SOME FIGHTS I’VE SEEN

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7292, 23 November 1910, Page 9

SOME FIGHTS I’VE SEEN

WITH A WORD ON RECENT IMPROVEMENTS.

By Frank Morton*.

I am not wlia.t you call a boxing-man. j I don't especially care to witness whao wo nice modern people call Boxing contorts : not because prize-fights nr© brutal and fierce, but because they are messy. I am not at all a fastidious person. I can't work up sentimental •objections to bull-fights or vivisection. I have seen a Chinese suffer the Doutn of tho Thousand Cut*. I saw a Russian Finn and a wild Norwegian fight witii belaying-pins, and I once made myself as inconspicuous as possible while' two Portuguese half-castes had an argument with knives. One takes theso things as they come, and there is roallj no reason at all to make a fuss about them. But to .go deliberately to seo two rather uuintersting persons batter each other with gloves—that is an altogether different mattey. But X am inclined to think that if tho boxers aro champions the position may bo different. The thing that is absolutely well done is always worth seeing. # 1 remember when Kelly was the hanging-reporter of the “Star" in Sydney lie could work up quite a lot of enthusiasm about tho adjustment of a rope or some .neat tiring in nooses. 1 could toll you a hundred stories concerning the wag Kelly, each worse than the others, but tho time is not now. I'm discussing principles. “Some hangmen," said Nosey Bob to Kelly and me one day, "some’s bunglers; but I tliay art's art; 1 always pass 'em out easy." So J. should like to see ,a duel with battle-axes, so long as the duellists were warriors of prowess and experience. And I have determined that the next • time 1 am near a fight between big men 1 shall look. I come to this determination after seeing the pictures of the JohusonJellries fight. I had to oee those pictures, ,in any case, because certain Roundheads hud attempted to ban them, so I owed them moral support. I can’t say that I went along with anj* special enthusiasm. Wo had all heard so much of the big fight .at Reno, and so much that wo had heard had been discouraging, We had been told that Jeffries was utterly outclassed, beaten from tho juitix); that the actual fighting was slow and tedious; that the backers of white man were rooked and fooled. There was a certain picturesqueness in the stories of riots and disorders that followed tho fight; but it proved that the loss of life was small, as the figures tame in. Thero was, you see, nothing to make an ordinary man want to see these pictures, you know—nothing but the Roundheads’ assertion that he shouldn't. Not pleasant or flattering to one's racial pride, those stories that Jeffries had got stake and slack, that he chewed gum and drank beer with equal constancy, that the big Ethiopian walked all over him.

But the pictures utterly upset these preconceptions. To start with, Jeffries mad© a good light. He had put off six atone in weight, ho was much older than his opponent, he had been long out of training. But ho saw the thing through for fifteen long rounds. To talk of Johnson walking all over him is to talk rank nonsense. In several rounds the work is very close, in one or two Jeffries has the advantage. As an exhibition of skill, tho tight is quite remarkable. Johnson is a beautiful creature to watch, with tho grace and agility of a panther, aiid pretty often looks about as dangerous. Jeffries is a tremendous fellow. He * was outclassed, but thero is at least a probability that in all tho world of men only Jack Johnson could have beaten him, A contest of Titans the advertisements call it. It is all that.

There is to ho noted also the fact that the Boundheads were alarmed without reason. In the .picture of this fight there is absolutely nothing objectionable. It os a show a school could be taken to, in full confidence that tho youngsters would suffer no harm. Among the enormous crowd at Beno there wore said to be two thousand of the worst "toughs” of that undeniably tough continent; but tho crowds snow delightfully good-humoured and orderly throughout. There were women of all grades in Eeno, but no woman was molested. 'There wore bitterly disappointed partisans of Jeffries at tho fight, but there was no hostile demonstration against the big man. A man who was there told me about it. “Americans/! he said, “are good sports and white men. There are crqwds of people. in America who disapprove /at prize-fighting, but they don’t rave in abuse of the champions—that' isn’t the American style. To you it may seem a queer thing to see .Roosevelt visiting Jeffries in his camp; hut to an American it seems the most natural thing in the world. There was a lot of talk put around with reference to tho action of the Governor of California prohibiting the fight in San Francisco; all pure nonsense. The Governor didn’t really care a cent about the moral aspect. He just took orders. More powerful in California than tho Governor, more powerful than, the legislature, more powerful oven than the labour unions, is the great Southern Pacific corporation. For its own reasons and in its own interest, the Southern Pacific wanted that fight to be fought' at Bonn, and it only had to intimatd its desire. No Governor of California argues with the Southern Pacific: it wouldn’t bo considered healthy. If you ask an intelligent Californian child who made the world and put the stars in their places, he will tell you it was tho Southern Pacific, and ho won’t hesitate. The Southern Pacific is just a corporation; it has no principles and no moral scruples. If it had not been for thd Southern Pacific, the fight would have boon fought in San Francisco.” There is to be borne in mind, too, as a fact quite curious, that these prizefighters are men of exemplary private behaviour. They cannot afford to harbour the smallest vice. They must live with tho utmost .regularity. Stanley Ketchell, the most promising white fighter of the last ten years, tried the other system, indulged in what you may call an average assortment of the things forbidden, and he went down like a cloud la the night, Your big fighter must live a scrupulously clean and abstemious life, or he cannot remain a big fighter. If you happen to see these Eeno pictures, you wall note that the retired men are in every case sturdy and alert fellows who look younger than their years. John L. Sullivan is really old now, but he moves like a boy. Corbett is clean-limbed and straight, with the action of a greyhound. They aro men who fight tho good fight pretty closely according to the Pauline precept. Men laugh if you talk of Jack Johnson’s religion, but people who know tell me that the big black fellow is, or really believes himself to be, an honest Methodist. Why shouldn’t he be—from his own standpoint. No essential disrepute attaches to pugilism in America, and it takes a mighty lot of the grace of God to induce a man to abandon a profession that enables him to win twenty thousand pounds in a few minutes. I am a remarkably moral person, an’ all that, and was brought up according to the strictest Baptist faith; but I’d stand a lot of battering for twenty thousand. And you, now? Honestly. I enjoyed these pictures vastly. They are so brilliant and so full of human interest. And, as I say, the fight is a good fight, and rather reconciles mo to the whole business of figUUng.'