SMALL BOXERS BEAT BIG MEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18544, 18 August 1928, Page 7

SMALL BOXERS BEAT BIG MEN.

STORIES OF OLD-TIME FIGHTERS DISCUSSED. By TOMMY LOCGHRAX, Light-heavy weight Champion of the World. I’m .pretty young yet, and of course I know about the great old-timers only from hearsay, but it seems to me the stories of what they did must be coloured a lot just because so many years have passed since they accomplished their great doings. Take the original Jack Dempsey and Joe Walcott. They must have been wonders. Dempsey was one of the first light-weight champions, and even when he held the middle-weight title he get down to 138 or 140. Yet Jack was never beaten, except on a foul pivot blow bj r La Blanche, until he was stopped by Bob Fitzsimmons. When that defeat came Dempsey was a sick man, and he had no chance with the Cornishman, though it took Bob thirteen rounds to stow Jack away.

Among the men the first Dempsey defeated was Dominick M’Caffrey. heavy-weight, who had won a lot of fame by actually beating John L. Sullivan, though several days later the referee ' gave the decision to John L. Dempsey trimmed M’C-affrey handily. Fitzsimmons, who won the middleweight title frem Jack, later won the heavy-weight crown from Jim Corbett. So 3'Ou see a chap who was little more than a light-weight .was mingling on pretty even terras with the biggest and best men in the ring. It doesn't look reasonable, does it? No one would expect Jce Dundee to fight me, would they-? Or Sammy Mandeil to take oji Mickey* Walker? Yet the original Dempsey, one of the cleverest boxers of his time but not a great hitter, was beating everybody witliin twenty pounds of his weight. Was Dempsey really that good, or was the opposition a lot weaker than it seems to have been? I can’t imagine a light-weight trmch better than Benny Leonard, but Benny didn't go looking for bouts with Harry* Grebh when the Pittsburg Windmill was middle-weight champion. There’s the same sort of question about Joe Walcott. Joe was only about five feet four, though he did have a reach out of all proportion to his height. Yet, this little mite thought nothing of fighting heavyweights, and his best poundage was 142. He knocked out Joe Cnoyn.-.ki, who went twenty-five rounds with Jim Jeffries. lie whipped a lot of other big fellows, too. We had the same sort of fellow in Philadelphia when I was a kid. Jack Blackburn. He could make the lightweight limit, 133 pounds, in those days. One week he beat John Wille, who wasn’t the worst fighter in the world, and who scaled 205. And the following week he made 133 to thump George Memsic, one of the best light-weights of that period. I feel pretty* sure the fighters are just as good to-day as they ever were, but what light-weight do you know is going to meet even the trial horses among the heavy*-weights ? 'they might do it, but the whole thing is something of a puzzle to me. There are two answers. Either there little fellows were supermen, or the fellows they whipped were terrible apologies for fighters. You can take your choice. I haven’t made any yet. (Copyright 1928 bv the "Star” and N.A.N.A.).