Dirty work at the ringside

PAUL GALLICO

A treatise on some of the devices used by the artists of the arena to humbug the clients who seem to love it

Skullduggery is always fascinating. Whether it assumes the major form of a lady stroking her husband lovingly with a hammer, so that she and her hoy friend can collect his insurance money, or whether it is merely a minor swindle such as three-card monte, loaded dice or a couple of wrestlers pretending that they are in mortal agony for the benefit of the pop-eyed and panting customers. Skullduggery is apt to he more entertaining and interesting than the scenes to be encountered along the paths of righteousness. This, I regret to say, is especially true in the world of sport.

Observing games and players, fights and fighters over a stretch of years, I have come to the conclusion that if it weren't for the occasional scamps and rascals and their engaging frauds, and their acts of petty larceny, the show would have been pretty dull. The public, curiously, seems to feel the same way about it. They are always happy and contented when they are sitting at a good fixed fight, the outcome of which has been arranged in advance by bootleggers, cocaine smugglers and racketeers. I have never seen an audience that didn't get a bigger kick out of being present at a battle that is obviously a fake, than out of a dozen honest endeavors.

When Primo Camera began his first American tour, he was managed by a party who has since been named one of the Public Enemies, —one flatteringly high up in the ranking, too. Thus, the outcome of all of Primo's engagements were pre-determined either by a massing of artillery, always a famous persuader, or by an exchange of greenbacks.

Primo's partner for his debut in Madison Square was a lanky westerner named Big Boy Peterson, an uncertain pugilist who had had several adventures here and there, always succumbing in great travail as a result of light taps to the pelvis, or glancing blows to the forearm. When Big Boy was signed as Camera's foe, the sports editors of New York united in denouncing the affair as a swindle, a fake, a fraud, a dive, a Barney, a splash, a tankerino and all of the other colorful names devised for a performance of this kind. Anyone who could read a newspaper column could hardly have any illusions as to what was about to take place in the arena that night.

Behold, the evening of the exhibition, Madison Square Garden was jammed to the eaves. Men hung from the rafters on the top shelves, the mezzanine was solid, the arena jammed, the loges freighted with clients and the floor and ringside sold out to customers who had purchased tickets almost in a panic lest they fail to be present for the gypping. Mayor Walker sat in a front seat, the entire boxing Commission was there. Society, the Stage and the representatives of the liquor and murder syndicates. A gala audience.

The bilking was perpetrated as per schedule. It was a ludicrous affair complicated in some degree by Camera's clumsiness, his inability to administer a lethal or even damaging blow, and Peterson's evident eagerness to acquire a coup-de-grace of sufficient force to enable him to fall down without looking as though he had tripped. The engagement was scheduled to end in the first round. Peterson made several half-hearted trips to the canvas, looking carefully about him for a spot for the finale. As the round drew to a close, and it became evident that Camera had become hopelessly entangled in his own person, the unhappy stooge finally solved the difficulty by hitting himself a right hand punch on the side of the jaw and expiring prettily, lying on his side in a pose copied apparently from a French Art print. The referee counted him out, biting his lip to keep his face straight; and the house which had paid about $75,000 in admissions rocked with laughter and went home happy.

As I pecked at my typewriter in the press row preparing an account of this affair for my morning paper, parties drifted by, leaned over my shoulder and muttered—"Put in your article it was a lousy fake. It was a fake. Them two was faking." There was no rancor in their voices. Nor should there have been: It was a most colorful and enjoyable evening. I know, for I have seen subsequent engagements of Camera in which he was contesting strictly on his merits and they were dull, uninspiring. bloodless bores.

Nothing quite so stimulates the press row at a prizefight as when someone in the know suddenly scuttles around and passes the word —"It's in. Kid Whosis is going to take it in the fifth." A contest which heretofore has been fraught with no particular consequence suddenly becomes theatrical, exciting. So the Kid is going to take it in the fifth? First of all, will he take it, or will he double-cross and stay? Flow will he take it? Will he stick out his chin and take it au naturel, or will he flop from a slap to the wishbone and do it with gestures? The choice of the fifth round is commented upon with favor. Everybody will he able to get to the speakeasies that much earlier, and the experts and customers will be spared five rounds of listless pully-hauly. Kid Whosis dutifully goes in the fifth, and is at once rated by the grateful reporters on the grace, the art and the manner of his going.

