Sport: Fights

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Mandell v. Singer. Because he has been growing too heavy for his class, Sammy Mandell, lightweight champion of the world since 1926, trained in sweaters under the July sun, dried out in steam baths. On the morning of his fight with Challenger Al Singer, last week in The Bronx, he weighed himself secretly, found he was 136 Ib. instead of 135 lb., put on thick clothes and ran around the Yankee Stadium until the pound came off. That evening, pallid and drawn, he came out of his corner cautiously to meet Singer, sturdy Bronx Semite. After a moment of tentative jabbing. Singer lashed out with a left hook and knocked the champion down. At the count of three Mandell got up. Singer knocked him down again and Mandell stayed on the canvas while the timekeeper's mallet thumped seven times. Again he got up, his brain dead now. He wavered backward helplessly while Singer, groping wildly for a decisive punch, hit him again and again, finally knocked him unconscious with a left and right and was proclaimed the new world's champion. Time: 1 min., 46 sec.

Battalino v. Fernandez. In his home town, Hartford, Conn., where he can draw bigger gates than anywhere else, Christopher ("Battling") Battalino, feather weight champion of the world, windmilled rapid, clumsy punches at the jaw, stomach and heart of slit-eyed Ignacio Fernandez, a Filipino who once knocked out Al Singer (see above). In the second round Battalino hit Fernandez in the ribs, doubled him up, then knocked him over with aggressing right. Like a fighter who has not trained and cannot, stand the slightest body punch, Fernandez went down five times more in that round, but stayed conscious till the fifth.

Primo Camera, 263 lb., hit a 218-lb. Omaha Negro called Bearcat Wright so hard in the fourth round that a rope broke as Wright flew out of the ring.