BOXING NOTES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 53, 28 June 1940, Page 55

BOXING NOTES

Surprise Packet + Willis At Blenheim Filipino Boxers + Strickland Out?

description Blenheim spectators gave Merv Willis after his bout with Vic Caltaux at Blenheim. The Australian certainly showed splendid form against the rugged welter-weight champion, and his display of scientific boxing was admired by the crowd which filled the hall. a Me * Apart from his all-round clever boxing; the Australian showed that he could hit with the best, and had Caltaux on the canvas in the fifth, The champion evened matters, when he dropped Willis in the tenth. x * * For the past six months Willis has been issuing challenges to Caltaux whenever the opportunity offered; but as he has now qualified fora shot at the title, there ig no doubt but that his ambition will now be attained. The Blenheim contest was over twelve rounds, but if a title match is arranged, fifteen rounds will be the distance. Es Es * _ Archie Leckie has a score of amateurs in training, It is expected that he will produce a number of provincial champions this year, with the possibility of a Dominion champion as well. ji. SURPRISE PACKET" was the

Otago quite rightly is very proud of Ron Withell. who won the light-heavy-Weight title at the Divisional Championships in Cairo, by defeating Corporal Stevens of Australia, Withell, who is a private in the Canterbury-Otago Battalion, represented New Zealand at the Empire Games in Sydney in 1938, * *" * Young Gildo’s work in. Auckland is building up a lot of interest. During the last twenty years Filipino boxers have been fighting with success in many lands, but it was the great victory of Pancho Villa, the dancing, jabbing wildcat, over Jimmy Wilde, that first gave boxing in the Philippines its big impetus. * ES * Among prominent Filipinos Jamit> and Ganzon are well known to New Zealand fight followers. Jammy was perhaps on the down grade when he visited this country, but he had been a sensation in his time, particularly when Eugene Criqui, who later became feather-weight champion of the world, was boxing on Australia. Jamito was the only boxer to go the distance with the Frenchman.

Maurice Strickland is now attached to a business concern in Wellington and appears to have directed his thoughts away from boxing. It seems that he has been catapulted out of the game owing to lack of opponents, and not because he actually desired to become inactive.