DEIFIED BRUISERS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1929, Page 21

DEIFIED BRUISERS

CAUSE OF THEIR FAME

MERIT OR PUBLICITY.'

Docs that deified bruiser, the fistic champion of to-day, rely upon merit alone for fame and fortune? Does iiis reputation in very truth depend upon the steam behind his wallop, his ability to absorb punishment, or his superfine ring generalship.? Not one of these, not all of them, together even, can be considered actually responsible for the glittering .pinnacle upon which he stands before an admiring world. For this we have the authority of no less a person than the well-known sports' writer, W O. M' Gcehan, as imparted to us in the pages of '^Vanity Fair." The secret, he says, lies not in bravery but in boosting, not so much in packing a redoubtable punch as in owning a high powered Press*agent. What makes this possible, we learn, is the fact-that there is no yardstick by which the performance of a fighter can be accurately measured. As he puts it most convinciVgly: "The statistics in athletic achievement are depressing and a deterrent to the modern Homers of the sports pages. The eoid figures show that, in every line of'athletic endeavour that can be recorded in regard to time or distance, every known athletic record has been bettered within the last twenty years and, of course, the end is not yet. In certain lines the stop-watch and the tape measure have been killing romance and dissipating myths relentlessly. '.'There are those who would deduce from this that athletes must have improved in all lines of endeavour. This would leave the infereucevthatthe present heavyweight champion must be a greater fighter than John L. Sullivan or any of his predecessors under the Marquis of Queensbury or London prizering rules. In some quarters this would be regarded as little, short of .blasphemy, and y_et I have heard this point argued by men who were God-fearing, upright, and reasonable upon aH other subjects. With this formula in .mind we.are forced-to conclude that Hercules must have been decidedly inferior to one of our second-rate modern wrestlers. It would seem that the serpent he was supposed to have strangled in his crib while ho was a babe was parhapa no bigger than a garter snake. "Fortunately, achievement in- tho 'squared circle' cannot be measured by time or space, consequently here is one sport where the imagination can run frco and where the argument as to the relative greatness of the comparatively ancient and the modern can rage forever. In this regard the ( modern Homers still may fashion demigods according to their dreams ana to just as credulous audiences as those that listened to the first blind chronicler of athletic, prowess."

Such being the case, we-find ourselves readily agreeing with Mr. Al'Gcehan's conclusion that "your modern champion is as great as his chroniclers make him," states the "Literary Digest." He drives home this argument with a verbal vim that recalls the historic blows .handed out long ago by the peerless "pugs" of whom he writes. "It was thegood fortune of John L. Sullivan •to have taken the stage just as the firsfbeains of tho spotlight wero turned upon pugilism. In the case of a comparatively remote figure like John j L. Sullivan it is hard to say how much "' of this demigod was' real and bow' much was boost. It is my notion that the figure of John L. Sullivan was largely legendary, and that the figures of many of his immediate successors were equally unreal. '' GENTLEMAN JlM. ''! "In the ponderously majestic wake of Sullivan there followed a new type, 'Gentleman Jim 1 Corbett. With alKdue respect to the affable and intelligent actor that Corbett has become, he was no more gentlemanly in the ring thanwas his immediate predecessor. On the contrary, Mr. Corbett, when engaged in his ring-work, was just as cold and concentrated a killer as any man who took up the manly art; At Carson City Corbctt was highly amused at'the wrath of Mrs. Fitzsinunons (the magnificent Kose Julian) while the fight was going his way.

"The late Eobert Fitzsimmons testified to tho fact that Mr. Corbett ' 'it 'im cruel 'ard.' " From all accounts, James J. Corbett was quite as vicious a fighter as any of them, which is no arraignment of-his manners, because all successful fighters arc forced to be that way. But the keynote of the Pross-agenting of James J. Corbett, which was handled by ono of the most skilful gentlemen in that line of work, Mr. William A. Brady, was what might be called the "gentlemanly" angle. This seemed to get by, at the time. It would not go very far now, because it has been overdone. There haye been too many 'gentlemen' in the prizering, and their welcome has been worn out. ■ ■' '■' ■ . '

"But the greatest bit of Press; agenting was done by Mr. Jack feearns (born Leo J. M'Kiernan, but who changed the name for his own reasons) in the promotion of Jack Dempsey. Mr. Kearns had some groundwork in the manly art, having started out as a heavyweight fighter himself. But after being knocked out no fewer than six times, Mr. Kearns'decided that there was no future for him in that part of the business. He determined, as they

say, 'to get himself a'fighter.' He acquired Jack Denipsey just about the timo it was agreed that young man Dompsey was merely another 'palooka' or 'pork and beaner.' Under the management oJ; John the Barber, Now York, Denipsey had met a third-rato negro fighter and, in' the encounter, hud received a thorough trouncing, sustaining a broken rib and a considerable shattering of faith iv.bis own lighting ability." "

