WHERE SKI FROLICKED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19788, 11 March 1927, Page 10

WHERE SKI FROLICKED

PUGILISTIC RENDEZVOUS NEW ZEALANDER IN PARIS One of the outstanding features of the boxing game in Paris is the pleasant social and club life, enjoyed alike by fighters and their managers, writes E. W. Scott, boxer journalist, of Wellington. A boxer who wishes to find bis H handler” in between training hours has not very far to seek, for tho rendezvous of all boxers and managers, in fact, of everyone connected with pugilism, is u well-appointed cafe-restaurant at 13, Rue Du Faubourg, Montmartre, which enjoys the not at all pretentious title of u La Chop© du Negre. n This particular restaurant has received tho patronage of the Continental fancy over since Frenchman first took a liking to England’s “manly art.” One finds there boxing promoters, man agent, journalists, boxers, and enthusiasts, from almost every country in Europe. There it is where tho struggling sixty-francs-n-contest preliminary boy plays dominoes or draughts, or cards, or dice, with the main event champion, who refuses to doff his welltailored jacket without a guarantee of 1200 francs. It is tho Stock Exchange, tho Wall Street of French boxing, and some of the biggest contests ever staged on the Continent have been discussed and finalised at “La Chope du Negro.” It was this particular restaurant which suffered most from the childish arrogance of Battling Siki, the blackskinned Senegalese, after at Buffalo, just outside of Paris, he had beaten into submission the debonair Georges Carpentier, and had taken from him his title of light-heavyweight champion of the world. One of Siki’s most playful jests was to call for his favourite drink at “La Chope du Negro,” find fault with tho liquor served him, and then throw all the furniture and sometimes half tho clientele, into the street.

Siki was in Town. About 6 o’clock on an evening when Siki was in town (which was often), one could usually find the half-terrified waiters collecting the tables and chairs —or tho pieces of them—which this ebony-hued child of Nature had thrown into the main thoroughfare. Tt is a well-known story in Paris that Monsieur Leon See, now in Sydney with a 1 team of boxers, once gave Battling Siki a taste of his own medicine and threw the repulsive black fellow into the street after the latter had behaved in an insulting manner. Monsieur See was once a noted strong man, and on one occasion carried off the middleweight weight-lifting championship of England. But to return to “La Chope du Negre. ” The people who patronise this particular restaurant are always well dressed and well mannered. The wives and lady friends of members of the boxing fraternity frequent there alike with the male enthusiasts. There is a splendid orchestra to aid one’s digestion, and incidentally this orchestra, if for no other reason, is famous because of the fact that the violinist, a typical Bohemian, laughs or cries to suit the particular piece he is playing. As a matter of irrelevant fact I think he cries much more than he laughs.

Playing Cards. A word concerning one or two of the regular habitues of this much-patron-ised rendezvous of fighters. As one enters, one cannot fail to notice three men playing cards at a table in a far corner of the dining room. The corpulent gentleman who reminds one of Shakespeare’s “wi’ fair round belly and fat capon lined ’ ’ is Alphonse Ulrich, whose main occupation seems to be playing “bolotte” with his two charges Lucien Vinez and Pierre Calloir. The former, a tall thin fellow, whose age roust be at least 31 years, is the light-weight champion of Europe, and the infrequency with which he defends his title seems to indicate that he will be champion for many years to come. Calloir’s particular claim to fame apart from the fact that he is a very useful featherweight boxer, is that returning once from a trip to Marseilles, he fell from the train when it was travelling at over 60 miles per hour and lived. More than that, after his four months in the hospital, during which time a silver plate was lifted into the hole in his skull, he still continued to earn his living as a boxer. The Bretonnel family is there in full force. Monsieur Bretonnel, the father, is manager of young Fred, one-time regarded as a potential champion of the world. Fred himself is distinguishable from his brother, writer for the Parisian sporting journal, “Boxing,” by the fact that his nose is as flat on his face as it could possibly be without disappearing altogether.

One-time White Hope. Paul Journee, French heavyweight, and one-time “white hope,” sips his export-cassis in solitude behind the orchestra’s stand, wondering the while I what trick of fate it was that gave a Iman -with his dimensions and enormous strength, a glass jaw. Paul wns knocked out so often in 1925 that the monotony of it began to bore him, and 'he dropped out of the game. | The hustling little man with a voice |like a foghorn, who has just entered, followed by a strong-looking young felbow wearing a cauliflower ear, is Francois Deschamps, manager of Georges Carpentier. His companion is Paul Fritsch, of Belforts, whom Francois took to America in 1924 to win the world’s lightweight championship. His best performance was to fight a draw with Sammy Mandell, the present world’s champion. But Deschamps is more occupied now with the big husky fellow he has seen at a nearby table. It is Paolino, onetime wood-chopper in the San Sebastian forest at the foot of the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, but now the heawweight champion of Europe. I aolino has vision of winning a world’s title and Deschamps, his manager, is certainly the right man to get him his chance. Deschamps once confided in me, however, that he didn’t think as much of Paolina as that broad-should-ered Basque hoped he did. On the terrace arc twenty or thirty boxers or one-time boxers, who pensively sip their drinks and watch the neverending stream of pedestrians and vehicles. It is a safe wager that between 6 and 7 o’clock every night at “La Chope du Negre,” one could collect enough cauliflowers to start a market garden—cauliflower cars.