IS PURDY DOMINION’S GREATEST BOXER?

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 87, 4 July 1927, Page 12

IS PURDY DOMINION’S GREATEST BOXER?

OLD-TIMER SAYS “NO!” BRILLIANT MEN OF THE PAST In the following article. “Old-Timer” challenges “Old Aussie’s” estimate of Charlie Purdy, the Auckland boxer, and takes up the cudgels on behalf of the Dominion’s champion boxers of other days. “Old-Timer” writes: In fairness to some of New Zealand's old-time fighters. I must answer “Old Aussie’s” remarks in quoting Charlie Purdy as the cleverest and “best boxer” that New Zealand has ever produced. How on earth can that critic compare him with Billy Murphy? Certainly, the old-timer was a world’s champion and I may be going a little too far in picking Murphy. Well, I won’t go so far as that. I’ll quote three or four others. Tim Hegarty, what a great fighter he was, clever and with a punch; Tim Tracey, a Dominion champion in his day; Frankie Ellis, a boy who went to Australia and fought and beat topnotch importations from England and America. Then there was Alf Gault, a great two-handed fighter with a punch in either hand. “Old Aussie,” put Purdy in the ring with any of those men when at their best, and try and think for yourself how he would fare with them. PURDY AND TROWERN Being an interested and paying spectator each night at the N.B.A. carnivals, I consider myself as good a judge as anybody. Well, why didn’t Purdy fight Trowern at the Town Hall When he was offered a fight with him at 9.12? Instead, he demanded Trowern make 9.9, an impossible weight for him to make. And yet Purdy’s weights with Murray, Chambers, Jamito and others, wr?re all over 9.9. Trowern beat him decisively at Wanganui, Palmerston North, Hastings and Wellington, and each qf those fights were fought under a different referee. I am afraid that Purdy knows that Trowern has got his number. Now “Ye Olde Aussie,” tell me what old-time fighter would refuse a fight where there were a few shillings attached to it, let alone pounds where Purdy is concerned? He should have fought Fairhall without any fear whatever, as that fight was the latter's first after nearly two years’ lay-off. I think the fair-haired boy with the “marcel wave” would be well advised to stay at home, where there are no real fighters and collect some easy money. Otherwise he won’t earn “ham and egg” money. Let Trowern go in his stead. At the same time, Trowern is poor also compared to the old-timers. Dealing with Grimed fight, anyone with “savvy” would understand him making an easy fight of it, he being content to outbox Purdy. All that Grime got was £125 and exes, out of the fight, with a big chance of smashing his hands if he had opened out cn our champion (?). A big handicap against him in a land where they fight for thousands instead of a hundred and odd in New Zealand.