BOXING AND BOXERS

Taranaki Daily News, 4 March 1933, Page 4

BOXING AND BOXERS

THE SPORT IN ENGLAND. HEAVY-WEIGHT TITLE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) London, January 12. Reggie Meen may, Or may not (writes Eugene Corri), regain the heavy-weight title of his country, but no fighter after having been toppled off his throne has ever made fuller atonement for failures than did the former champion against Walter Neusel, who since he preferred the ring to continuing his studies as an analytical chemist has not yet known defeat. All the world knows that Meen at Leicester on Monday night was beaten by the fair-haired German, but all the world does not realise that, though he lost, he put up the finest fight of his life. A new Reggie Meen has been revealed. Neusel himself has declared that never wag he so extended. He returned to London full of compliments for the

Midlander. I make no overstatement, when I say that there were moinents, in the fight when the Teuton was not onlysurprised but. fearful of the result.' It is proper that we should give, to .Meen every possible. credit for his performance. .... Few heavy-weights have, been more severely criticised.. There have been occasions when, together with the rest of the critics, I have despaired of Meen, when I have been forced" to the. conclusion that his magnificent physique was no.sort of guarantee'that he would make good. These days it is not possible for me to make a grand tour of the rings in various parts of the; country. Long illness has kept me nearly a prisoner, but I have, thanks to my many friends, been kept in the closest touch with all that has been and is happening. In the quiet of my room I have been to every pains to study all the accounts of the fight at Leicester, and with my intimate knowledge of both Meen and Neusel, I am convinced that not until the end of his fighting days will the young Midlander ever put up a gamer display than he did in his latest and most difficult adventure. I am not of those who see in Neusel an especially clever boxer. He is not clever in the strict sense of the term. The school to which he belongs is a hard; rather than a clever, school. It is. a school that is all for the employment, of the bludgeon. And Neusel is a typical product of that school. He has that viciousness without which no fighter, may hope to get to .the top. He is all for the shortest cut to victory, but if. I have made no false deductions he would not have beaten Meen had the, Englishman not suffered cruelly from the; effects of hopelessly damaged eyes. It may smack of heresy to say so, but my definite opinion is that Neusel, though' of all European heavy-weights most to be feared, has but a vague notion of how to stop a left hand. When I saw him against Eddie Steele, I was amazed at the frequency with which the Norwood man found a way to beat a tattoo with his left hand, and had he been a punishing fighter there would have been little room for surprise had he beaten the German. WARNING TO' PETERSEN. It is agreed that Meen -hurt Neusel, and that in the third round.came near to bringing off what would have been

hi? greatest triumph. But what is most to the credit of the-old champion is that, after being put down for a long count in the early stages of the first round, he fought back. I'have ever , maintained that, were Meen more'than moderately rich in fighting spirit, he would have little to fear. If his tremendously gallant display against Neusel may be taken as a reliable guide to his; present fighting worth, then Jack Petersen need look to his laurels.. There will, however, always be this against Meen—he is .much prone to bleeding. Against Muller he had to give in because of an injury to his eyes. '