BOXING.

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 February 1920, Page 6

BOXING.

(By “Looker-on.”) Clabby and Tracey will meet again at Wanganui on Friday night next, at whicn place “Redwing” and Gann are also matched. Gann is a brother of the bantam champions, who was to have met Ladbury Here, at the New Year. That West Coast boxing fans have nothing to complain about regarding the prices of admission to local lights must be admitted, when it is known that the prices at the Timaru tourney this week, at which “Redwing” and Mitchell were the star performers, were Ringside 10s, front stalls 4s, back stalls 3s, and pit 2s.

HYPNOTISM? NO! GEORGES CARPENTIER’S STORY. HOW I BEAT BECKETT. Out of the mountain of explanations, deductions, and criticisms concerning my swift and dramatic defeat of Joe Beckett there stands out in a way lantastic the suggestion that it was because 1 hypnotised the British champion, comments the famous Georges Carpentier in an exchange. And there have come to my home in Paris letters from men and women, not a few highly placed and distinguished, pleading lor my ‘story of it all. I have laughed and rocked and roared; that little man Francois Descamps—whimsical and mysterious ami uncanny 4 “The Daily Mail” has described him —has shared my amusement in a fashion riotous.

“The ’fluence, soh, Georges; ha-ha, oh-oh !” he cries even now as I write, and his eyes will dance and romp as im snaps his lingers as the “Professor ot Lens” used to do in day long gone when I, his famous pupil, conspired with him to profit by the credulity of the folk of my immediate countryside. This,, my story which .1 now write, is a plain and unvarnished one. When I was little more than a child, so little and white-faced, I crept one day, uninvited, into the rough-and-ready gymnasium of Francois Descamps, which was in the neighbourhood of my home.

Descamps styled himself “The Professor,” He was physical oulturist, boxer, gymnast, conjurer, and in his spare moments a Socialist of a particularly aggressive type; in my childhood, and through my big eyes, J saw in him a man unusual and mysterious. When lie beheld me —half scared, wondering I was —lie would know my errand, and •when I, in fear and trepidation, told him that I wanted to box like the English. he chuckled, so I thought, like some demon. “My son,” said he, “go home to your mother.” But T persisted. I told him that already I had ventured to try my hand in a boxing-booth which at that moment was in Lens, and I had decided to become a boxer. “But you are too frail, too young ; you will be killed,” be declared. However. 1 persuaded him to allow me to put the gloves on. How I shaped he did not say. but without consulting me lie interviewed and got permission from my parents to allow him to take me into his charge. And I knew great joy !

EARLY DAYS AND EARLY WAYS

Now, Descamps, voluble, extravagant, insistent from the very first day I became his pupil, used to conjure up pictures of the time when I would be champion of the world, when both of us would be enormously wealthy. And this is how we set out to gain fame and fortune. Little or nothing was known about la boxe anglaise in Northern France, and being so young, the day when 1 would have a match was remote. Descamps, though “The Professor,” and incidentally an incorr'gible optimist, was splendidly conscious that neither of us could live on i„aiie possibilities His pupils were not sufficiently numerous tubring him more than a handful of franca, and so every Sunday at a very early hour we would set out from Lens ror some country place maybe 10 or 12 miles distant. Having arrived mere, we would separate so that Descamps might imd the best and most frequented cafes. Into one or more he would go, ana while lie look some inexpensive and innocuous reiresiuuents lie would iall to taking stock of ins feliors. Vv itu uue> or uvo ot them lie would engage in conversation, and reap a uig stoie of local knowledge. As soon as possible he would come to my hiding-place and, having imparted to me all tne information lie nad acquired about various men, their sliape and size and their mannerisms, and drummed into my ears shap and distinct characteristics of the piace, he would sit down and write out his “playbill.” Widen would take this form ; THE JUGGLER MAGNIFICENT. Professor Descamps. ACROBAT SUPERB, Georges Carpentier. THE MAN OF wIYSTERY; Professor Descamps, assisted by his famous pupil, Georges Carpentier. GRAND Fi.sALL, Professor Descamps will hypnotise his famous pupil, Georges Carpentier.

MY “TRANCE.” The hypnotic turn Dcscamps would pi-eface by the wildest, the weirdest, the most ridiculous volume of words it. was possible for any man to manufacture. And this, embellished by much tearing of his long black hair, would pave the way for him to seat me on a borrowed chair. Creeping up to me with arms outstretched, lie would first stroke my face, mutter something unintelligible, and before a completely open-mouthed audience he would look into my eyes with all the tensity ot his soul for a few seconds, pass his hands in a strange, frightening manner over me, and then, as per arrangement, I would half-swoon and become rigid. The moment had now come for me to fall into a trance, so I succumbed to the “magic spell” of “Professor Descamps, the celebrated hypnotist” ! And I would tell, in language elaborate ami mystical, of things that were the Intimate and personal concern of many folk who made up our audience. Until I had my first real. light for mone,} —the purse was, if I remember rightly, some 25 francs —it was necessary for me at the week-ends to tour the country cafes as a hypnotic subject by allowing myself to be sent into a

trance on each and every Sunday Descamps was helped in his one consuming ambition, which was to introduce me to the world as a champion boxer. With very truth 1 can assure you that neither Descamps nor myself has everengaged in one moment’s study of hypnotism. Kf HOW DESCAMPS HELPS ME. It is true, however, that I have put it on record that before a fight Descamps takes into himself all that there is in me except my ability to fight and my passion for lighting. Which statement, though a figure of speech, is no wild exaggeration. But lie does not receive into himself my normal uonlighting self because of his or my hypnotic power; this lie does because ,ai .i manner quite remarkable I can, sum do, detach myself from everything except my immediate purpose, whicn is to fight when I take to the ring; ami it is Descamps—by his sympathy, by his great love for me, by our long association, who- had taught me how, sc long as I remain a pugilist, to concentrate wholly and entirely upon my work. From the moment I agree to engage in a match it is plainly understood between Descamps and myself that 1 am to be neither troubled nor concerned about details.

We, I think, enjoy a unique position. We are not bound together by any contract. He is my manager he cause he has always been my manager. Descamps comes to me and says, “Georges, you are to fight So-andSo on such a date.” It is Descamps who arranges ■ ail financial matters. 1 fight, not with a “hypnotic punch,” but after days and weeks’ close study of the man who is to be my opponent. BECKETT’S PSYCHOLOGY.. I felt sure before I met Beckett that I knew him intimately; I got into the inside of Iris mind ; I felt as I watched him walk uneasily around the ring in his faded dressing-gown that he was obsessed by the feeling and the sureness in him that ho was strong. The semi-circle lie described in his walk convinced me that he suffered impatience to demonstrate to those who looked on that by his bigness, his power, he could win the fight. T was sure of victory when I straight away landed my left hand full 111 the face, for then 1 knew Beckett was engaged in trying to unravel a puzzle which he, perhaps without knowing it, had made. Beckett did not think about the science of the game, and so suffered from mental fogginess. 'l'llat I, or anybody else, put “the magic spell” over him ; that I, or anybody else, hypnotised him, is, of course, preposterous. I hit Beckett hard on the chin with my right hand; my mind, my soul, my whole body were in that blow, and so I held to the European heavy-weight championship. The boxing hypnotist has not yet been born.