BLACK BRUISERS MEET IN SYDNEY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 159, 4 January 1912, Page 7

BLACK BRUISERS MEET IN SYDNEY.

SAM McVEA DEFEATS SAM LANGFORD. LONG-ANTICIPATED FIGHT. POINTS VICTORY AFTER TWENTY ROUNDS. (New Zealand Times' special). Sydney, December 2fi. The long-looked-forward-to battle between Sam McVea and Sam Langfonl, for what was virtually the world's supremacy in the heavy-weight prizering division, took place to-day (Boxing Day) at Hugh D. Mcintosh's Stadium at Rnshcutters' Bay. It commenced at 10 a.m., went the full twenty rounds' limit, and resulted Jin Referee "Snowy" Baker declaring McVea the winner on points, to the accompaniment of loud and disrespectful boo-hoos from a very large section of the crowd. And what a crowd it was! Some of it was waiting for admission before the advertised time of opening the gates, which was 6 a.m. At 7 a.m. the steady flow set in until 10 o'clock, when the great enclosure embraced something like 20,000 people. But it was a very different crowd to that other great Boxing Day gathering, when a white man was matched against Jack Johnson for the world's title. There you had the racial feeling, the while blood surging in accordance with its champion's good or bad fortune. Here was merely a spectacle of two , niggers slugging each other in an alien j land —a land which had allowed them ; to enter its gates upon sufferance, plus the clear understanding that they should i leave again within a brief given time. So, from the moment the two men climbed into the ring until the end of ( the long fight, the "barracking" stage of enthusiasm was restricted to those raucous persons who would yell their fancy even at a dog fight. GOOD FIGHTING. ' Never was the Mcintosh advertise-, ment, "boxing contest," more fully: borne out than in this struggle between the black Americans. Both men were so well trained, so clever, and speedy of < defence that brutal fighting punishment was, in the ordinary course of events, almost impossible. Certainly, Langford's right eye was so jabbed and punched by that direful left hand of McVea's that, towards the end of the scuffle, it looked like a potato boiled, in its jacket. However, no harm was done there, and "if you steam it to-night, Sam," said the man who had raised the swelling as they met in the dressing-rooms, "it'll be aft right."

The fight was divided, so to speak, into three sections. In the first McVea worked in his characteristic style of stabbling in his left fist like a pistonrod and then stepping clear of retaliation, or closing it to a smother. He fights the defensive fight of which John Johnson was so shiny an agate, and in the first half-dozen rounds he piled up points against the much shorter and lighter Langford. In those early rounds he appeared to be immeasurably the superior boxer. His short left jabs, for instance, seemed utterly beyond Langford's defence abilities. They so irritated him at the tail end of the second spell that he just wartea m, took a couple on the bounce, cracked McVea heavily with right and left to the jaw, and went back to his corner as pleased a coon as there was out of Old Kentucky. In the following round lie endeavored to repeat the performance, but he stopped a couple of whallops that knocked him off his balance and o*n to one knee on the floor. He ro»e smiling, but shaken, and was given a bad passage for the rest of the round. Tjie next session provided more hard trials for him. As he advanced, looking for his favorite close-in work, the long paw of the other coon was consistently pushed into his face and held there, or was let go suddenly and the right whipped across his jaw. McVea gave him one vertical upper-cut in that fourth round that made his jaws champ like a horse oh a slack bit. The play in the fifth and sixth was somewhat similar. LANGFORD " TAKES STOCK."

In the second section, which lasted from about the seventh to the seventeenth -round, Langford began to get the measure of tilings, as a batsman does after a few overs from a tricky bowler. Simultaneously, McVea slackened off in his work, and began to get away from his pertinacious • opponent, who padded after him without rest, and despite occasional blows that would have shaken a horse. And while Langford began piling up a good wad of points, McVea was rapidly losing the popularity he had accumulated with the Sydney crowd. In the seventh round Langford forced his way past the long left-arm defence, and drove liis man back to the ropes with over-hand right and left blows, for all the world like a fast swimmer doing the crawl stroke. And all the time McVea was scurrying from what was coming to him. No taunts from the ring-side could make him stand and mix it with jthe man tracking ■him. To those who jeered, and to thousands who did not, it appeared that "the Paris idol" had "dropped his bundle," and probably his : own subsequent statement that he felt confident and was merely "resting" is nearer the truth, However, he didn't rest all the time, as Langford's gradually closing eye clearly showed. Every now and. then he would step in and bash home a couple of steadiers, wjiich generally caught Langford in an over-confid-ent attack. It was a demonstration of the methods of that other Jack Johnson who made a. name for himself, by the aid of Jiyron, in the .great aiuLbloQdy battle between the Christians and the Turks, as described in "Don Juan": "But Johnson was a clever fellow, who Knew when and how to 'cut and come again' And never ran away, except when running Was nothing but a valorous sort of cunning." And these black pugs are as cunning as dingoes. All the same, whether it was cunning, or the.dire need of recuperation, or plain fear, McVea happened to be in the way of a right clanf! to the jaw that all 'but dropped him on the fly. The glove that was responsible seemed to flash like a streak of light, and the recipient sagged at the knees with the concussion. It sort of momentarily stunned his body. He recovered in a clinch, but he hung on to Langford like a long-lost brother until the referee forced them apart. In the next round Langford made desperate efforts to land a settling punch, and just missed with an upper-cut that whistled in the breeze. At the thirteenth round McVea brightened up again. LAXG FORD'S WATERLOO. The third section of the battle was the nineteenth and twentieth rounds, when Langford completely foundered, and was only saved from being knocked out by the fact that McVea had not sufficient strength left to effect it. But he crowded all over Langford, and that, added to the fact that Langford was punched to the knees in the third round, won sie decision for McVea. Anyhow, that is your correspondent's view of it, and evidently it was the referee's view. All same, it was not exactly I a popular Jiisfcpu with crowd, and the |to its correctness is li%

to last for sonic time. The Sun, Herald and Telegraph arc satisfied that Baker'ti iudgment was sound. One thing is certain. Neither of the men could heat Johnson—that is, t)he Johnson who made a butcher's holiday of Tommy Burns in the same ring a, year or two ago.