BOXING.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 41, 16 February 1918, Page 14

BOXING.

Forty-eix years ago Billy Madden (afterwards manager for John L. Sullivan) and Jack Graham fought a dra* m St. Louis, U.S.A. It's a long spell way' ■back to 18,72, and yet one of the principals in that contest is still in the game, able to indulge in a rough-and-tumble with men many years his junior. Jack Graham, one qi the veterans of the ring, has now been"resident in Melbourne for about twenty years. He hae been in Australia almost twice as long, as he arrived there in the early eighties, and for a man who has led a strenuous life he is a fine example of what athletics will do for one. Few of his present day acquaintances and pupils realise what a versatile athlete Graham was in his day. Mostly he excelled at wrestling and boxing, and it 13 in these branches of sport he is best known to the present generation, but, in addition, he was a champion at foils, fencing, single-sticks, weight-lifting, club swinging, and feats of strength; in fact, no sort of physical exercise was amiss so far as he was concerned. Then, in addition, he was a lion tamer, in fact, it was as a lion tamer with Cooper and Bailey's circus that he arrived in Australia.

Recently untimely interuptioris from the gallery at a Sydney theatre so unnerved Miss Kathleen MacDonell that she fainted. This incident prompts a critic to recall an incident at Sydney which had a different termination. It is recorded that on one occasion, when the late John L. Sullivan, the famous pugilist, was playing in "The Village Blacksmith," someone in the gallery cock-crowed. '-John L." was not the fainting,*sort; he merely strode to tKe. footlights, and remarked to the offender: "Cut that out, or I'll come up and put a tail on you, my pippin."