Heavyweight Professional Boxing As A Business

Taranaki Daily News, 29 October 1934, Page 11

Heavyweight Professional Boxing As A Business

PETERSEN’S EARNINGS IN THE RING

r A LTHOUGH - Jack Petersen, heayyweight champion of Great Britain, has been boxing for only four years, said a cablegram from London a few days ago, his “Parsemoney has aggregated £30,000, what is meant by the reference to his four years of boxing is that he has been a professional for only that time. The cablegram also stated, rather naively, that this sum is considerably more than Petersen would have earned if he had followed the dental profession as he intended.. It may be suggested that some members of the dental profession now follow where Petersen has operated; he knocks out teeth instead of pulling them out, and certificated dentists have to repair the damage. % That remark is.by the way; the cablegram is a reminder of the decline of professional heavyweight boxing in Great Britain, , and of the great change that has come over this branch of sport < ( in the 1 present century.

The old-time rough and crude surroundings of the prize ring have been veneered over, and underneath the veneer the nature of the occupation has been changed to one which is much more “big business” than sport, so far as the heavyweights, at least, are concerned. While rthe legalisation of professional glove-fighting has freed the game of the greater part of the horde of “sharper?” and other "adventurers which battened on it in an earlier period, it has also given some scope to men. interested more in what they can make out of it than in the promotion of contests as sport, to organise it on business lines. Professional glovefighting still has its parasites—more so irf the United States of America than anywhere elso—-but the most avid ot these have also taken some veneer upon themselves. Managers and shareholders in the earnings of prominent heavyweights or in fight-promoting syndicates now ape the dress and deportment of successful business men, and seek to attract Society, instead of the Tammany Hall type of “sportsman” and the roughs of former days, to important boxing contests. * * «■

‘Concurrently with, this veneering of the heavyweight game, and caused partly by the exaggeration of the importance of heavyweight contests in comparison with matches between fighters in the, lighter divisions, has cdme an extension of the means by which prominent heavyweights may add to their income without fighting

very often. Many matches in the lighter classes are much more attractive and exciting than the average contest between heavyweights; but the public, in general, has been gulled into a belief that the heavyweight bout is the one that really matters, and, as a rule, the boxers in the lighter clasess. have to fight much more often to gain modest fortunes. This fact helps to keep something of the element of sport in professional boxing in Old World countries for in the lighter classes the winning and. the holding of a championship still means something more than the revenue it brings in.

Most of the British professional heavyweights of the past 20 years or so have become celebrated more for the ease with which they assumed recumbent attitudes In the ring than, for prowess as fighters. The British heavyweight “crop”, in that period has been distinctly a poor one. Petersen may be really a good fighter, but he has not proved his capability against the better American heavyweights. In Great Britain the interest in professional heavyweight boxing has been stimulated by the desire of the public interested in boxing that the country shall produce a fighter good enouglrto meet the best American heavyweights, ana perhaps win the world’s championship, but at least good enough to .remove the imputation that British heavyweights of to-day are just horizontal fighters. Petersen has benefited financially from this factor so much that he has become disinclined to do what the British public, which has put so much money into his pocket in four years, desires him to do. All that money remains m his family, for his father is his manager. Petersen’s case illustrates one aspect of the way in which business has supplanted sentiment and the true fighting spirit in heavyweight boxing. c

A Lancashire paper says that although E. Tyldesley has nominally retired from first-class cricket it is probable that he will make numerous appearances in the county’s team next season.

The professional ranks in British golfers, it is reported, are recruiting an entirely new class in these days. Public schoolboys and university undergraduates are taking up the game for a living.