BOXING IN BRITAIN

Evening Post, Issue 29, 4 February 1935, Page 3

BOXING IN BRITAIN

LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP

(From "The Post's". Representative.) LONDON, November 1. ■ Jack Berg and Harry Mizler, both Jews, met at the Albert Hall to decide who should hold the British lightweight championship. Berg's victory over the holder was one of the biggest upsets of form boxing has- known. After ten years' intensive battling, and with all hope of a world title lost for ever, ho yet proved so much the superior of Mizler that the champion was forced to abandon the struggle at the end. of ten rounds. ' It was an amazing triumph (writes the "Daily Mail" correspondent), yet the real story of this fight was not so much Berg's vindication of himself as the tragic fall of a brilliant young champion. Less than a year ago Mizler had the correctness of style of a Driscoll. Yet here was a floundering, nervous tyro—his ordered boxing gone, his punch non-existent, his eye and .timing hopelessly out of unison. After the first round Berg was into him—a furious, non-stop punching machine, and nothing Mizler did could keep him away. Mizler was simply crowded out of the fight by body punches, and though none of the blows carried knock-out, force, it was a battered, sick-at-heart young champion who flopped wearily on to his stool SHARED DRESSING-ROOM. The two men are of the same faith, both Jews, born in the same part of London, yet deadly rivals. The vast Albert Hall was packed with their own people, and in a state of uproar. Yet Jack (Kid) Berg, the man who ' has at last won a championship after being a fighter almost since ' a schoolboy, shared a dressing-room with his rival! Old stagers in the fistic game had never before heard of such a thing. Berg and Mizler talked together before they went into the ring, and changed back again within a yard of each other when one had won and the other had lost a title.