The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1900-08-26
GOSSIP Of TIE Prize RING
HISTORY OF NEW YORK PUGDOM
WILL SHORTLY COME TO
A CLOSE
MANY FORTUNES MADE THERE
The Coming McCOy-COrbett Contest
Likely to Develop Into the
Real Thing Before 1t
Is Over.

CHICAGO, Aug. %.-(Special) 1.-THE
next six days will go down into the his
tory of pugdom as getaway week. in
New York. For close onto three years
the clubs and the fighters have thrived
and grown oppuient and fat under the
protectorate of a legislative enactment in
the Empire state. Now on the eve of it's
demise the loss of the really good thing
has hit the men most deeply interested
financial pleXus punch During the
term of its life the Horton law has made
lot Of money for certain New Workers.
again, it has enriched quite a number of
the lighters Probably the heaviest
winners, outside the controllers of the
hghtng Institutions, have been the heavy--
weights, Sharkey, Corbett, Jeffries. Fitz-
simmons and Rubin, in the order named:
the mlddleweights. Mccoy, Ryan, Walcott
ana West in like order, and McGover,
and Erne. 1t IS roughly estimated thar
TINS punch have cut up nearly three
quarters of a million dollars. The cluh
managers have pocketed about the same
another bank roll of like size has been
used in modifying the municipal and in
dlclal experts who were called upon 70
draw the fine line between boxing and
prize fighting.
The Horton law, not unlike most naae-
ures of its Xix, was drawn up in such
slip-shod fashion that it permit+ed 20
qulobIes and questions of police exnedi-
ency' which, in short were not over
looked In the doing out Of permits. I'm
UeI the provisions of the Horton law II
required something other thar the mere
compliance with its tenets to open IN
shop. The Tuckahoe club, of Westches-
Tel, and the Hawthorne club. of Buffalo
WI Dear witness to this. OF course,
tileIe were clubs without number through
the state operating, but nothing very nre-
tentious was ever successfully attemnt.
eu- The big guns of the game in Now
York ordered these minor organiza lions
10 content themselves with the smaller
Try OF the pug world and leave the cham
Plonshlp battles among the stars to the
GoIham concerns. Tuckahoe and HaW-
1IIoLne polh kicked over the traces and
1uckahoe and Hawthorne were silence5
1t cost the Buffalo experimenters s4o90
10 ma out that a fight between Corbett
and Mccoy, while legal in the Eastern
eId OF the state, was a violation of the
Horton law in the Western extreme. Mr.
Gray, of the Tuckahoe club, was told
that he might go to Coney Island and
Aoih ely 70 Watch the heavy
weights do battle but that bv M
stretch Of the legal imagination was sunh
a thing possible in the Borough Of the
Bronx. Both Hawthorne orr
mad club houses of it's own, both opera ted
under precisely the same laws which
governed the Gotham and Coney Island
clubs, and both Wore Il
enough to essay anything in the fight
line. yet the law passed at Albany was
not served with the same species of
interpretatio ton at either place as obtained
In the Dry Dollar Sullivan district.
The Twentieth Century club, under the
management of Jim Kennedy had signed
Terry McGovern and Frank Erne the
club forfeit, and the forfe,ts of the fight
ers were up, but at the eleventh hour
notice was served on the club that the
contest could not take place. 1his, after
an advance sale of $4,000. The fight
did not take place and when the men
shook hands there was $31 900 in the
house. After the fighters had been paid
their share of the purse the choice CO.
terie of sandbaggers who were seem
after the no-fght order was served on
Kennedy, received 40 per cent of the prof
Its for recOnsidering this order
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, undisguised, without
attempt at stealth or secrecy-has marked
the New York fighting game. Black
mailing has a deal to do with Its death
"
to the powers who had its life or death
in hand failed. The organization which
divided its earnings with the blackmau-
ers lived.
kid" Mccoy and Jim Corbett are to
meet next Friday night in New York for
s. per cent of the gross receipts The
men are to battle at catchweigths for
twenty-five rounds, and between the pair
wkA FTr~lok f.aV, a4,
task at guessing such as has not come
up since the famous pigs-in-clover puzzle
was foisted on a mentally racked commu-
nifty. At the outset no one was deceived
by the mock heroics of their stage quar-
rels. Even the apparently seduous train
ing campaigns of the two men has not
drawn the wool over anybody's eyes It
is beginning to dawn upon the promoters
of the battle and the principals them
selves, for the matter of that, that there
is likely to be bloody rioting in Madison
Square Garden next Friday night If any
attempt at a brother act' is made At
this late day the men themselves have
awakened to full realization of their po-
sition, and what is worrying them most
now is a hole through which to crawl
That both Corbett and Mccoy will split
the money in even chunks is patent
That the pair had an agreement as to
the conduct Of the battle proper is also
admitted. That each feared treachery
and that both now are bent on going in
and crossing the other at the first ia
vorable opportunity is the guess hazarded
by one who knows both principals well.
Corbett, schooled to all that is essential
to a well conducted fake, is to meet a
man who has never been outwitted to
any considerable extent in ring cunning
and trickery. 1t Is now thought that the
men will be compelled to go in and fight
with more than an ordinary show of ear
nestness, and that this, eventually, must
develop into the real thing. And at the
first opening to the liking Of either man
enough zeal will be shown to convince
the other that if there ever was any pre-
arrangement 1t is off, and the battle is to
go ahead on the square.
If the original agreement stands and II
the men persist in carrying out the plan
of boxing twenty-five rounds to a draw
or even to a hair-line decision 1t will take
a considerable number of Chief Devery's
blue coats to stay the mob at the ring
side. The feeling in this matter is very
high, and Corbett and Mccoy know this
AS to the merits OF the bout, If it goes
along on honest lines, I like Mccoy be-
cause Of his superior punching powers
1t is a question, too, if Corbett has much
Of a shade over Mccoy on the scientific
angle of the game. Again, Mccoy is the
gamer of the two. 1t has been amply
demonstrated that Corbett will not stand