BOXING.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 58, 9 March 1911, Page 6

BOXING.

LANG'S BAD BLUNDER

(N.Z. Times correspondent.)

LONDON, Jan. 20. Yet another of .the heiivyrweight boxing contests arranged" by the Australian promoter, Mr H. D. Mclntosh, in order to find a white man fit to meet Jack Johnson for the world's championship} came to a lame and impotent conclusion at Olympia last Wednesday evening. The men concerned were Bill Lang, the Australian, who was billed as "Champion of the British Empire," and ex-Petty-Officer Curran, a man whose cairns to the highest honors rest upon victories over ''Iron" Hague, Gunner Hewitt, Jewey Smith, and Gunner Moir, and who lias as much right as anybody in the business to call himself champion of England. .Wbll matched in point of weight the men were expected to put up a red-hot fight. Curran is a powerful, bustling, two-handed fighter, possessed of plenty of pluck and determination, but lacking in science. Lang, in his fight with Jack Burns, showed himself to be an exceptionally quick and clever boxer for so big a man, but on that occasion he did not show to advantage as a heavy hitter, and Curran's friends relied on his ability to take punishment and his punching power to make up for the Australian's extra cleverness.

The bout, however, was far too brief to give either man a chance of Showing what he could do, for within thirty seconds of their squaring up* for the fight Mr Carri, the referee, was uttering the fatal words, "Lang, you are disqualified." There was some booing at the decision, and Lang himself did not relish it, but Carri had no alternative to disqualifying the Australian. After a few seconds' sparring Lang drove Curran to the ropes, and there in a bit of a mix-up Curran was brought down to one knee with a left hook on the head. ..Then to the utter amazement of everybody Lang let fly three blows. . One missed entirely, the next landed on the top of Curraft's head, aftd the third made decisive connection ■ with Curran's jaw and laid him out. How a man of Lang's experience' could commit such a glaring error is past understanding. The foul would have been a bad one if there had been bad blood between the men and they had been fighting fast and lustily at the time. As things were, the Australian's actions were quite inexplicable, it was not one blow, but three, that he levelled at his opponent while he was down on one knee, and two of them landed.

It was a most inglorious end to what promised to, be a hard and interesting fight, but the loser, had no one to blame but himself, and appeared to realise that fact ere he left the* ring. Lang is anxious to meet Curran again, and had it announced on his behalf that he was ready to do-so .at any time, and, win or lose, to take nothing. Mr Mclntosh's patrons got very little indeed foi- their money on Wednesday night. ' The ''big fight" lasted less than thirty seconds, one six-round contest ended in a draw, another lasted one round, and a tenround contest between Johnny Mathesqn, the "Fighting Scot," and Private McEarey, of the Irish Guards, came to a conclusion in the fifth round, the referee having to disqualify the Scot for foul tactics.