JIM JEFFRIES TALKS

Evening Star, Issue 18883, 6 March 1925, Page 5

JIM JEFFRIES TALKS

HOW HE TRAINED. SOMETHING ABOUT DEMPSEY. I met Jim Jeffries a few days ago. Jim looked astonishingly young and fit. i haven’t seen him in such apparently fine condition since ho was champion of the world. He carried no fat, and his face was lean without being wrinkled, his skin sun-baked to a dark brown (writes Robert Edgrcn in tho San Francisco ‘ Chronicle ). “ What in the world have you been doincr?” I asked. “Training to come back?” “Just working on tho ranch, outdoors all day, and taking care of myself,” said Jeffries., “ I never felt better. Probabxy I could put up a pretty fair scrap, but you know what youth is. I d like to be twenty-one again and going after Dempsey. We’d have a nice fight. It wouldn’t last more than a round or two, for I know Dempsey would come in and tako chances, and I’d meet him in the same way. They didn’t fight mo that way in the old days. All tho fights were long fights, and it was tho stylo to stand off and box and look for openings, and try to wear the other follow down and then get him. I never had anyone come at me the way Dempsey would, but if I’d ever fought anybody like Dctppsey I would have been glad to meet him at his own game. I don't think Dempsey could have put me down in those days. When I was twentyone or twenty-two I was as near punchproof as any man over would be. “A man’s best fighting ago is from twenty-one to twenty-six—not over that. I was at my best at twenty-one to twentyfour, and never quite a s good afterwards. I could run a hundred close to ten seconds then, and speed mikes the fighter. Dempsey is a great puncher, but I wonder if he can hit any harder than Bob Fitzsimmons. Anyway, ho could hardly place his punches better. I think Fitzsimmons was tho greatest fighting boxer I ever saw. Ho wasn’t a fancy boxer like Corbett, but for effective boxing he had the world beaten. I remember, after training Corbett to fight Fitzsimmons, I sat there at the ringside looking .at the fight, and I couldn’t understand how Fitz slipped in and fooled Corbett all tho time. Fitz was crafty—as cunning as a fox. Ho could think a couple of moves ahead of anyone he fought. “You remember how everyone ibought ho knocked Corbett out with a solar plexus punch? Well, old Fitz told mo years afterwards that ho didn’t hit Corbett in tho pit of the stomach at all. Ho got Corbett to leave an opening, shifted, and just stiffened Ids left arm out and caught Corbett on tho edge of the ribs on tho right side of the solar plexus, to drive the ribs in with tho punch. I used the same punch on Corbett myself in San Francisco, and you remember how ho went down. That was Bob’s greatest punch, and nobody ever learned how to use it the way ho did.

“ I was at my best the night I won the championship from Fitzsimmons at Coney Island. I don’t think any man living could have knocked me off my feet that night. Fitzsimmons hit me many a punch, but I can say that I never felt one of them. I remember that in one round ho swung a punch on my chin and caught mo perfectly, with everything ho had. Tho blow raised ah egg on my chin. When I went back to my corner my second said: ‘ Jim, that was a bad one on tho chin. Did it bother you much?’ ‘I didn’t feel it at all,’ I said, and that was tho truth. I was punchproof that night. “ I read a storv of yours about training, a while ago,” Jeffries went on. “You had the right dope, but let me toll you a few things about training. Jack Dempsey takes great care of himself, doesn’t he? He never drinks or smokes. Ho doesn’t dissipate, and ho boxes and docs some work all the time. That’s fine. But let mo tell you something. A man can dissipate more and hurt himself by eating than by drinking. If you are a friend of Dempsey’s, tell the boy to watch his eating and keep away from poojffo if he wants to stick as a champion. I'm going to toll you a story about tho time I won the cluimpionship. It’s never been told before. I want to show you what perfect condition means. I began to train for Fitzsimmons five months neforo tho fight, when Brady went after the match. I trained two months on tho road in the ordinary way. Then 1 put in three months of the hardest kind of work, running, boxing, and, above all, dieting for the fight. The work was what every good fighter does. I had Tommy Ryan, and at the start Tommy was faster than I was, and could hit me whenever he wanted to. I weighed 2471 b stripped when I began tho real work of conditioning, and that was my normal weight—not fat. “ For three months I ate hardly anything. You’d he amazed to know how little a big man really needs to eat, and how much stronger a man becomes if lie doesn't eat too much. It’s no joke that people dig their graves with their teeth. I would eat two small lamb, chops for my dinner, with all tho fat trimmed off. That made about two small bites to each chop. I had a little fruit and toast. I had dry toast for months—very little. In fact, I had so much dry toast that I lost all liking for toast_, and never did care for it again until just lately. All through that hard training. I ate as little

