£20,000 REFUSED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 4

£20,000 REFUSED

BOXER WHO TURNED OFFER DOWN

HEYDEY OF AUSTRALIAN BOXING

NOTED REFEREE'S MEMORIES

Twenty thousand pounds for one fight! This was the offer made to Georges Carpentier, the famous French boxer, to come to Australia and fight Les Darcy when both those great fighters were at their best.

The story of some of the negotiations was told by Mr. Harold Baker, the well-known Australian boxing referee, on his visit to Auckland when discussing some of the great fighters of the past, says the Auckland Star "It would have been the greatest boxing match in history,” he said, "but Carpentier’s manager knew that there was plenty of easy money closer to home, and the match could not be arranged. "Darcy was the greatest middleweight that the world has known,” continued Mr. Baker, "and all the best middle-weights of the world were brought to Australia to meet him. He was not a knock-out artist, but he beat his opponents to a submission by concentrated punishment, and shots that were like a steam hammer." Colourful Career. Some of Darcy’s victims were Fritz Holland, Jeff Smith, Eddie McGoorty, Jim Clabby and Dave Smith, men whose names a couple of decades ago were known in boxing circles throughout the world. Darcy died at Memphis in the United States in 1917. He was 22 years of age.

"Those years,” said Mr Baker, “were the golden era of Australian boxing and Darcy made it so.” The Australian visitor considers that Jack Carroll, the welter champion, is the second-best fighter to Darcy. He is faster, more unorthodox, but does not have Darcy's extreme punishing ability. The general opinion is that if he could meet Barny Ross, the American holder of the world welter title, Cairoll would win.

Mr. Baker considers that Ambrose Palmer is the best of the Australian heavy-weight division to-day, although he is not a great boxer compared with the standards of the past. A heavyweight to be at the top of the tree had to have a punch that would put an opponent down. He regarded Palmer, Carroll, Richards and Henneberry as the four outstanding Australian boxers at the moment, and Carroll as the real star of the lot. “Father of a Hiding.” Mr. Baker recalled the Burns-John-son fight in Sydney on Boxing Day, 1908, for the championship of the world, when Burns received £7OOO to get, as Mr. Baker expressed it, "the father of a hiding.” The visitor said that Burns at no stage had the slightest chance of beating Johnson. The negro had a wonderful attack, a superb defence and to it all was allied the litheness of a cat. "Dempsey may have been a more colourful fighter,” said Mr. Baker, "but Jack Johnson was the greatest of them all."