“FIGHTING FARR”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 252, 23 October 1937, Page 4

“FIGHTING FARR”

HIS OWN LIFE STORY ONE LONG BATTLE WAGED GRIM FIGHT TO THE TOP LOVES GAMBLE OF FISTS The life story of Tommy Farr, British and Empire heavy-weight champion, who was recently beaten on points by the American negro, Joe Louis, makes interesting reading. The story, as told by himself, reveals in detail how he graduated from the coal pits to become one of the foremost lighters of his day. His battle to the top rank has been one long battle, and his ambition is to become the king of the world’s heavy-weights. Fighting is in ..iy blood, declared Farr in a recent interview. I couldn't have escaped the call had I been buried a million miles in the bowels of the earth. Dirty, grimy coal holes couldn't keep me down under. My grandfather’ was a giant bare-knuckle lighter and so was my big father George. They were coal miners before me and my one regret is that they didn’t live to see me crowned champion of the Empire. They would have shaken their tine heads in silent appreciation. Oh, they might have mentioned something about knowing it was in my bones. I suppose it was. A Welshman will never surrender in a tight. I love to fight. I love the mad gamble of fists

When I was a kid in Tonypandy, South Wales, it was the custom for us boys to band together, 12, 15 or 20, and go over the mountain to whip the kids of the next village. Word that we were coming spread like a forest fire, and we didn’t have to go looking for them. We met them coming up the other side after us, and they came punching! If we licked them, we werit right through the village and over the hills to the next town. They’d match us to the last boy and we punched it out. “No Same Style Twice.” You see, we learned all about fighting because we never ran across the same style twice. If we were thrashed in a certain village we retreated as best we could. You don’t suppose that the victors were satisfied, do you? Not a bit of it. They walked right over us if we were that flat and waded through our village if recruits did not come to our rescue. It was terrific training, terrific, and I can thank the blood of my ancestors for handing me down the real foundation.

My life really began among the rought-and-ready men of the Glamorgan colliery pits in Tonypandy, South Wales. I was 13 when I went below as a collier's helper. When I say collier's helper I smile. We did the work and the colliers helped us. You're a tired man before your boy’s voice changes, weary and wondering where it will all end. sometimes you secretly prayed that the pit would explode and blow you to bits. My turn came one day: I never knew what hit me. I was a fine biack and bloody mess when they took me up into God's sweet air again. The long blue scar on my left nostril is one of the places where flying coal bowled me over like a cannon ball.

I’ve got the same blue scars on my arm and leg. Those are the little mementos of the coal pits which you carry to your grave, whether you are buried on top or far below. Ours was a coal mining town. You just had to be one. It was your inheritance. It was our life, our hope, and the one road to existence. I went below when I was 13, and didn’t come up to stay until I was 16, when I went to booth fighting. The Toughest School. The booth fighting of our part of the world is a sort of national institution. All our lighting men seem to graduate from the booths. It is the toughest hard-knock school in the world. No place for the spineless or the weak. One full term with the booths and you should be a fighter. Some promoter gathers around him a dozen likely boys, all sizes and weights, and away you go. He pays you a crown a week. Your board and lodging in a horse-drawn caravan is thrown in. He lines you up on a platform, and steps forth to tempt the crowd:

"Ten shillings to the person who will stand before Tommy Farr, of Tonypany, for three rounds.”

Up goes a hand and the booth proprietor tosses him an old pair of glores. Up he comes. He might be Jack Dempsey, your lighting idol, but you’ve got to go to him then and there. You do this at least three times a night A fellow in a high hat, a silverheaded cane and a beautifully p.essed pair of pin-striped trousers, levelled his cane at me one night, and said: "I choose you.” He did. He set his silk topper and cane down and I laughed as I winked at the boss and said: “Just a dandy.” Yeah? lie knocked my block off. The Fighter They Hanged. The man who gave me the hardest fight of my whole career left this life through a gallows trap. When I met Del Fontaine back in 1934 I had visions of getting somewhere in this lighting business, but 1 didn't dream that it would mean that I would light for the world’s heavyweight championship in America. There has been a great change in my life since that night in October of 1934, that Del Fontaine and I stood head to head for 12 rounds. It was one of the first times in my career that my own people stood up and chanted Welsh mining songs, our own peculiar songs of victory. I got the decision and. when I looked around, everyone in the building was

standing up singing and cheering. Looking back over my battles, 1 can’t think of one half so bitter, half so desperate. Del Fontaine’s life ended a little over a year ago at the end of a hangman’s rope, lie had shot to death his sweetheart, and the memory of our terrific battle brought this unhappy ending home, so close, oh, so close! I walked the floor the whole night long. Del boxed right up to the day of the tragedy. He was a gallr it warrior. Something dreadful must have gone wrong with his mind. I would want to excuse his terrible ending in that way. Man, it did seem such a pity.