AN AMERICAN VICTORY.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 220, 16 September 1924, Page 12

AN AMERICAN VICTORY.

ANOTHER "GREAT FIGHT" j "FIASCO. i ~ ~ £16.000 FOR 7 MINUTES BOXING (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 11. '. \ If the "great light" liasco at the ! Wembley Stadium last Saturday did j not sound the passing bell of lieavy- ; weight boxing contests for huge purses jin Great Britain all one can say ia that ICarlyle's- mordant remark concerning ! proportion of fools to the .population of • this fair land was, and is, justified. jTime after time within the past few years have these fights for thousands proved shows worth about sixpence to see, and that between Tom Gibbous, 'of America,.- and Jack Bloomfield. ! England's alleged best heavy-weight j boxer, was hardly worth going across I the road to witness. (Gibbons, we Tcnow. lis a very good man indeed, but if I Bloomfield had been even half as good !as the adulatory paragraphs of some of l our sporting writers made him out to ■ be, the American -would have to be ! written dovm '"a marvel." But BJoom- | field's record in the ring merely showed i him to be the best of the essentially j very moderate crowd of big men in England trying to earn their~ living i within the roped square, and his "fight" ; -with Gibbons merely served, to emphasise strongly what a poor lot they are as compared to America's heavy i and light-heavy divisions. Yet Bloomfield, with hardly a fight to his name worth recalling, was given £6000 to box i Gibbons, and that, worthy waa to receive £10,000 win or lose. Never was fight in England the subject of so much persistent and exaggerated "booming." , According to the newspapers the Stadium, for all its 1-20,000 seating capacity, was going to prove too small for the affair, so ! hungry were people to witness the j fight. And so on ad. nauseam. But, alas for the promoters and the phophets, there were not quite so. many fools with money to burn as they imagined, and , the result of .their frantic and costly ! attempts to galvanise the great 8.1 , . j into wild enthusiasm over the Anglo- ; American set-to, and the supporting 1 bouts between minor pugilists "\vas a i stadium "two-thirds empty.' So sparse, I indeed.-did the crowd appear that when ! Gibbons saw the state of affairs, lie ; promptly wanted to know ( where liis money was coming from. What happened behind the scenes is ! a subject 'upon which many different tongues have spoken, lint the upshot was that, instead of taking the ring at ,4 p.m., it was within a stroke or two of 5 o'clock ere the principals were in the ring. Then Gibbons wasted a bit more time over being gloved, no doubt with the idea of—to use the Yankee euphemism—"getting * t'other man's goat." Whether these delays In getting to business tod on Bloomfield's nerves or not, one cannot say, but from the first lie seemed very ill at ease, and lit was evident that somebody had been praying him to look out for Gibbons' speciality punch, namely, a rapid swing to the body, travelling low and upwards to the mark. As Gibbons delivers it, it is a devastator, but it- ks only one of the American's very extensive repertoire, as Bloomfieift very soon found out. The Englishman started fairly well, and found an excellent guard for the "speciality." "What js more, he" actually scored. a- feW/.-points with a crisp punch to the face and a few lefts to the throat'and chest. But the blows didn't. much, and it was easy to see that he was merely sizing up the opposition. '. ' A. Torrid Second Sound. In the second round the American came out to fight. He got in some hefty punches, and then, in coming out of a torrid mix-up, the American slashed over a beautifully-timed and placed left hook. Down went Bloomfield. He rose slowly at the count of seven, but he was dazed and wobbly on his pins, and, after doling out a couple, of body blows, Gibbons sent the right clean home on the paint. Bloomfield was down" for a count of nifle, and when , he struggled up Gibbons went for him like a tiger, and finally, with a vicious right, sent him out of < the ring/ Bloomfield fell with his face over the Press' table, absolutely ■ unable to iiise, but "time" intervened, and the Englishman lived to come up for another dose of punishment, t His seconds worked furiously to get him into some sort of shape' for the. third round, but it was obvious to anybody that the Englishman. was- in no condition to continue, and as he shambled helplessly forward Gibbons looked at the referee as muclv as to say, "Must I hit him again?" That official, however, made no sign. To his credit Moonifield tried hard to put up a fight, and actually got home quite a. hard punch on Gibbons' head. But he scarcely knew what he was doing, and the American bad only to find the point. This he did, but Bloomfield went down only to rise again. Then I another crushing right found the spot, and it was all over. Bloomfield must be given credit for heaps-of pluck. He did his best, but that best was not nearly good enough to cope with Gibbous' speed, cleverness; strategy, and punching power. -But he got £0000 to salve his wounds, and for that amount lie was boxing, more or less, for just under seven minutes. Xot bad pay even for a good hiding, eh? Fight For the Money. It seems after all that both men will have to fight again for their money, but this ' -time in the law_ couirts. They both I received £3000 ere donning the gloves, but apparently the balances due are still owing-. It is said that the actual expenses of the promoters were little short of £30,000, including the purses for the big event and minor items, and that the takings at the Stadium were less than one-half of the amount anticipated; hence the trouble. Whether legal processes well enable the boxers to recover the moneys due to them remains to be seen. Still, they have ■ got ■ a cool £3000 apiece, which is not at all bad pay for the show they provided.