BOXING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1359, 11 May 1916, Page 4

BOXING.

GORY FIGHTING IN LONDON. O’KEEFE AND SULLIVAN. The English mail just to hand brings particulars of the recent fight in London between the middleweight boxers Lance-Corporal Pat O’Keefe, who is well known in New Zealand, and Corporal Jim Sullivan. Descrioing the contest, which created the greatest interest in military and boxing circles, a correspondent says: — Nasty questions have been asked about the big soldiers’ fights at the Golder’s Green Hippodrome. The man in the street wants to know how Colour-Sergeant-Instructor Wells and Staff-Sergeant Dick Smith came to battle with gloves for £6OO, and Lance-Corporal Pat O’Keefe and Corporal Sullivan for £4OO. And how Sergeant Richard Burge could promote such lucrative contests in these grim days of economy. Nevertheless, the possible post-mortem inquiries did not deter about 5000 people crowding into the well-known vaudeville hall. Fully three-fifths of them were in the King’s uniform. The theatre was a microcosm of England. All the best-known lovers of the ring were present, mostly in khaki. The National Sporting Club had gravitated to the garden suburb. Belted earls were bronzed and serviceable with two starts on their shoulders. Cooks’ sons were in claystained great coats straight from the trenches in Flanders. Husky men famous in the athletic world rejoiced in the night’s sport ahead of them. Bruce Logan, the historical amateur stroke, sat beside the ring, while Ernest Barry, champion sculler, seconded Pat O’Keefe. And there were many women present, squired by young officers. It was an army night, and the second big event tried even the squeamishness of men inured to blood letting. There were two championships to be decided. Colour-Sergeant-Instruct-or Wells got away with the former without any difficulty. He has always been a lion when opposed to a fellow countryman. Looking like a matinee idol, and wreathed in a Che-shire-cat smile, he confidently faced Staff-Sergeant Dick Smith, a big, lumbering fellow with a boil on the back of his neck. With advantage of 131 b in weight and 3in. in reach, Wells could afford to be cocksure. The purse of £6OO should have been his in the first round. He had the bush-whacking but earnest Smith hazed, and should have outed him. But he was too intent upon executing a dainty dance, which entertained the patchoulied fair sex. In the second round Smith tried to hack his way through Wells, and was stopped by delightful boxing. When the bell ran a third time Wells appeared to weary of playing with his prey, jammed a half-arm left on Smith’s open jaw, and when this straightened the staff-sergeant to the tension of the salute he rammed his right into the staff-sergeant’s stomach. Whereupon Smith lurched on to his back, took the count, gave up the championship, and also the thick end of the purse. The patchouli brigade applauded vigorously. The second event was the only one that promised any serious sport. Corporal Jim Sullivan, with youth in his favour, had some chance of depriving grey-haired Lance-Corporal Pat O’Keefe of the middleweight championship. Lusty, resilient robustness was pitted against maturity and ringcraft. Sullivan stripped clean in limb as a gladiator. O’Keefe had a hard-bitten, well-trained appearance. Two rounds sufficed to demonstrate that Sullivan was the better boxer, O’Keefe the superior general. The veteran made his opponent bring the fighting to him, his (O’Keefe’s) favourite way—in fighting. So long as Sullivan stood off he could outpoint the champion. The moment he rested his head on O’Keefe’s shoulder he lost points. Whereupon O’Keefe schemed to achieve a series of clinches, while Eugene Corri,. sitting at the ring-side with quaint strips of plaster on his own forehead, had to say upon several occasions, “Don’t hold with your right, O’Keefe,” as the old hand fruitively embrased Sul livan. , . , In the midst of the third round O’Keefe cut the bridge of Sullivan’s Roman nose with a hefty right-cross. From that moment the challenger was handicapped by his nose being blocked with blood, while O’Keefe saw that the blockade was not forced by affectionately prodding the broken

skin on every conceivable opportunity. Yet did Sullivan keep piling up point for point, until those who had laid 3 to 1 on O’Keefe grew restless in their seats, and vociferously articulated in their advice. At 15 rounds it was anybody’s fight, though Sullivan seemed to be weakening slightly, and O’Keefe aggravated. his tiredness by solicitously lying, on him in every clinch. Feeling the belt —or the purse—slipping out of his reach, Sullivan, in the sixteenth round, suddenly went wild, clipped O’Keefe on the ear with his left, and got home a stunning punch full on the Irishman’s face with his right. Instantly O’Keefe's nose became a gory Niagara. Hope surged up in Sullivan, lie went at O’Keefe to knock him senseless, but the veteran had just sufficient sense left to smother his bleeding face on his challenger’s shoulder. Once he shifted it. Like lightning Sullivan swung a right which cut deep into O’Keefe’s face right on the crater of his left eye. After that O’Keefe could not see his opponent for a curtain of blood.

