BOXING.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15152, 27 January 1923, Page 17 (Supplement)

BOXING.

(By “Left Lead.") A bout which is set down to take place at Wanganui to-night will have Sid Stevens and Fred Sturrock as principals. Stevens is a k.o. artist, but his opponent is the more finished boxer. During the twenty years that great fighter Jack Britton shaped up inside the hempen square he took part in 570 matches. An Admirer asks: “Do you think breathing exercises prolong life?” Certainly I do. I never knew anybody who ceased breathing and lived. Keep on breathing, old sport, just as long as you can. At last a definite date is announced for a Griqui-Kilbane match involving the featherweight championship of the world, but will it hold? Aye, there’s the rub! Boxers arc, mostly, more or less kittle Rattle, and Ivilbnne lias been for years Hie worst offender. This does not say much for (lie calibre of the Australian, George Cook. Dick Smith, the Englishman, who defeated him a short time back, is 44 years of age. “You’ve noticed, haven’t you, that a great ' number of our champs are not in training these days? Before Hie New York Boxing Commission gol to working, the champs fought every other week. Now that the watchful eye of Mr Muldoon is picking the fakes and tlie stall bouts and I lie setups, our champs have stepped completely out of the limelight. They have to fight Iheso days.”—Tad. Jimmy Glabby, once a great middleweight, quit fighting with 80,000 dollars earned 'in the hard old game of fighting when Tt w~ts hard, and when purses didn’t run into six figures. He is broke now, and bis friends are trying to get up a benefit for him. Jimmy got it, and the horses look it away from him. Benny Leonard, lightweight champion, is tired of being held up lightly as a champion business man instead of a real champion with the dukes. In less than two months this summer, Leonard cleared up 20,000 dollars in four lights with Jack Britlon, Rocky Kansas, Lew Tendler and Ever Hammer. Benny now claims that he is broke, and that the track and Wall Street took him for a million dollars. The loss of a million on anything is generally good for the front page, but Benny is such a generally recognised business man that many of tfi,. editors wanted to quote him advertising rates for the news. Jack Dempsey goes broke before every big light, so that some philanthropic promoters can give a couple of hundred grand To keep a good boy from going wrong.—New York American. There is a referee in one of the Australian capitals whose melhod of counting points is unique (remarks an Australian exchange). He steps Into Ihf. ring with 20 single shillings in Hie breast pocket of liis coat, and at the |

end of the round he surreptitiously removes one shilling and places it in the left or the right trousers pocket, according to which boxer has won the round. At the end of the contest he makes a count, and awards victory to the hoy who has earned the most shillings. Because one boxer has won more rounds than the other does not neces'sarily mean that he has won the contest. It is possible for a boxer to wipe off a three-round deficiency in one round by completely eclipsing an opponent. Take the case of the first contest between Stewart and Ring. For 13 rounds Ring held command all the time, and yet between the 13th and the 20th Stewart won the contest. He knocked Ring down five times. The usual method is to award a maximum of five points for a round. A boxer may win five to nothing, four to one, or three to two, or break even. Points are then tallied in the last round.

Here is an interesting question put by A Second: “Do you believe in ’the administration of dope to a lighter? Is it a beneficial practice?” Ido not, and it is not. Tonics have their occasional uses, but as a general thing they are, in my opinion, harmful. The sense of well-being produced by tonics, or dope, which you will, is frequently false and usurious, in that it encourages the boxer to further exertions which can only result in further depletion of the reserve cellular activity. By opening the tap too widely the water is wasted, so to speak. There is no use in flogging a jaded horse. There is no harm in a second giving his principal a swig from (lie magic bottle to drive him over the last two or three rounds. But if administered earlier, and he did not win inside a round or two subsequently, the dope might operate in an opposite way. Let tiie trial in which Hie doped greyhound is engaged he started later than the lime stated on Hie card, and sec how poorly he shapes. Also watch him act brilliantly, compared with his ordinary | form, in" the course for which lie lias been given “spring,” and observe how jaded lie looks in the next round.