TRAINING OF BOXERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18584, 17 December 1923, Page 9

TRAINING OF BOXERS.

ENGLISH METHODS SCORNED.

NO KILLING "INSTINCT."

LONDON, "Dec. 8.

Tex G'Rourke's efforts to produce a heavy-weight champion of the world from one of three young English giants he is training at Malvern have aroused widespread interest, tinged with amusement, in America, where boxing experts are unanimously of the opinion that the scheme is foredoomed to failure unless O'Rourko adopts American methods. Walter Trumbell, a leading boxing writer, scathingly comments that England hac no chance of producing a conqueror of Dempsey by following present methods. It is like : asking a. deer or an antelope to fight a rhinoceros. " The English," he says, "seem fond of a pretty fighter who posesses a pretty left hand, and such a boxer cannot beat the world, because more than half the battle consists in heavy infighting. Johnson -used to hold his opponent with one arm, hit a lightning uppercut, and get the arm back in time to keep his guard. " The American heavy-weight is known ,to have .a . hundred tricks to . apply | against a pretty / fighter. Corbett f was a pretty fighter, and could easily outpoint Jeffries in scientific boxing; but Jeffries (floored Corbett with one blow. I remember how Fitzsimons broke both his hands on Jeffries' jaw."Dempsey takes the heaviest blows on the jaw. Apparently the nerve connecting his jaw and brain does riot function. English heavy-weigh& cannot do this. Beckett cannot do it. ■ Wells, although he has unbounded courage, has -a. , glass jaw. • • * ' ' ' r ' ' " Pretty fighters do not jipssess the killing instinct, and are inclined to step back when an opponent is. helpless, and reeling. Dempsey steps in quickly with straight, not • swinging, blows, . carrying every ounce of his muscle." • ; Frank Bagley, a successful . American trainer, says that English training, methods are wrong. , Boxers are allowed too much tea, pastry, cakes/ and cigarettes. . -•» , " ».■ ■«' : America, he declares, lias improved on the methods followed when England was supreme. Englishmen, are ~ good boxers for points, but there are ; few fighters among them. i Promising English lads would have a chance ,if they migrated and learned American methods.; He considers that Todd, one of the few boxers who fight like the Americans, 'and God-' dard are the best among the ,4* heavyweights. • , j ; ..., , English experts do not : relish -W; this, criticism. One points , out - that Bagley formerly trained Ratner, who declared that he was never really fit TOtil' he had an English trainer. . ..C-._