There has never been a more gory championship in England than the succeeding four rounds. Sullivan bled copiously, but O’Keefe exuded cataracts of blood. The men’s faces and shoulders and chests and legs were painted red. O’Keefe’s blue shorts became a dirty purple; Sullivan’s red, white and blue shorts were converted into a crimson loin cloth. Neither man had a knock-out punch left. Hardened staff officers from the shambles in Europe became nauseated. The patchouli spectators gazed with widely distended eyes and heaving bosoms. Sullivan did all the leading, worrying O’Keefe, blinded by his own life blood, hither and tliither. Every time a blow landed on O’Keefe’s battered face there was a sickly, squashy sound, and those nearest the ring were spattered. It was a magnificent exhibition of pluck on both sides. It roused the bloodthirsty gods to tumultuous cheering But it was not boxing. It was brutal prize-fighting. At the end of the twentieth round O’Keefe tried to grin at Sullivan through his gorge-screened eyes. Sullivan attempted to smile with his nose and mouth dripping blood. Corri, for some inexplicable reason, gave O’Keefe the verdict. Threefourths of the spectators angrily dissented, and two limp caricatures of humanity reeled to their feet and crawled painfully down from the stage like blind men.

In all probability Dave Smith will make his reappearance in the ring, as Mr. R. L. Baker has hopes of matching the ex - New Zealander against Jimmy Clabby, the famous American middleweight, the bout to take place on May 20. * * ♦ ♦ Commenting upon the recent battle between Harry Stone, the American lightweight, and Herb. McCoy, the well-known Victoria boxer, in which the former clearly outpointed the Australian, W. F. Corbett, in the Sydney “Sun,” says: —Has Herb. McCoy deteriorated as a boxer, or has Harry Stone improved? I am inclined to think that McCoy is not as good as he was. On December 26, 1913, McCoy and Stone met at the Stadium, and fought a pretty close battle, though not so close that the referee and the bulk of the spectators were unable to see a clear winner. The ring official declared for McCoy, and the applause which followed appeared to indicate that his ruling was endorsed by the majority of the house. I thought Stone won, and said so, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that at least half a dozen people qualified to express a reliable opinion were with me. If McCoy really did have the better of the point-scoring on that occasion, then he has fallen off a good deal, since there could have been no doubt regarding the American’s superiority in their recent battle. But McCoy has not lost that much of his skill of two years ago. The only thing which Stone sprang upon him in their latest encounter was a right swing to the ribs and a little more of the jumping-jack stuff. Otherwise Stone was to all appearances the boxer we previously saw. The manner in which he worked that right wallop, and the frequency with which it made contact, surprised me. It seemed to get well under McCoy’s left arm every time. Why the Aus-

tralian, having been struck once or twice, did not then think out some way of beating the attack puzzled me considerably. Stone showed good judgment in using the blow only now and again during a round, and here and there fighting the full three minutes without bringing it into action at all. McCoy is not consistently good as a boxer. Sometimes ha shapes so poorly as to create the impression that he must surely, and shortly at that, fall from his high estate as lightweight champion o. Australia; then he comes again, and we once more see the brilliant Me Coy of other contests, and hear the crowd cheering him as wildly as ever for the skill and the effect of his operations. This being the case one has learned the advisability oi refraining from holding an inquest upon McCoy’s high-class ability until the time, if he remains in the game long enough, when a succession of defeats shall have demonstrated beyond question that his best form can be repeated no more. By the way, it was an interesting coincidence that Stone should have made his initial appearance in the Australian ring this second time of his coming to Sydney as near as possible to the date, three years ago, upon which he first heard the plaudits of an Australian crowd.

“Australia is every day coming nto closer sympathy and touch with New Zealand,” said Mr. Hugh J. Mclntosh, controller of the Tivoli Theatres in Australia, in a speech in Sydney recently. “There used to be a certain parochial antagonism between the two countries for no particular reason. That has disappeared. New Zea'anders and Australians have fought side by side on those shell-swept, bloody hills at Anzac, and they will be brothers in blood for all time after the war. We hear far too much talk of New Zealanders and Australians as separate peoples. In point of fact we have common interests and' common. aims, and one destiny—we are Australasians all! If Australia were in the possession of a powerful enemy foe, does anyone believe that New Zealand would be safe for any length of time, though we know her people to be the bravest of the brave? It is not conceivable. After all, what do a few leagues of intervening sea amount to? How many leagues are there between us and the Motherland, but we and New Zealand are one with her in heart and purpose? M e British cannot afford to make a bugbear of the sea, since, for the good of all the world, we own it, and will own it for all time. I believe

that in the future Australians and New Zealanders will be drawn to closer and closer recognition of the Imperial bond that binds with the kindred thread of kinship all the sons of the Grand Old Mother who sits in the grey North Sea, defying the greatest aggregation of military power ever known in the history of the world. For my personal part, when I’m in New Zealand I feel that I’m at home, and that feeling is at the bottom of all nationhood.”

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