Room For All Pigs At right Trough

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 145, 21 June 1941, Page 5 (Supplement)

Room For All Pigs At right Trough

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Boxing is in xnany ways an exciting, interesting and healthy sport. It calls [or courage, speed, stamina, a good eye and something of a brain. It is also a silly game, this gratuitous exchange of punches on the nose and in the stomach, hut a great many people seem to enjoy playing it and watching it played. There has never been anything essentially wrong with the pastime. The trouble has always ten with the people who take part in it, promote it, foster it and make a living out of it. As a sport it is innocent enough, but as a business or profession it calls tor certain swinish and brutish attributes in the participants if it is to be conducted successfully. It therefort should surprise no one when the pigs gather at the trough.

I [M recent years boxing has been 1 a source of untold wealth, i mheard of fortunes. All the more | legitimate reason, then, for the 1 .wine to grunt and snort and | snuffle and jostle. BOXING, WO all agree, is nice exercise, but prizefighting 1 ceils to heaven and always has. I The hierarchy of modern prize--1 : .?hting begins at the bottom with •e backbone of the kingdom—the I : ©mon pugilist. Ihe next lank seher is the prize-light manager, do operates and exploits him, and lie gangster back of the manager. Thereafter come the fight pioisier and, at the top, the cheap pollIn the heydoy of the American rae-ring during the golden era the eblic used to dump two or three -llion dollars into the trough at one "ji6 every so olt.cn, and now the |g»ys would go for it. fe The eventual fate of the modern ffifizefichter is not far removed from Biatof his ancient brother. With but exceptions, he ends his days feroke ana broken. His brain or his jr;j.esight is invariably damaged and H; i;>money dissipated.

He trades his body for temporary : .airy. He is but rarely able to enjoy s earnings, if he has managed to salvage any, In health and comfort, iiien his day is done. And the average active life of a psblic brawler is between seven ana cght years. , , The lavman is often surprised iiiat a fighter can age and go to pieces in what seems to be comparably few fights. It is quite true that lie takes his most severe beatings in combat with the six-ounce gloves, mi that very often he is badly mired around the head when he is on ie verge of being knocked out ana in no longer roll with a punch or ijfend himself and is struck about 'ie skull with the full force of an Opponent's punch. But what even the boxing fan for2ts is that, the fighter receives a eady daily battering about the heau id body in his training periods in ■pite of'the fact that 12oz and l'lo/ pillows" and hcadguards arc usea. Minute injuries to the brain besme exaggerated. The optic nerve is imaged bv the steady pounding pon the frontal bone and the bony ''■'tees over the eyes. . . The speech centres ave disturbeu iom injury to both the larnyx anu 'ie brain, and eventually lesions ffld blood clots formed Dy constant ®cussion and shock affect tne 'ocometer areas of the brain, and tne Sghter acquires the halting, v a iitaping walk so elegantly described one of the terms of endearment invented for prize lighters —stumblebum.

THE changes worked in fine- * looking, clear-eyed youngjte who adopt the ring as a profession are sometimes shocking to observe. You see them at the start Mi and unmarked, and you live llirough their gradual disintegration. The knotted ears and the smashea |tas are the least of their injuries, ftieir lips begin to thicken and their T's seem to sink deeper into tne Jvernous ridges about them, ridges JMare thickened and scarred from "Me. Many of them acquire little Jervous antics. Their voices change ® husky, half intelligible whispers. Some of them go blind. Dempsey May lives in mortal terror of blmciJtes. Their walk is affected. And * ors t of all, sometimes they cannot Sjnember, or they say queer things. industry laughs and says: "°n t pay any attention to him. He s Punchy!" exchange for this, under the J es ®ftt system, the fighter is techBally entitled to make away with lion's, or, rather, to continue simile, the hog's portion of tlie Wag. of his share of the gate, which &%, in a championship fight, c ? l ]~ {'f 27i per cent for the champion per cent for the challenger, Li® entitled to retain for himself J; 3 of the money. Jhe other third he hands over to in return for the sei - K 8 rendered him by that indivi' c P aL And in New York it is illegal : r a boxer not to have a manager, letter how clever he is or . c fJ?" gj looking after his own buslL^. e State says that he must have order to be able to receive a P-se to box. The State in this consists of the politicians the hierarchy, threei in commissioners, with their satellites, appointed undei th » Boxing Law. It is excepJJW actually 6 for the fighter to get jt-thlrd of the money that r in e to him.

