FIDEL LA BARBA

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 30 September 1933, Page 8

FIDEL LA BARBA

i*.- ■ COLOURFUL CAREER OVER. Fidel La Barba, the flashy little fighter from the Western coast, has been through his last battle. -Several times during his colourful career, which started when he won the Olympic flyweight title in the games of 1924 at Paris, La Bar-ba has retired from the ring. But this time it is permanent and his retirement is not voluntary, states a New York sports writer. The other day I saw him on his way to a beach on Long Island and was .somewhat shocked and surprised to see that his left eye was almost entirely closed, badly discoloured and quite swollen. This seemed strange in view of the knowledge that he hadn’t had a fight since he met Seaman Watson, in February. “It isn’t from a battle in the ring,’’ Fidel explained. “I got it in the hospital. I’ve had three operations on that eye in the last five months. I spent one stretch of 50 days and an-, other of 30 with bandages over my eyes, unable to see a thing. But it’s going to be all right. They’re going to let me go swimming to-day for the first time.’’

“Do you,,mean it’s going to be all right to fight again?’’ he was asked. “Fight again! Why, I won’t even be able to jump off a 2ft kerbing for fear of jarring things loose and going blind in both eyes,” La Barba exclaimed.

Pressed for details, it develops that he was hit with an elbow by a sparring partner when he was training for his featherweight championship bout with Kid -Chocolate last January. He went through that contest and came within a- hand’s span of taking the title; sonic even thought he won on points. Then a film came over his left eye. He didn’t say anything to his manager, George Blake, and took the Watson assignment. “I thought the film would go away every day,” La Barba explained. “'But in the third round of the fight with Watson, I lost complete sight on that side. 'Charlie Harvey must have discovered it, for he had the Englishman working from my left the .rest of the contest.”

It may 'be remembered that after the battle this writer was very -sceptical. It seemed impossible for La Barba to put up such a brilliant fight against Chocolate and such a terrible one against Watson the very next month. Here is the explanation, after all this time.

La Barba went to his manager after losing to the Briton and said he was through. “When a man like that can even look good against me, much less beat one, it’s time to quit,” be declared.

He still refrained from mentioning the faet that he couldn’t see out of his left eye and planned to -resume his studies at ‘Stanford University. _ He had retired once before, after winning the world fivweight championship, to enter Stanford, but had come out of retirement in 1928 to fight as a bantamweight. It was after he returned to the coast that he had his eye examined, and then the operations started.