Sport: Dismal

• Share

A cold, round moon floated over Jersey City, looked down through the smoke veil spread over factories and freight yards, beheld a vast saucer full of humanity grouped about a luridly lit central platform. On the platform, the moon saw two huge men, one coffee-colored, one swart and hairy, pummeling each other clumsily. The moon, sickened and disappointed, sailed away and sank.

The saucer full of humanity, 80,000 strong, was also sickened and dis- appointed, drifted away grumbling, muttering. It had assembled to see the two huge men do brilliant battle. Instead, these men, who were Harry

Wills, "Brown Panther," and Luis Angel Firpo, "Argentine Bull Man," had hugged and shoved each other about the ring for twelve dismal rounds, each too cautious to strike out cleanly for a knockout.

Only four clean blows were struck, all by Wills, and those disconnectedly. In the first round, he jarred the Bull Man's head. In the second, he laid the Bull Man suddenly horizontal with a right jaw-punch, as they were backing out of a clinch. The third was a blood-bringing uppercut to the Bull Man's jaw. The last, a stiff left to the same spot.

Thereafter, Wills held his fire, winning all the rounds by clever defense which Fiipo, weak-kneed and wild, could not crash through, and by thumping away painfully at Firpo's left kidney during the interminable clinches.