Sport: The Dancing Master

Carl ("Bobo") Olson is a lean (5 ft. 10½ in.) and hungry-looking; middleweight (160 Ibs.), who learned to defend himself in the tough Kaliki section of Honolulu, where street-fighting is a normal pastime. Paddy Young is a stocky (5 ft. 8 in.) middleweight, who learned his punching as a stevedore on Manhattan's rough & tumble waterfront.

At Madison Square Garden last week, the ex-street fighter and the ex-stevedore, both now 24 and duly coached and polished in Marquis of Queensberry niceties, met for the American middleweight championship, a title which has been vacant since Sugar Ray Robinson retired. Also at stake: a world title bout with European Champion Randy Turpin in August. Punching Paddy Young's campaign plan was simple: bore in swinging for a knockout. Bobo Olson, a far fancier fighter, figured to win on points.

Bobo quickly proved that he is one of the best dancing masters of the modern ring. Circling in a leftward two-step to avoid Paddy Young's sharp left hook, feinting, bobbing and weaving, he made Paddy miss more often than he hit. Meanwhile, from Bobo's own rights and lefts came a tattoo of light, flicking jabs, hooks, crosses, counters and slaps.

In the eighth round, confidently careless, Bobo caught one of Paddy's wild hooks flush in the face and faltered. But he recovered and went back to the business of demolishing Paddy with a barrage of flicks. Sturdy Paddy Young did not go lown, but he seemed to grow perceptibly older and slower.

In the 15th round, a ringside reporter for the New York Herald Tribune de voted himself to counting Bobo's punches: 117 in three minutes. Cut and bleeding, Paddy Young stayed gamely on his feet. But at the bell, Paddy raised Bobo's gloved hand in the air before the referee had a chance to do so. "Why not?" Young mumbled later. "By then, everyone knew he was the champ."