The two-thirds, one-thitri division of the nurse between fighter and nianagpv is determined by rule and law, hut there is nothing'tn prevent a private agreement, between fighter and manager, whereby their earnings are split fifty-fifty, and upon more than one occasion a fighter has had to content himself with 25 petcent of the booty, the other 73 per cent being whacked up amongst a board of managers, camp followers, chisellers and racketeers. "Pieces" of fighters are sold like shares in a company, on spec., or in times of trouble when debts pile up. Max Baer once achieved something notable when he sold more than 300 per cent of himself to various parties in return for ready cash. He excused himself on the grounds that he thought he owned a thousand per cent of himself.

But there is also the little matter of expenses, whereby the careful manager is able to reduce the size of the portion which he must hand ovei Ms bum, as he is frequently apt to call him. Often he is moved to increase the size of these expenses more out of compassion and self-interest becaiise, his bum being a person of low ong n and simple tastes more not would obviously be at a loss to know how to spend the monej o what to do with it if he had it, so why give him any? Some of the expense accounts rendered Cain era during the period of his systematic fleecing ought to hG salvaged and placed into tne smun S °Th"re no limit on difference and usually doesn . There are training-camp expenses irx Vio expenses fot tiavei, ff k !T£ When el- they a mi ting hiin on the caid). Tf iip ins been brought o\er by a , mnnaeer that individual foreign manage] i im ssib!e to°operate here successfully without cutting in an American manager. the nug is any good, as \Ub And it t 1. fechj-neline. the foreign Sa°nSer S ve S ry Tiuickly. eased out LmitFiS locals get everything ____ * ju a pocp of some Amei i fis-hters the good work is furthei hi w'do it Ret in 'there and get hit .on the chin.

j By j Paul Gallico

"THERE an? occasionally fighters "who arc able to combine intelliponce with the other prime characteristics required of a successful pugilist; to wit, cruelty, ferocity, lack of imagination, and no ethics, morals or scruples. Sport does not enter into the business at any time whatsoever. , As a matter of strict truth, the tighter really could not pet on without his manager to handle his business, his matchmaking, and his conniving for hi in. Successes in the ring are rarely if ever accomplished on merit. They are all schemed, chiselled and bargained for. The cross, the double-cross, and the triple-cross plav an important part in the rise of anv champion. It is by no means sufficient for a tighter merely to have bis muscles, speed, courage, and a devastating knock-out punch. If he hasn't a capably crooked little manager to manoeuvre him into the spot where he can use that muscle to best advantage, he will never pet past a six-round bout at his local club, or the American Legion smoker. Championship matches and fights loading to them are made in the manner of big business deals. They are never signed and sealed until each side is convinced that it lias every bit the best of it. with the judges and referee sewed up as well. The manager does all this. The fighter is merely the instrument. T. have never been able to feel particularly outraged at the machinations of prizefight managers, though their callousness and brutality towards their charges is something else again. For the most part they play in their own leagues and confine their petty larceny and swindles to one another.

AND if occasionally the public is caught in the middle and is bilked by a prearranged match, it is generally the fault of that public. The only pity is that the fight manager on the whole cannot be more decent and honest with his man and content himself with cheating his rivals in business. A few of the men who own and operate stables of fighters are decent and reputable, but the majority are not. Some of the sheer cold-blooded heartlessness shown by so-called human beings who have the healtn, sanity, and lives of other human beings in their charge is sickening. A manager will coddle and protect a champion or money-making tighter because he is his meal ticket and a valuable piece of property which he doesn't want to see damaged because he will be out of pocket. But he will send a run-of-the-mine bruiser of the type generally known as a "club fighter" or crowd-pleaser out round after round, cut, semi-conscious, bleeding badly from wounds that he is either too stupid or careless to attend to, to take a further beating or get knocked out. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ IF there is any feeling of humanity or mercy in their dark souls they keep it for thernj selves. The only man I ever knew who I ; ever thought had any feeling for his ! fighter was a chap from the Middle i West bv the name of Jack Hurley, j who managed a tough, hard-looking ! little welter-weight, Billy Petrolle, l who also went under the exciting 1 nickname of "The Fargo Express. As long as "the old man," as Huri ley called his fighter, was in there popping the other fellow —and how he could pop them!—and not catching too many, Hurley let him go. When they began to pop Petrolle, 1 Hurlev retired him and refused to j let him fight again. I But for every Hurley in the game I there are a hundred swine who rub a filthv towel over the pulped faces of their fighters, give them a swig out of the bottle, and heave them up out of their stools with 'Go on

