The International Flavour in Boxing

England Will Oppose America in the Encounter Between Tom Heeney and Gene Tunney

W. O. McGEEHAN

BRITISH pugilistic aspirations are emerging from the rosin dust of half a century. With the choice of Thomas Heeney of New Zealand, a British Colonial, for the post of logical contender, which means the runnerup to the heavyweight champion, the hopes of true Britons for the recovery of the title which originated in England are in the ascendant.

This is as close as Britain has come to regaining its lost cauliflower supremacy since that memorable night of May 14, 1883, when in the very old Madison Square Garden, Charley Mitchell knocked the great John L. Sullivan off his feet in the first round. It is true that Sullivan sprang up again faster than truth crushed to earth and in the third round was about to slay the battered Mitchell. But the fact remains that for the count of one at least it looked as though the title had gone back to the place of its origin.

On the following year in the same place John L. Sullivan was scheduled to wipe out this disgrace but he appeared in full evening dress internally and externally and was forced to make his apologies on the ground that he was too ill to fight. If this had been some other form of sport Mitchell might have claimed the title by default.

The fact that he twice failed to render Charlie Mitchell permanently horizontal, which for some years past has been held to be the normal position of a British heavyweight, clouded the title of Sullivan and became a thorn in his constantly increasing flesh. After almost as much maneuvering as that preceding a modern "battle of the century" the pair met again on the estate of Baron Rothschild at Chantilly, France, on March 10, 1888.

This battle lasted something over three hours. Mitchell was down time and again on the muddy turf. According to the scoring methods of the American boxing commissions, Sullivan would have won on points but the bout finally was halted and a draw decision was given, much to the disgust of Mr. Sullivan. To his dying day John L. would purple at the mention of Mitchell's name.

IT was during the third encounter that John L. is supposed to have entreated Mitchell to refrain from jabbing him in the shins with his spikes in the following characteristic language, "Be a gentleman, if you can, Charlie, you blankety blank." But Mitchell paid no attention to the exhortation. He was quite as unresponsive as was Mr. Tunney when Dempsey motioned him to come in and fight after Mr. Tunney had just spent several uncomfortable seconds on the canvas at Chicago.

No unpleasantness of this sort is expected in the coming heavyweight championship bout with the "international flavour." Mr. Tunney does not use that sort of language and Mr. Heeney hardly uses any language whatever in or out of the prize-ring. When Britain and America meet in Mr. Rickard's prize-ring this summer all of the amenities of a diplomatic conversation will be observed.

As Mr. Rickard has impressed upon us all the atmosphere of the cauliflower business has improved wonderfully over that of the days of the London Prize Ring Rules. Mr. R. F. Dibble in his book about John L. Sullivan described the crowd at the first Sullivan-Mitchell fight in the old Madison Square Garden of comparatively malodorous memory in this fashion:

"No seats were provided for the audience at this historic affair; the whole crowd stood. Among the most notable spectators present was Roscoe Conkling. When the long black coat and the silk top hat announced his arrival a seat was hastily built for him by laying a plank across two beer kegs: and from this place of honour he surveyed the proceedings with his accustomed senatorial dignity.

"It was indeed a motley gathering: bankers, pickpockets, lawyers, thieves, brokers, merchants, Bowery pimps, coachmen, dudes, men about town, actors, baseball players and millionaires—everyone from Fifth Avenue to the underworld elbowed and shoved to get nearer to the ring. Each person distrusted his neighbour, each person kept his eyes on the fighters and his hand on his purse."

OF course the setting for the coming international bout will be much more refined. Mr. Rickard has been telling us ever since he began to handle these "battles of the century" that only nice people go to prizefights. One night he confided to me that there were six hundred millionaires present at one prize-fight in the New Madison Square Garden. Obviously the ranking guest at this temple to Fistiana (it probably would be Mayor James J. Walker of New York) would not be forced to sit on a plank stretched over two beer kegs.

