BOXING IN BRITAIN

Shannon News, 28 September 1926, Page 4

BOXING IN BRITAIN

THE MIDDLEWEIGHT HAMPION SHIP TODD AFTER THE TITLE LONDON, Aug. 8. I believe it is now more or less fixed up (writes Eugene Corrie) that the next assault to be made upon Tommy Milligan’s titles, those; of middleweight champion of Britain and also of Europe, will be made by an ex-champion, Roland Todd, at the Royal Albert Hall early in October. We shall all be glad to see this brought about, if only for one thing; the unsatisfactory way in which Todd lost his title. Todd was relieved of his laurels by the Boxing Board of Control, because lie left England for America at a moment when the Board thought he should have stayed to fight a challenger. Todd, since his return, has endeavoured to assert himself as our champion still. And from, the sporting point of view, therefore, it is well that he is to be given his chance. I do not know definitely that this contest will be under championship conditions, but I think there is little doubt that it will be.

Thus Todd’s still comparatively young as ex-champions go, gets a rea. chance which is accorded to few. For it generally happens, when a mas has to append that horrid little prefix, “ex” to himself, that he is on th* downward slope, on which there la no returning. Sudden Ups and Downs

And how many wonderful heroes of the ring there have been, climbing to dizzy heights, to be' turned right-about-face, snuffed out, as it were, by a single blow, or a single contest. Did not Todd himself snuff out one of the most striking careers the squared circle has ever known, when. In the second match, he beat. Kid Lewis Only a little while before, and what a great man was Lewis. He, still a welterweight, has beaten all of that class on this side; was probably the greatest welterweight in the world; had also become our middleweight champion and our light heavy-weight title holder even; and hqd challenged, first Carpentier, and then even Dempsey himself. Of course, we laughed at his effrontery. But we knew -perfectly well that, behind it, lay a magnificent confidence and a superb record. Then came Todd. Todd with the cast-iron defence. And we wondered. Lewis the decision, after a fearfully close struggle of twenty rounds, but Lewis was carried out on the broad back of one of bis seconds bruised and weary. Lewis refused to believe, even after that, that there could be a middleweight, to stand up to him, and he gave Todd another chance. He won clearly on points, and, in that'hour, Lewis was snuffed out.

Others have fallen from their pinnacle even more rapidly. Joe Beckett was virtually banished from the ring after the second defeat at. the hands of Carpentier—an affair of less than twenty seconds. Snuff. Yet in that fight he did not even lose his title. Jack Bloomfield, for many years, ’ a genius as a boxer, with an extraordinary punch, was at the top of his career, when at Wembley he met Tom Gibbons. Snuff.

And one might follow the scythe—or the snuffers-—further, in this, last little life-story. : Tom Gibbons had previously fought Jack Dempsey,, and carried him to the full fifteen rounds.

He went back to America, this splendid, intelligent boxer, more confident tha never that, despite his thirty-four years, he could beat Dempsey, if only another match could be made. Gibbons met Gene Tunney, another in the field of challengers, for Dmpsey—and—snuff. Gibbons, one fears, is finished. Next month ,at thp Yankee Stadium, New York, Dempsey is to meet this same eGne Tunney, after an absence. from the ring off some three years. Snuff? For whom? Will the great champion fall as last; fall to a man who must be a couple of stones the lighter, but who has kept to the rigours of the ring, and is fighting fit? Have the films and their dollars reduced a grand fighting machine to a shell ? Or is it to be that Tunney, like Carpentier before him, will be meted out with so terrific, so shattering a thrashing that he will never again fight with the fire he now possesses? ‘ Snuff? But of that fight, more anon. I have brought it in merely to show how the scrythe goes on, relentlessly cutting down here, there, and everywhere, so that the new grass may spring up in its wake. For that is, I to me, the secret-of boxing’s thrall, i To return to Roland Todd. There ! have been those who said that Todd ■ was uninteresting. They were not ! thrilled by his style, and they* were not sure that he represented the best ! type of boxing. , With this last, I , agree. But no boxer, to me, can be j uninteresting, any more than any 1 flower can be so to the keen botanist. If boxing were, literally, the art of self-defence, Todd in his heyday would have been unsurpassable. For no middleweight that I can remember was so clever in his particular way. To defend by agility is not difficult, if a man set his mind to learn the ring foxtrot. Many have done it. But to stand toe to toe, as Todd could do, with a fierce opponent, and simply defy all his attempts to hit him, merely and sheerly by the defence of his arms and gloves is a feat which I found consummately interesting. Unfortunately for Todd, it was a purely negative attribute. He knew that he must learn to attack. He I give you my word, lie tried. He

tried desperately hard, and those who have been hasty to condemn should never forget that point. That he failed was due to the fact that the spark of spontaneous attack was not in him. That was Todd’s tragedy. He went to America to learn—he went twice. Todd has always been a trier in the ring, and one who has done his level best to make himself a worthy j champion. I feel that he deserves this chance to recover hi 3 laurels.