Recently an audience in New York was subjected by a vindictive promoter to the horrors of an honest wrestling match, and that one dreadful evening and its repercussions have practically killed off wrestling in Madison Square Garden. This tale is also worth recounting. It goes back to the Londos era, when twenty thousand crowded into the famous sports arena every Monday night to watch Jimmy Londos abuse a collection of Polacks, Magyars. Turks, Italians and Russians. It was all amiable theatre. The audience came to see the handsome Londos win, and so he won. The flip-flops, the spins, the phony toe-holds, the arm locks and cradle holds, and the final inevitable climax in which Londos hoisted whatever ugly ape had been assigned to him high into the air, whirled him thrice around and crashed him to the canvas,—all were routine drama, but as carefully staged as any production by Mr. McClintic or Mr. Erskine or Mr. Abbott. The bouts were billed as exhibitions. The audiences knew that none of it was on the level. And they loved it.

Suddenly wrestling began to fall upon evil days. Londos quarreled with his masters, and was denied his championship billing. He vanished from the Garden, to be replaced as lead bull by Ed (Strangler) Lewis, an elderly, obese ex-champion whose sole recommendation was his trick of tucking an opponent's head beneath his arm pit. and squeezing the skull until said opponent swooned, —a hold which, so I have been informed, is strictly the bunk.

So unbeautiful was Lewis, so limited his repertoire of acrobatics that audiences fell away, and the editors began to complain again that wrestling was all a sham and a fraud, that Lewis wasn't satisfactory as a bellwether to the same old routines, and that it might be a good idea to call the whole thing off. Jack Curley, the proprietor of the troupe, took cognizance of this murmuring, but misinterpreted it. He promptly matched his pudgy Lewis with an energetic Litvak named Jack Sherry, hero of a rival troupe and through underground channels let it be known and widely circulated that this was to be an honest effort—a "shooting match", a piece of wrestling jargon derived from the notion that both parties are "shooting the works".

Sherry, a hairy, scowling orang, and the graceless Lewis, bald-headed, button-eyed, with a small, petulant cupid's how for a mouth, came to grips for the first time at nine o'clock in the evening. One hour later they had not yet gone to the mat. For sixty minutes they did nothing but pull and haul one another around the ring, each with his arms draped around the hack of the other's neck. There were pools of honest sweat all over the canvas. Critics of wrestling marched around the ring, peering intently at the two troglodytes who were giving an imitation of a couple of inebriated piano movers, and swore by Hercules and by Milo of Croton that here was shooting, here was wrestling, here was an affair that glowed with honesty. But the audience jeered and cat-called and booed, moaned and complained, stormed and threatened and wound up—those who remained, by pleading for mercy from such uprightness. Eventually, the wrestlers themselves tired of "shooting," reverted to type, and at last Sherry succumbed in the accustomed manner. amidst a perfect hurricane of boos and complaints.

Later, Curley staged another "shooting match" between Lewis and his ancient enemy Ray Steele. Thousands stayed away from the arena. Many old wrestling fans went so far as to leave town that night, so as to be quite safe from temptation, and the artists delivered another deluge of honest perspiration before the smallest wrestling gallery of the year.

Meanwhile, a rival organization, operating in a small made-over ice rink uptown known as St. Nicks', introduced a new set of Pithecanthropi to their clients, who added new japes, postures and tortures—including the leaving of the ring by both parties, on their necks, heads, hacks or wherever convenient,

punching, strangling, gouging, scratching, and when the referee wasn't looking, an occasional nibble. Mere once again, the dearly beloved boloney, and the clients with lovelight gleaming in their eyes began to wend their way to St. Nicks'. Then Jim Londos returned to New York presented by this same rival troupe. Seven thousand bulged the walls of a place meant to hold but six. Jeemy gave the airplane spin to some ill favored gorilla or other, the audience rocked with delight at these dear, familiar antics, and went home happy.

The public waxes most hurt and indignant when a prizefight or wrestling match in which one gladiator has overpowered another in an entertaining manner is later revealed by the newspapers to have been a little business deal in which victory was swapped for cash or favors. I constantly receive abusive letters taking me to task for imputing motives other than the highest to "the two great athletes who have just given their all" and condemning me as a cynic, and an unbeliever totally unfit to comment upon such noble characters. I accept these meekly and with understanding, because I know what is the matter with the writer, lie doesn't believe in the integrity of the athletes any more than I do. He is merely chagrined that he didn't know beforehand that there was something doing and that he was fooled by the performance. It does no good to soothe him by telling him that they have fooled me, too, and that they will continue to fool me.