It was at one of these bouts with the international flavour that the heavyweight championship which as one might say is the proudest jewel in our diadem almost left us but not for England. That was when our Mr. Jack Dempsey became reckless in the Sullivanic fashion in the bout with Luis Angel Firpo at the Polo Grounds.

One can imagine the consternation in the crowd described by Mr. Dibble in the old Madison Square Garden when the mighty John L. was knocked on his broad haunches with a thud that must have jarred the building and caused some sympathetic tremblors in far off Boston. But the shock at the Polo Grounds was even heavier.

Suddenly Jack Dempsey, voted a greater fighter than even the Great John L., went hurtling out of the ring with his legs kicking spasmodically for all the world like a twolegged comet clad in white tights. He crashed down into the typewriters of the newspapermen while eighty thousand gasped in horror. The heavyweight title had apparently passed to the Argentine Republic before their very eyes. The tragic silence was broken only by some low moaning at the ringside and by an occasional feminine scream.

Then the time keeper, who was transfixed by horror for seconds that could only be estimated, recalled his duties and started to count. As he barked the numbers the head and shoulders of Dempsey appeared above the edge of the ring and, wild eyed, the champion crawled back through the ropes into the ring. It always will be my conviction that he was out of the ring more than ten seconds.

Then the slaughter started. Dempsey in the "fog of fighting" rushed Firpo and the huge Argentino went down, got up only to be knocked down again. Once Dempsey standing directly over and behind him hammered him to the ring before both knees were off the canvas. According to the amended rules of the New York State Boxing Commission this was a foul and Dempsey should have been disqualified, thus giving the title to the South American.

BUT the title was not destined to leave the United States that night. Firpo, speaking no English, could not have exhorted Dempsey as John L. exhorted Mitchell, "Be a gentleman, Jack, if you can, you blankety-blank." The international flavour in connection with this particular heavyweight championship bout rather soured our neighbours of Latin America.

The Rickardian era of the cauliflower industry produced another heavyweight championship of an "international flavour," the famous meeting of Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier at Boyle's Thirty Acres. But at no time during this bout was there any real menace to the American supremacy over the rosin sprinkled canvas.

It is true that in the fourth round of that bout Carpentier landed flush on the jaw of the American champion. It is recorded that the blow sent Dempsey back on his heels but also it broke Carpentier's hand and presently Dempsey did what he might have done at any time after the first bell rang, knocked Carpentier out. Mr. Rickard, when in a garrulous mood, will admit that before the bout he pleaded with Dempsey not to knock Carpentier out too quickly, "on account of all of those nice people out there", and that Dempsey agreed.

Certainly Carpentier had no hope of winning anything but the $200,000 guarantee and for once all of the experts in the world were right. There was the lone exception of George Bernard Shaw who predicted that Carpentier, the genius who had knocked out the "sturdy Briton," Joe Beckett, in the National Sporting Club, would do the same thing to Jack Dempsey.

The Briton who will meet Gene Tunney here this summer is also of that "sturdy type" and some of his movements are reminiscent of those of Beckett. Unlike Beckett, however, he has no backward movements and no horizontal tendencies. He was knocked down only once in this country by Paulino Uzcudun, the Basque, but he bounded right up again and plodded forward to give Uzcudun quite as good as he sent, if not better.

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It is written that while Heeney is a Colonial and therefore a Briton he is of Irish extraction. This would soften the blow if the incredible should happen and Heeney should win the heavyweight championship from our Mr. Tunney. It softened the grief of John L. Sullivan in the hour of his great tragedy to be able to say of James J. Corbett, his conqueror, "Thank God he is an American." It might have assuaged his sorrow and the sorrow of his followers to the same or almost the same extent if he had been able to say, "Thank God he is an Irishman."

It is my prediction that if the seemingly impossible should happen that they will be talking of Heeney as the Irish champion. Somehow it does not seem such a blow to our ring followers to look forward to the transfer of that heavyweight championship to the Irish.