as possible, and drank almost nothing at all but a little cool water with lemon juice in it. “Tile day before the fight our oook fixed' up a big pitcher of cold water and lemon juice. 1 took a small glass of it and sipped, because I was so dry that every fibre in me was crying for water ‘ Drink it—it won’t hurt you,’ she said. I drank the whole pitcher, just to feel the coolness of it going down and to wet my dry tongue. Then I. slipped out back of the barn and put my fingers down my llil’oat and got nil of it. 1 eased up on the day of the fight a little, and-weighed 2041 bat ringside. I weighed after the fight just la6lb—the lightest I’ve ever been since I was a boy. I lost 81b in eleven rounds and in the hours of waiting before getting into the ring. It was the excitement more than anything else that took the weight off. “ Fitzsimmons fought desperately when ho felt ho was slipping, after I dropped him with a jab in the second round, and ha hit me many a hard punch. He couldn’t land just right, for L had a trick of turning my head with the punch as it landed. But he hit me an awful lot of glancing punches around the head. I never told anyone this before, but the top and sides of mv head were ao scraped and humped up by Bob’s fists that I couldn’t bear to comb or brush my hair for a week after the fight. Bob could suro hit, yet none of the punches shook mo, and even the ono that raised an egg on my chin didn’t daze mo in the least. After the fight I went to a Turkish bath in Now York for a day, and just went into one shower and plunge and steam after another. My dried-out body must have sopped up water like a sponge through the pores, even in the steam room. I drank a couple of bottles of champagne and some water, and when I went out 1 weighed 2181 b. I had put on. 221 bin a single day. I always trained hard for fights and got into good condition, and 1 always cut my eating down to almost nothing in training. That’s the way to train into perfect condition. But I never felt, after beating Fitzsimmons, that I had a hard job ahead in any fight, and I grew careless. When there wore no more heavy-weights the promoters would put on with me, and I had: to retire, I went up as high as 3151 b. I trained ten months for the Reno fight six years later, and took off the weight, and looked all right. But I lacked, something. It wasn’t there. I’ve been living out in the sun, working round the ranch for the past few years, eating and drinking no more than I need, and I’m probably in much better condition to-day than I was at R/siio. If Dempsey lives as carefully as I do ho ought to ho a champion for a long time. I feel that if I’d done it I would have held the title a good many years more.” “ There was another circumstance that affected the fight at Reno,” I said, referring to the theory that Jeffries was drugged the night before the event. “ Maybe,” said Jeffries indifferently, “ but that was a long time ago, and I’ve stopped thinking about it. I know now that in any case I lacked something no amount of training could bring back. Fighting takes the greatest combination of speed and endurance of all sports, and a man is at his best at twenty-ono or twentytwo, perhaps up to twenty-six. That’s Dio peak. Afterwards ho can last for a good many years if ho eats little and fakes caro of himself. When you get Now York toll Dempsey that for me. T’d bate to see the boy beaten, and unless ho fights oftener and gets away from living in hotels I’m afraid he’ll go like the rest of us. Tough, isn’t it? A fellow doesn’t realise these things wjiou he’s young. Come over to the ranch while you’re here, and I’ll show you how a fellow ought to live.”