BOXING.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 27, 31 January 1920, Page 18

BOXING.

A cool head is half the battle. When Jack Johnson defeated Tommy Burns at Sydney, the white man was so exasperated by the studied taunts of his opponent that he came at the black "wide open," with the result that he narrowly escaped a knock-out in the first round. As a matter of fact, Burns afterwards said he could see three chairs every time he walked to hie corner after each rotlnd, and that his head was just getting clear when the fight was stopped by the police in the fourteenth. There is" little doubt Johnson owed his vjctory to the punch mentioned, and the fact that he was under hospital treatment for broken ribs for some time afterwards j conclusively proved that it wasn't the soft snap for him it was alleged to be. One night a few months ago (says an Australian scribe), I was dining in a restaurant in llontmartre. The place was crowded, and I wa6 so ciose to a stranger on my right that two or three times our elbows collided, and we smiled our apologies. The stranger, who was in evening dress, was a slight, well-groomed young chap, with a somewhat long, light j face, with even, sensitive features. The j particular thing that impressed mc about him was that his gold, cigarette case 'was the neatest one I had seen. You would have voted him a fashionable young Frenchman of good taste about the 'boulevardes, and no self-respecting Australian would have hesitated, hart occasion risen, to have risked hitting him under the eye. As the night advanced ■ there was some jawing at one end of the room, and after looking on a time the gentle young stranger accepted an invitation from one of the girls and took ito the floor. Instantly all the oth«4 • dancers ceased and the tables were deserted as the people formed a ring to ■ watch the couple dancing. The man was I Georges Carperitier, the mildest manI nered man who ever become a famous pugilist.