I do not recall James J. Jeffries, after he slumped down in his corner at Reno, Nevada, saying of Jack Johnson of the twenty-four carat teeth, "Thank God he is an American," though the citizenship of Jack Johnson was not questioned up to that time. Nor was there any expression of gratitude over the Americanism of Jack Johnson from the crowd at the ringside nor from any of the subsequent gathering of Nordic or nearly Nordic fight fans. Those who were grateful over the citizenship of this champion seemed to keep their own counsel.

There is one thing that always has puzzled me in connection with the legend that the heavyweight championship title came to the United States with John L. Sullivan and remained here undisputed excepting by Mitchell, Carpentier and Firpo. I may be out of order in bringing up the subject but curiosity impels.

If I recall correctly one Robert Fitzsimmons, called Ruby Robert, was born in Cornwall, England. From that place he emigrated to Australia which would place him in the same category with Thomas Heeney as far as citizenship is concerned, the only difference in the favour of Heeney being his Irish extraction.

Fitzsimmons came to the United States via the sporting port of San Francisco where he demonstrated at the old California Athletic Club that he possessed what is known technically these days as a sock. It was not long before he became what we now call a logical contender and was matched to fight James J. Corbett, the conqueror of Sullivan, who, "Thank God, was an American."

At Carson City on a St. Patrick's Day, you will recall Ruby Robert knocked out James J. Corbett, the American for whom John L. Sullivan was so piously grateful and a Native Son of the Golden West, with a solar plexus blow. But I can remember nowhere reading that the heavyweight championship passed from the United States. There never was any clarion cry raised for an American champion to rise and bring back the championship to America, a forerunner of the cry after the fall of Jeffries for a "white hope" to restore the ring supremacy of the Caucasians.

Even after the defeat of Fitzsimmons there was no gratitude for the victory of Jeffries. In fact popular sympathy in this country was all with Ruby Robert, the grand old man of the game. Nobody noticed anything like an international flavour to the Jeffries-Fitzsimmons bout. This to me always will remain a mystery, accepting the catechism definition of the word, that a "mystery is a truth which we cannot fully comprehend."

There is a parallel case in the game of tennis. When Mrs. Molla Bjursted Mallory was women's champion and unconquerable I used to see in the headlines that "American Woman Champion Won Again." Then it happened that Mrs. Mallory was beaten by Miss Helen Wills. I then read that "American Girl Beats Norse Woman." It seemed that with her defeat the citizenship of Mrs. Mallory changed suddenly and to this day she is known to the sports pages of the country merely as "Norse Woman." If she should regain that championship I feel quite sure that we should recognize her under the head of American Woman Champion once more.

There can be no doubt as to the present citizenship of the logical contender who is to meet our Mr. Gene Tunney. Mr. Rickard, recalling the excitement there was over Boyle's Thirty Acres and the money that was in the box office, is seeing to it that this phase of the impending bout is not lost sight of. British sports writers who had become reconciled to the horizontal attitude of the English heavyweights are beginning to take notice. At last a British heavyweight has risen to the eminence of logical contendership, which is a towering position for a modern British pugilist.

We have, therefore, an international flavour for this one and the English newspapers are emphasizing it to help Mr. Rickard's ballyhoo. If the utterly improbable should happen they will not lose sight of the fact that Tom Heeney is a sturdy Briton with the best traditions of the British prizering behind him.

And there is another little rift in our legend of continued American succession to the heavyweight championship. Tommy Burns (born Noah Brusso) was a Canadian, which made him even as Tom Heeney, a Colonial and a Briton. If I am not mistaken this same Noah Brusso is still a British subject and when he acquired the title his immediate predecessor, Mr. Jeffries, did not at any time thank God that he (Noah Brusso) was an American. Probably this was because Mr. Jeffries knew better, or perhaps he did not care.

But in the impending bout Mr. Rickard is insistent on the international flavour. The unenthusiastic insist that this is because it is the only recommendation he can make for it. If the ballyhoo is loud and insistent enough he may rouse even those who have not quite forgiven Mr. Tunney for outthinking and outfighting their idol, Mr. Dempsey, to say at the end of the bout with Heeney as they look reverently at the handsome features of Mr. Tunney, "Thank God he is an American and that the title remains in the United States."