The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER i, 1911. BOXING CONTESTS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1277, 4 November 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER i, 1911. BOXING CONTESTS.

The deputation that asked the City Council on Thursday night to refuse tho use of the Town Hall for boxing contests makes a convenient text for a discussion of the cant and prejudice that are to be found in the talk of both sides in what is now an almost constant subject of controversy. There was a rich display of these unfortunate qualities in the dispute in London during September that ended in the prohibition and 'abandonment of the fight between Johnson and Wells. That controversy was by no means a struggle between the friends of boxing on one side and the opponents of it on the other, for such a noted upholder of boxing and other sports as Lord Lonsdale set himself against the contest, although for reasons quite different from those inspiring the Nonconformist objectors. He said that the contest was not a sporting event in any true sense; it was like pitting a three-year-old against a two-year-old; and he "would never believe that these large affairs, whore money was the chief factor, were for tho betterment of sport." The Times, which approved this view of the projected fight, and realised its importance, proceeded to _ enlarge it by this statement, which our anti-boxing friends may be astonished to learn would find endorsement nowhere more strongly than amongst those who can view a boxing contest without either shame or loathing: "The sporting interest of the fight must be, at oest, a somewhat strained and unnaturalone. . . . The only real question is how much of a 'show' Wells will be able to make against an older and stronger and much moro experienced antagonist." That is to say, the contest would have only a morbid interest, and could not bo defended on sporting grounds. Moreover, the morbidity would be heightened by the difference in colour of the two combatants. It would thus have some very unpleasant features of its own without any off-set in the shape of the ordinary merits of real championship contests. It would be quite a different thing from a contest between Johnson and Langfoud, which, we arc bound to say, we cannot admit would necessarily be objectionable if held under English or Australian management. " ut the main ground upon which Mr. Meyeh and his allies attacked the aftair was that it was a boxing contest. Mrt. Meyer spoke of a boxing contest as "tending to brutaliso those who practise and patroniso it ; the Eev. J. H. Jowett stated r.is fundamental position" in this painful burst of cant: "I believe in the sanctity of the human body, and anything that mauls it and treats it with indignity is, to my mind, to bo banned and prohibited so far as possible. Mr. Jowett also revealed his idea of a boxing contest bv saying that "the spectators arc called upon to watch tho gradual maiming of the combatants/' Mr N'oitTH and Dr. Gibb have used extreme languago concerning the recent Tracy-Hannan contest. Yet that bout was almost the most unobjectionable, inoffensive and pleas-antly-contested affair that has been witnessed here. Neither combatant sultcred the faintest injury, thero was not a scratch inflicted nor a drop of blood shed, and a few seconds after being technically knocked out Tracy walked out of the ring with his opponent, both of them feeling only healthily tired. Next dav they dined together in the bosom of liucYS family, an arrangement entered into between the two men before the contest; and to be carried through irrespective of what the result of the match might be. And the spectators certainly enjoyed the bout far beyond the usual, for the reason that it was as we have described it. Yet it will probably be impossible to convince any opponent of boxing that our version is a true account of that contest. Mn. Meyer has based all his knowledge of boxers and spectators at boxing contests upon what he has road and heard. He was asked whether he would go to Eari's Court and see Wells sparring, but he declined, although he had certainly placed himself in such a portion that he could not fairly decline to do so. "I would sooner*undergo an operation," he said. H c h a d made up his mind, that is to say, that boxing is so transcendentally brutal and evil a thing that even sparring practice is a thing to shudder at. This ia the frame of mind that would describe boxing gloves in

a sports-doalor's window as things sinful in themselves, .-is sonic person:', regard as a sin in itself thai, oxide of carbo-hydrate called alcohol. iM it. Meykr, to be sure, quoted from a highly coloured account of the Jouxsox-JEFFniEs fight, and was aided by the timely arrival of a cable message reporting a really objectionable fight at Madison Square in New York. But whether a. fight, is horrid or not as a spectacle depends, or can easily be made to depend, upon tho management. Indiscriminate condemnation of professional glove-fights on the strength of a number of cases in which there have been unpleasant scenes is manifestly unfair. Equally unfair is it to condemn the spectators in the undiscriminating manner usually adopted by the opponents of the. sport. There is no defence for the cant of the flabby "sports patron" that prize-fighting is ennobling, that it helps to improve the physique ol tho race, and that England's greatness is due to the Englishman's early-acquired love of settling disputes with a straight punch. But if cant means insincerity, or pseudo-lofty preaching without knowledge, then there is far more cant on the other side. When one says that boxing brutalises the l>oxer,_ and degrades the imago of God—if we may be pardoned the quotation of a horrid phrase often used by the anti-boxing fanatics— he should bring evidence to his support. When he says that the effect on the spectators is even more deplorable, he is speaking what is not true. What might disgust him will not necessarily degrade others. In point of fact, when the management of a contest is in good hands, and in hands that take care to pick the men on the principle of banning the tough" and the inferior boxer, the spectators suffer no moral or spiritual injury at all. On the contrary, the average spectator carries away with him some excellent food for thought. He reflects upon how the boxers kept their tempers, how they sustained sharp Wows without wincing, how they observed a clear and simple code of fair play, and, above all, how they obeyed a mass of rules. It is these facts of a bout that last longest in the mind of the average admirer of boxing, who is not, as his critics too often imply, a low fellow who . really lives only when ho is watching somebody being punched. But we arc afraid that nothing will dispel tho idea of the anti-boxing agitators that the sport is a mass of horrors. The stopping of the WellsJohnson fight may have avoided some temporary undesirable results, but wo aro afraid it is likely to have some bad results of its own in course of time. It will encourage the Churches to seek further triumphs in the regions outside their proper concern. It will encourage the public to believe that by sensational methods a minority can intimidate the Government into action of tho sort desired. It will certainly lead many people to believe that'prizefighting is a huge social evil, whereas, as any sensible person must realise in between fights, it is a grotesquely infinitesimal thing as compared with the huge cancers of infidelity, of Socialism, of immorally, of acquiescence in dishonesty in government—of thoso currents in the dark and drifting hedonism of the time that most of our antiboxing clergymen have almost ceased to oppose.