HEENEY'S RISE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 83, 20 March 1928, Page 3

HEENEY'S RISE

EXPERTS TO SUPERVISE. » ...... EARLY FIGHTS RECALLED. COLUN BELL'S VICTORIES. Tom Heeney's rise to fame as a boxer in running heavy-weight champ ion has surprised those who have fol lowed his career. However, nobody is better able to visualise the improve ment he must have made than Colin Bell, of Sydney. Colin Bell is a garage foreman who tinkers with carburetters and the like. Not so long ago he, too, was a boxer, and his victim on three or four occasions was Tom Heeney. “I just had to smile when I read the papers,” said Colin Bell soon after the news of Heeney’s latest victory came'through. “I don’t take much interest in tights these days, but when 1 saw that Heeney had got a decision over Delaney, and that his next fight might be against the crack, Tunney, well I could’nt help smiling. But 1 says to myself: “Good boy Tommy. Keep going.” Then Bell’s mind wandered back to Gisborne, and he recalled how he fought Heeney a draw there. But let him tell his own story: “I had three fights with Heeney, and beat him easy. He got easier every time I met him. 1 fought him to a draw in Gisborne first, and I beat him twice in Mackey, Queensland. Why I never got a black eye. I must have been 41 when 1 beat him the last time. He would have been about 26 then. He’s either 31 ob 32 now.” The thing that gets me in how he’s improved so much. Dinkum, I can’t make it out. My idea is that fighters to-day are slipping—slipping to blazes. Why, Sam Langford would have taken all these heavies in the same ring and towelled the lot of them. 1 can’t see Heeney a world's champion, I’m blowed if 1 can. Mind you, I’d like to. But you never know. Heeney is a big chap and as game as a pebble, and he’s tough too. “I remember once I had both his eyes closed and his lips puffed, and I had a whole lot of sitting shots at him. 1 used to knock him down, but I could not keep him down And 1 had a pretty fair wallop. He’s the right breed, too. He’s got a bit of Irish in him Strange thing, his father is only a little chap. I don’t complain about how things have gone. 1 was driving a bus in Sydney when I beat George Cook the last time. Now I’m on my feet, as the saying is. . . .Fancy Tommy Heeney getting all the big money. Oh, well, . . . “But I could’nt help smiling to my self when I read about it in the papers.”