When a boxer winds up his Sunday-goto-meetin' punch, and lands it on his opponent's chin with a smack that can be heard all the way out in the lobby, and when said opponent is then counted out and carried away stiff, one hesitates to cry "Fake". Still a fake it often is. When there is too much at stake to risk an exhibition of histrionics, the victim is instructed in just what round he is to go. and that he is to drop his hands, stick out his chin and—blooie!

Sometimes the critics go a little too far in their efforts to keep the frauds on the level. There was one cry of "fake" following the Petrolle-Battalino fight. This was one of the most grim and bloody contests ever waged in modern times, and in it Battalino's face was smashed to a pulp and he was finally beaten right into the canvas. I have known many a business man of the ring to accept the quick and usually painless lethe of a knockout. but not one of the boys has yet shown himself daffy enough to allow himself to be cut to ribbons just to make it look good to the customers.

I have never heard the cry of "Fake" come from an angry audience. When this sinister word is bounced into the ring from the shadowy fastnesses of the arena it is, I suspect. delivered more in the spirit of "Tag, you little rascal, you're it." Waggish rebuke, merely to notify the artists in the ring, and the other patrons, that they are on to them.

Any reasonably experienced ringworm can detect a phony knockout, for whereas it is simple enough to fake the first knockdown, the actor-pugilist's behavior thereafter gives him away. It is impossible to simulate the look that comes over a fighter's face after his skull has been subjected to a real concussion. Likewise, the body of a man who has been knocked down as the result of a severe punch does queer things; no two bodies act exactly alike. Thus, since there is no real standard of behavior. the faker has none by which to measure himself, and as a result, in his anxiety to make it "look good", usually permits himself to be trapped into some nonsense so obvious that even the so-called experts at the ringside can detect the sell.

Not all fakes are knockouts. As a matter of fact, most of the swindles of the ring occur when one boxer agrees to "carry" the other, or when the boys agree to engage in a very brisk and thrilling battle, which shall be close, and studded with an occasional knockdown, and so cause the excited customers to demand a rematch at its conclusion. These delicate frauds (and put on by two capable boxers they defy detection) are usually worked on the out-of-town clientele in the smaller cities where the customers are not quite as expert, or the authorities as particular.

Wrestling matches, of course, are much easier to fake, and it is so difficult to draw the line and say—"Here the real ends and the false begins", that the easiest thing to do is lump them all together under the head of "exhibitions", and let it go at that. Irrespective of the fact that there is something about a wrestler that makes him unhappy and uncomfortable when he isn't crossing somebody in a match, it has been demonstrated, in this very essay, that honest wrestling is a great bore, and that phony wrestling or "wrasslin' " is an amusing harlequinade, something which can be counted upon to send an out-of-town buyer into transports of delight—particularly, if you let him make the discovery for himself that it isn't on the level.

When one wrestler clamps a hold upon his mate it is impossible to tell whether he is applying punishing pressure or whether be is merely feeling his pulse. But as long as the face of the victim registers sufficient agony, the patron is satisfied. A few arpeggio moans, groans and whines, and the spectator is up in his seat waving his hat and shouting "Kill the big bum!"

True, when the boys dive through the ropes, and onto concrete floors, or into a welter of camp chairs hastily deserted by the alarmed occupants, it can hardly be called phony, but neither is it wrestling. The more jittery patrons may take comfort from the fact that gentlemen who become wrestlers are usually well equipped to land on concrete floors. They protect themselves from suffering bodily injury by hitting with their skulls first.

The sports columnists of Manhattan have given up as a bad job the self-imposed police and detective job of protecting the public from the swindles of the boxing and wrestling pits. If a promoter can get enough writers to swear that his match is a fraud and a cheat be can assure himself a packed house. The average spectator, at least in my town, has a passion for being on the spot when something unusual happens. Moreover, the larcenous managers and fighters are really doing him a service. They have made him a Person of Slight Importance because, when he comes down to the office the next day. he is able to develop the fact that He Was To 'file Fights And Knew It Was A Fake Right Away. Then it goes something like this. "Was that a Barney! You'll never see me in that place again. They get away with murder. Why as soon as Kid Blotz went down the first time and rolled over on his stummick, I knew there was something doing. I said to the feller sitting next to me. a feller with his girl, I says—'It's a fake.' The Kid gets up and does that phony tumble and I'm on to him right away. 'It's a Fake,' I holler, and the Kid gets counted out on one knee. I says to the feller next to me 'It's a lousy shame, they take your dough for that. I'll never come to this joint again.'"

He won't eh? He'll come every time, because he loves it.