WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 297, 14 September 1927, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Money is not everything in prizefighting in America, for although Mr. Jack Dempsey had just previously cashed in a quite satisfactory cheque lor about £lOO,OOO, it is said that lie wept salt tears when .Mr. Gene Tunney—now Lieutenant Geue Tunuey—defeated him a year ago. In his seven years as world’s heavy-weight champion Mr. Dempsey had received round about £400,000 for less than 3J hours in the ring. This sum, however, does not include any extras, such as moving picture rights, etc. Now, according to a news message this morning, he is due to collect between £85,00U and £90,000 for a return match agajnst his late vanquisher.

At last year’s Dempsey-Tunncy light, at Philadelphia, there were about 130,000 spectators present. The gate receipts ran very close on to £lOO,OOO. Of this sum Mr. Dempsey pocketed about £150,000, and Mr. Tunney £lO,OOO. The balance, about fifty per cent, of the total, less expenses, went to the happy promoters of the great event. The" financial preliminaries to these famed encounters seem nowadays to be more thrilling than the battle itself. Last year’s fight was- over in thirty minutes. The financial and legal' battles beforehand had lasted for mouths. The price of seats ranged from 255. to £6, and the average figure paid works out at about £3 per head of the 130,000 spectators present. 11ns was at the rate of two shillings a minute fot each minute the fight lasted.

The manly art of self-defence nowhere in the'world receives more financial support than in the United States. Among those present at . last year s fight were four Governors, Cabinet Ministers by the dozen, public functionaries of all degrees of eminence, and not a few clergymen. Millionaires were there in vast plenty, in just admiration of one of their class, Mr. Dempsey is his modest total earnings having then long since passed the million dollar mane. The largest previous crowd assembled to see a fight was just under 100,000 at the Dempsev-Carpentier match. J lie next largest'v,as something over 90,000 at the Dempsey-Firpo battle. A lot of the people who paid £5 and £6 a-piece for seats fairlv close to the ring at these events had to buy the newspapers to find out what bad' happened, as everybody in front was standing up, and the view was blocked. Still, they always seem readv to go back, hoping for better luck next time, and the promoters have also since realised that it is bad business when only about 10 per cent, of the people in the high-priced seats see the fight, while the rest view it through field glasses.

The million dollars, in English money £•200,000, to be paid to Mr. Tunuey for the coming battle, is the high-water mark yet touched by pugilistic finance, which now ranks in importance with railway mergers, bank consolidations, trust reorganisations, and the like. Beside the contestants and the promoters, the lawyers usually have a handsome cut out of the proceeds, for most American States and cities have laws hampering to big fights, and the legal battle to secure a site conveniently’ accessible from the large centres of population swallows up money. Philadelphia, the Quaker City, was selected for the last fight, as its laws ate easier than most —though they lav it down that the fight must not exceed ten rounds—and there was also a big exhibition on in that city last year. '

The financial advance of the heavyweight championship will be realised when it is recalled that when John L. Sullivan won the title in 1890 the sum at stake was £5OO. When Corbett beat Sullivan to a pulp at New Orleans in 1892 they fought for £-000 a side and a purse of £sooo—the winner to take all. That was the end of prize figUtn’S in the heavy-weight class, for now the champion gets a fixed guarantee win, lose, or draw, and takes chances. The high respectability now attained bv the science of pugilism is well evidenced by the fact that whereas Mr Tunaev at the time of. meeting Mr. Dempsev was in the ranks in the United States Marines, the Navy’ Board immediately following his victory investigated his career, and instantaneously discovered that’ he possessed the reqmar e qualifications for promotion to a he tenancy If Lieutenant Tunnej aga\ defeats the famed ex-champion there is no knowing but what he may even find himself Major Tunney, or perhaps ecen Colonel Tunney.

John L. Sullivan was estimated to manages to get all the requires for nourishment from. the come on his investments without trenching on >ie capital su ™- . financial side of the. profession, how ever, was very crude in Sulhcan s time

A Philadelphian music worked out a new variant of _ V ier i_ degree” methods for which the• ran police are renowned. to a nm report she secrets, too stubbornly = ua -.°, ’ thocl “stronqiv accented” music is to frank confession.

* * • Miss Martha Scott, the inventor of this mode of torture, is said, to have discovered the powers latent in musi while acting as "song leader a toy 3 who Always strained *e of S tO Klic’ ‘temperament matched angelic voice. The New Zealand delegate at the League of Nations ;bonld beinstrurted . flip next world war is po. poned until we get our national memorial up for the last one. Tones: What’d that snappy salesman sell vou this morning? Smith: A book on how to cultivate sales resistance. THE garden of no delight. A pale and wasted moonlight falls On lawns of velvet green > . Twelve statelv fountains trickle down To pools that lie unseen. These fountain pools still wait unstirred— No image falls therein; Their mirrors, like a witless soul, Knows neither joy nor sin. The shadows hold no glad retreat Of lover or of maid; Along the empty terraces x No child has ever played. No echo lies upon this air; Winds ween among tlie trees. . Wistful to-night this, garden lie?, Hungering for memories. —Frances bhaw.