No amount of Press-agenting, ive are informed, can "create a demigod out of absolutely nothing." The article to be sold to tho . public, must possess a modicum of merit. Given that and the friendly help of newspaper writers on ring gossip, who are, it appears, "easy game for the sportiug press agent,." a groat deal can be accomplished. Mr. Kcarns received plenty of aid from the writers of pugilism, whom he cultivated assiduously. From the moment he came under the charge of Mr. Kearns no day passed without tidings of Jack Denipsey. After the break with Kearns this continued of its own momentum. The successors of Kearns lived on the work of the first real manager and press agent.. When a figure has been as ' intensely ballyhooed as that of Jack Dempsey it could not pass into the silences at once, and only a little beating, of the drum, even by unskilled hands, was required to keep the ballyhoo alive. For his part in the creation of what ive might call the "Dempsey Legend," Mr. Kearns charged his man only 50 per cent, of the net earnings of the pair. When you look back and recall that at the time Kearns took him up, Dempsey was on his way back to the brake beams and the hobo jungles, this percentage does, not seem quite as unreasonable as it at first appears. "There was a greater boost man than even Mr.' Kearns, in the person of the late Willus Britt, who managed, in turn, his brother, James Edward Britt, almost, light-weight champion; Battling Nelson; aiid the late Stanley. Ketchell. I think that Mr. Kearns must have learned in that same school, for both he and Mr. Britt came from that district in San Francisco known as 'South of the Slot.' It produced, among other prodigies, David Belasco and 'Tad' Dorg'an, the sporting cartoonist and prize-fight authority. <■■>.■ KETCHELL'S NEW ROLE. "But Britt would insist upon lilypainting stunts. I recall that when Willus was starting east on his first trip with Stanley Ketchell, he confided to me his great scheme for press-agent-ing that fighter. 'Of course you know that ■ Stanley used to be a fighting waiter,' he said. 'But that will make no hit in New York. There is no class to that whatsoever, and what we want is class. Now I have got a lot of nice clothes for Stanley, and I have bought him a couple of fraternity pins. I am going to take him east as a University of "California student who is' fighting his way through college. He i is nice-looking, and I think T can get away with it.' ■ ' "I threw buckets of cold water on this plan, and drenched it so thoroughly that Mr. Britt. abandoned it, but nu without considerable regret. 'Well, then,' he sighed, 'I guess that he will have to go to Now York, as a cowboy. I will fix him up with a broad-brimmed hat and chaps. But he is simply not going to go to New York as a fighting waiter.' ■

"Mr. Willua Britt had.not over-esti-mated the credulity of .the readers of sport pages in New York. Ketehell ..was accepted as a cowboy just as Jack Reuault was accepted as a member of the Bo'yal North-west Mounted Police until the Canadians .-protested,'.and as Harry Wills was accepted as an industrious stevedore until the Stevedores' Union, in justice ■to itself, protested that he was a stevedore only as long as a troublesome world war made it necessary. : - FIEPO A "CHEMIST. " "We now are treated to a glimpse of the highly-successful activities . of the greatest of all fight-promoters, both in the way of making others famous and also in the little matter of keeping himself constantly in. the public eye: N . "Luis Angel Fh'po, the 'Wild Bull of the Pampas,' was neither wild nor bovine, but that was a s name to pack them in at the bos-offices, just as the title 'The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame' brought thousands of dollars to the extensive athletic fund, of that struggling institution of learning. They passed Firpo oS as a pharmacist. The editor of the "Pharmacists' Magazine" seftt something to him for analysis. The Press agent had the work dene by a chemist and Firpo was claimed by the pharmacists as ono of their very own. As a matter of fact the experience of Firpo in the drug line consisted mostly of sweeping out a drug store in Buenos Aires.. "As a pugilist, Firpo had fewer assets than any heavyweight who ever stepped into the ring, yet the dream of Tex Kickard, who knows his customers, is to find another Luis. Angel Firpo. Also Firpo, with no qualifications for the prize ring, left the United States' with close to 700,000 dollors, which is a great d.eal of money, especially when translated into Argentine pesos. It is more than most of them have to'show at the end of their ring careers, and those who know Firpo insist that he not only has every dollar of it but that he has added a little to the original sum. "Probably the most sucessful Pressagented man. in the United States is Mr. Tex Eickard, promoter of milliondollar prize fights. All of his business activities constitute news, Which is sought with avidity by.the sports writers. Mr. Rickard no longer has to make any effort to Press-agent himself or his enterprises. . Newspapers are fighting to do it for him. "If the Gans-Nelson bout, which started Mr. Eickard on the career in ■which he has achieved such success, had been promoted by a mere fight promoter named George Lewis Eickard (which is Eickard's original name), and fought in New York or San Francisco, that would have been the end of the matter. But it was staged in Goldfield, a mining camp, and the promoterwas a glamorous character with the name Tex Eickard.

