The Calumet news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 1907-1938, 1910-11-25
FEW GOOD BOXERS
AT PRESENT TIME
SCARCITY OF GOOD HEAVY,
WEIGHT FIGHTERS is MOST
MARKED. JOHNSON ONLY
CLASSY MAN.

II is doubtful IL i'm the whole his
tory of the ring there has ever been
such a scarcity of really good pro-
fessional boxers. In the heavyweight
class. outside of Jack Johnson, the
rest Of the so-called fighters are jokes
end the big Negro could probably whip
Sandy Ferguson, AL Kaufman, Jim
Jim Stewart. Con O'Kelly and any
others who may be overlooked in this
classification inside of 20 rounds il
they could be induced to meet him and
he was fighting on the level, for in a
fight where he was really trying, il Is
good betting that none of these men
would last over 10 rounds, and some
of them would not last over two. II
any good, husky young fellow was 10
come along now who would have even
the slightest chance of beating the big
Texas Negro the money he could make
would be fearful to think of, and,
considering this fact, it is very diff
cult to understand why some of the
big fellows who are playing college
football for a small salary and their
expenses, or some of the big husllies
who are on professional baseball
teams, should not get wise to the box
ing game and take a chance at it.
The stigma against the professional
boxer, is not any greater than it is
against the paid college football play
or. The chances of injury are not any
greater, or the list of deaths and seri-
Gus injuries in the ring are trifing
as compared with the slaughter of the
college football field or the baseball
diamond on the other hand the re-
Enumeration from boxing is many
times greater.
Big Money in Boxing.
The professional boxer, with any
kind OF a reputation can earn more
i'm one six-round contest than the coll
lege football player will earn in a
whole season, and the boxer can feel
in his conscience that he is on the
level and not acting the hypocrite.
one rather queer thing in this con-
nection is the fact that while practice
ally none of the professional baseball
players can be induced to go into the
ring under any consideration, they
are ready to fight with bare fists on
the slightest provocation.
Since the death of Stanley Ketchel,
there has been considerable talk re-
garding who was to succeed him as
the title-holder of that class. And this
calls attention to the fact that there Is
almost as great a scarcity of good
middleweights as there is of crack
heavyweight fighters. Taking such
men as Billy Papke. Leo Caponi, VIII
lie Lewis, Harry Lewis, Frank Mantell
and Jack Sullivan, there is not one
really good man i'm the lot. Tommy
Ryan in his good days would have had
little difficulty in cleaning up the
whole bunch of them, one after the
other, for, while Ryan could probably
hit harder than any of these so-called
middleweights, he was I'm addition a
remarkably clever boxer, and 1t is not
going out of the road to say that none
of the men mentioned above possess
any more knowledge of the manly art
than the law allows. Several of these
fellows have been passing as welter-
weights, although when 1t came to
showdown they could not scale better
than $50 pounds, and several of them
were even a great deal heavier than
that