BIG FIGHT DRAMA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17769, 3 May 1932, Page 8

BIG FIGHT DRAMA

GAINS AND MCCORKINDALE SCIENCE THROWN ASIDE NEGRO WINS AND LOSES LONDON, March 4. Fighting before a vast audience at the Albert Hall, and in an atmosphere of racial excitement seldom before seen in the heart of the Empire, a negro boxer, heavyweight champion of Canada, hung on to the finish of one of the greatest heavyweight battles of history to heat the white champion of South Africa. The negro was Larry Gains, tough and experienced fighter, and his opponent was Don McCorkindalc, one of the best fighters turned out by the Union of South Africa, and certainly one of the most resilient boxers ever seen, in action in London. Public excitement reached, a pitch at which oaths, jeers, and curses rang through the hall from some sections of the audience, and the verdict in favor of Gains was greeted with a wild outcry from the partisans of the white contestant.

While the two boxers belabored each other through the last three rounds of the battle, with the decision apparently hanging in the balance at every second, Jack Goodwin, veteran trainer of British champions, toppled from the raised ring plaform into the arms of pressmen, and as the verdict for Gains was announced, he breathed bis last. Goodwin was the trainer of the negro, for this fight, and it was to the strain of the late stages of tlie match that his sudden expiry was attributed.

DOWN TWICE FOR NINE There was a stage at which the fight seemed to be easily within the grasp of Larry Gains from Toronto. He had scored a. slight margin of points throughout eight rounds, and his punching was rather cleaner than that of McCordindale, who was using the ring a good deal and evidently playing possum to some extent, for from tune to time he pretended to a hazfhess that did not deceive bis opponent. In the ninth round, the pretence was swept away by a clean punch to the jaw which dropped the South African like a pole-axed bull. The blow was so clean and its effect so paralysing for the moment that McCorkindale dropped like a log, his face crashing into the canvas with an impact that suggested the end of the battle. But the suggestion was not fulfilled, for at the count- of nine, the South African suddenly sprang to his feet ns though just realising his danger. Gains leapt in to deliver another blow of the same kind, but he did not land it effectively, and though he crumpled McCorkindalc on the ropes, and saw the Springbok slump groggily to the floor, the Canadian was not vet master of the situation. Once again, at the toll of nine, McCorkindalc struggled to his feet, and going! into a smother simply took' a hail of blows upon his shoulders, arms, gloves and head as he was dogged backwards and forwards across the. ring by the frantic negro. It was Gains’ chance to end the fight in a decisive way, but he lost the opportunity. for lack of the steadiness that would have held his punch until . McCorkindale came out of the smother. Countless hatles have been lost for the same cause, and Gains came very close to defeat himself through allowing his own excitement to run away with him.

THE WHITE MAN’S SMILE The bell that closed the ninth round almost tolled the knell of Gains’ chance of victory. It found McCorkindalc badly bustled, ‘but still on his feet and in possession of Ids senses. It was good strategy, at least, that prompted him to smile grimly and almost masterfully at his negro opponent as ho dropped his hand a on the sound of the hell. Gains was pumped, and badly wearied by his tremendous efforts to down his man in (hat fateful ninth. He staggered almost as much as McCorkindalc a_s lie went to his corner, and as he sat facing the white man across the ring, he must have believed that he was wasting Ids strength upon a cast-iron adversary. The psychological effect of the Springbok’s grin can hardly be over-estimated, and one has to give Gains credit for withstanding that effect so valiantly as lie did in the succeeding rounds. For that ninth session had ‘cpmo as near to heating Gains, perhaps, as it had to beating MoCorkindule. The latter wits coming back from that stage on, but the uegro was done, and it was just a question whether he could last out tho full distance of 15 rounds. His arms were like lead, his feet shuffled in • a slow and unwieldy manner that told its own tale. Yet he battled bis opponent, in a too to toe series of exchanges which featured the last few rounds, with a gallantry that any white man would bo proud to own. VETERAN TRAINER’S COLLAPSE

And in the thirteenth round of .that sensational contest, which Gains won by the narrowest margin on points at the finish, there occurred the collapse of Jack Goodwin. Down at the feet of the pressman seated round the ringside, he tumbled unconscious. To tho majority of those present, his fall was of no significance. The fight gripped them and thrilled them as no other fight seen in London in recent years lias gripped and thrilled an audience. In the ring! the white man and the negro fought out a. contest almost elemental in character, as the veneer of their science and strategy slipped away, stripped from them by the intensity of their mutual antagonism. Down below them- lay tire old trainer of champions, who had sent his last winner into the ring and whoso senses were dulled and finally blotted out as the lest few moments of the fight winged their way on. Gains won the fight, but lost a friend to whom ho owed a great deal. To-day the fight is all the talk of sporting London, but there is u deep undercurrent of sorrow concerning the death of Goodwin. Kid Lewis, Frank Goddard. Mike Honeyman, Charlie Hardcastle, Willy Farrell, “Bermondsey” Billv Wells —these ornaments of tho British boxing ring were among those who had passed through his hands and who owed much, if not everything, to Ids gift of finding the best in a man and bringing it to the fore. He trained 23 successive Lonsdale belt winners, and a host of other fighers who could have loft their names writ in large characters had they been content to follow his strict regimen. He figured as trainer of Joe Conn when that famous riugman fought Jimmy Wildo in tho first open-air contest stapled in Britain, and right through the last two decades of Britain’s boxing history, the name of Jack Goodwin has stood for the clean, square fighting that always held the interest of men such as Lord Lonsdale, and made the National Sporting Club the Mecca of boxers from all over the vfovhl in the heyday of that institution.