"lie kept a square gambling-house and a square saloon. Of course a square gambling-house paid, and so did a square saloon. Tho natural percentages and profits from both were^ll that anybody could ask, but emphasis was placed oh.Hie squareness of both. When Kickard came to New York behind this ballyhoo the rest was so easy that even Jlr. Rlckard was surmised. His famo has reached such proportions that he has almost become fearful that one of these days ho; may become over-press-agented." The article closes with a brief reference to that hero of the gridiron whoso name has become a household word to football lovers:

"Of course the big money and the morj) enduring athletic fame seems to be in the prize-fight game, but the figure of Mr. Red Grange, the football player, is no inconsequential one. I will always insist that there have been greater backs and greater all-round football players than Bed Grange, of Illinois, but that is of no particular importance. The fame of Red Grange, through the Press-agent genius, of Mr. C. C. Pyle, reached all corners of the earth. , But why continue trying to destroy old and beautiful legends, especially when those who pin their faith >on them will fight for their preservation? Let us not inquire too closely as to whether or not John L. Sullivan could lick tiny fighter in tho world, and did lick no few of tho greatest fighters in. it. Let us not too long,, or too closely, examine the ice carried by Bod Grange, lest it melt away into thin air. "Admitting that most of our athletic herons are quite as legendary as those of Homer's creation they are certainly better than no heroes at all. Hovk much

of their fame is pure- metal and how much of it is mere advertising does not matter as long as they add to'tho gaiety and credulity of nations." Big Night for Sydney. To-night in Sydney Fidel la Barba will make his.first appearance in Australiii. "He will meet Billy M'Alistor. There should be a' big crowd at Rusheutters liny to boo the famous bantamweight iv action.' La Bnrba and his manager (George Blake) were greatly impressed with Charlie Purdy's cleverness. They 'saw the New Zcalander iv j an exhibition, and after the bout Expressed themselves most enthusiastically. Tommy Donovan Matched. Kill Smith, of Napier,'is to be Tommy Donovan's next opponent, under' the auspices of tho Now Plymouth Association. The purse for this contest is £30. i - Napier's Enterprise. The Napier Association has written to Australia for a boy. No class is barred up to middleweight. The Napier Association irecently imported Teddy Green for two contests. Several 'other associations are looking for contests.. Impressions of Willie Smith. I Discussing the bout between South African . Willie Smith and Alchie Cowan, "Solar Plexus," of the Sydney "Referee," states: "Smith had an advantage of 61b in weight,-which was not the sole factor of his success. That came about through a combination of aggression, quickly-firing short left,-and jolts in close, clever blocking (that seemed to be unnoticed by many), and a superior brand of natural strength that might have bcou equalised by the opposition's better condition. If fault can oe found with. Smith's style ,of milling, it was in the timing and leading with tLie left. GcneHslJy he was too far off wh-jn that weapon shot out, and much of its power iv that style of assault was minimised by the simultaneous stamp of the left foot. softly gliding iv with that under pedal, the blow could be made harder and" the precision greater. Willie Smith will do well to remedy the defect. Before passing final judgment on Smith there are many things to be considered. In the first place, he has not been hero nearly long enough to get really well. Worse stilly he 1 did not have half a dozen spars, which is not nearly enough to sharpen up the muscles after many weeks'" idleness from the ring. Ho was up against tho third best bantamweight in Australia, a boxer who is fast and clever. Smith, too, it must be borne in mind, had to do all the leading, which to anybody who knows boxing is a self-imposed handicap if the fellow* at the other end of the fistic debate happens to be at : all clever. There were times when I Smith, in his anxiety to connect,. hit a wee bit out of distance, and Cowan, as evidence of his ability as a boxer, took advantage by back-moving and coming back with bis own left or right, just as the occasion warranted/- Cowan also, benefiting by the experience of earlier rounds, learned what to do in close, and/ for a brief period did as well as Smith, inside, or,/by a clever defensive move, made his blows harmless by blocking them half-way on their attacking intent. Time and again, however, Smith/a clever blocking defeated Cowan's attack* Smith was more often than not blamed for holding and hitting, whilst, as a matter of plain fact, it was a case of taking advantage of being held to hit with his free hand. Answer to Correspondent.--A. v Cameron: Hecney and Sbarkey fought a draw.' ""_