out there and fight, you tramp, "ionic laying down on me," and a few minutes Inter haul them back to their corners, douse them with water to bring them to, and boot them back to their dressing-rooms. I remember particularly one kindly old gentleman, a veteran light manager by the name of Charley Harvey. He was a mild, sweet-looking old soul with innocent blue eyes and a walrus moustache. And i watched this man one night pick his beaten, half-conscious fighter tip and shove him out to destruction. The tighter was Tom Hecney, and his destroyer was Gene Tunnev, then heavy-weight champion of the world. Harvev had neither the courage nor the decency to stop that, fight'ut the end of the thirteenth round. Years later he let another of his boys, Steve Hamas, take such a brutal beating at the hands of Max Schmeling that Hamas went to the hospital when it was over and never has been the same since. There are a great many reasons for fixing lights, and they are all good ones. A writing-paper manufacturer who did not see that his product was given every advantage over other similar products and who failed to take advantage of rival business concerns would be considered a poor business man indeed and wouldn't last very long. The hue and cry that is raised at the idea of a fixed fight is pretty nearly as phony as the fight itself. People who attend prizefights are old enough to know that it is not a sport but an industry, and that if they are permitted t.o witness a contest that is fought strictly on its merits they are just lucky.

IT is paradoxical, however, that most of the big heavy-weight championship contests are honest, especially when fought by two reasonably young men of equal fame and ability. This is because there is so much monev involved that neither one nor the other of the parties concerned is able to muster sufficient cash or even promises to make it worth while for either champion or challenger to do anything but his best. The most common form of business arrangement where championships are involved, and there is no out-and-out arrangement for the champion to lose or the challenger to take a dive is the continuing contract whereby the challenger, if he wins, guarantees to pay the defeated title-holder a percentage of his earnings as champion on his next tw r o or three fights. Thus, if the incumbent champion is able to stand off the challenger in the fight, he still has his title and his earning capacity. And if he loses, he continues to share in the profits of the championship for a time. , , . On the face of it a fight under this arrangement is perfectly honest. Both parties are trying—well maybe. But there is always the chance that if the champion gets a clip on the chin and finds himself on the floor he mav decide to stay there. After all, it will be easier to let the other fellow do his fighting for nun for a year or so. 4- + * * SOMETIMES, however, wnen it is evident that the challenger is more colourful and will have unquestionably greater earning capacity as a champion than the incumbent, the managers of both champion and challenger get together and form a species of syndicate or pool.

A championship match is arranged. The champion with suitable pantomime succumbs in great agony to a violent slap on the scapula, and all the members of the pool then share m tne subsequent prosperity of the new champion. This is definitelv the system employed throughout piofessional wrestling. But most of the deals and dickers occur, on the whole, before the championship match is reached. Let us say that a new heavy-weight appears, a colourful chap with a knock-out punch. It is necessary to provide him with a record for advertising and publicity purposes since tne first question asked by the patron of boxing shows when a new phenom is introduced is: "Who did he ever lick?" A tour through the country is then arranged in which the rising candidate meets and by agreement, wherever necessary, knocks over a series of trial horses who for a consideration agrees to collapse in whatever round is deemed advisable. This matter of the round is frequently of great importance. If the reigning champion, in his flay, has knocked out Joe Punk in five rounds, that is considered par for the course, and it is held good business for the new candidate to accomplish the same feat in two or three rounds, or two under par. Occasionally a trial horse is discovered with scruples or ambitions, or a girl friend, who will not listen to reason in the little matter of offering himself as a victim. In | such eases, if the aspiring candidate | has the right, kind of connections, it I has been customary to threaten the I -trial horse with sudden death by fire- | itrms. Moral scruples are then likely | to strike the trial horse as hardly ; worth while.

THE late W. L. (Young) Strib■l ling, a famous and curious heavy-weight prizefighter who was killed in a motor cycle crash (he was afraid of nothing that rolled on wheels or flew on wings, but was a coward in the ring), had an even more foolproof system for compiling an impressive knockout record, and incidentally picking up a little spare change. He travelled with a motor caravan through the south and the south-west fighting his chauffeur. This chauffeur would move on ahead to a sizable town i hat. harboured prizefighting and establish residence and training quarters under the name of Smith or Doakes with an appropriate prefix such as "Hutch," or "Red," or "Spike" or "Kayo." Stribling would come along, a match would be arranged, and Strib would knock him out in a thrilling fight. It should have been thrilling. It was rehearsed often enough. Then the caravan would move gaily on to the next stop, a good two or three hundred miles away, so that there would be little or no danger of repeaters among the audiences. The layman is often puzzled as to why, if the candidate to be built up is any good at ail, it is necessary to prearrange fights with a collection of stumble-bums, tramps and has-beens. The truth is that it is not easy to knock a man out. no matter how bad a lighter he may be.