The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-06-11
BURNS-LANGFoRD MILL.
Warm Things Promised For Fight
Fans When These Two Heavlee
Meet In Ring.

Tommy Burns and Sam Langford are
at last to Aght. The muss Will OCCUR
in California on Sept. 5. Billy McCar-
ney landed the match for the Metropo-
lis club. Burns is to receive a bonus
of 5000 for cabling his acceptance from
Australia The winner of the forty-five
round bout will get $4,000, while the
loser must be content with $40, 900.
Hugh Mcintosh of Australia has tried
to lure Langford across the Pacific with
an offer of $4,000 certainty to box
Burns in Sydney in June, but Wood
man Is not in love with the scheme.
For one thing he does not want to miss
the Jeffries-Johnson fight. Anyhow, he
sent a reply that If Mcintosh offered a
substantial purse with the customary
winners and losers end Langford
would consider the proposition.
When they get together it will be an
event that will rank second in impor-
lance only to the Jeffries- johnson
fight.
What could Burns do to offset Lang
fords uppercuts? a fight fan asked the
other day. Well, Tommy has at least
one good punch even If it may not
quite balance the scales Whoever
saw Burns and O'Brien in their first
fight in Los Angeles will remember the
right cross counter with which Burns
caught O'Brien in the fifth round. It
was as we'll timed punch as ever
rinssider gazed upon, and it was only
O'Brien's extreme thickness IN the line
of ducking and lodging that kept him
out of harms way for the remainder
of the round and enabled him to con-
tinue fighting on a more defensive
basis.
Burns defeated Squires with the same
II ind Of a Wa
Australian came within striking dis
lance, timed his man to a dot and
brought him to the floor with a crack
that sounded like pistol shot 1t took
three more of the same kind to settle
Squires completely.
Burns is one of the best timers
among modern ringmen, and II his
right cross and Langford's uppercut
started at the same instant 1t would
be toss up which would annex the
long end of the purse.
But is Burns as dangerous a man as
formerly7 There is grave doubt about
1t. His go in Australia with johnson
was a heartbreaking one for Burns.
and he took terrible beating. 1t has
been shown over and over again that
punishment slows a man up more than
the passage of years. Burns laid off
fifteen months after his experience with
johnson and then took on Bill Lang. a
rising young Australian heavyweight.
On a prior occasion Burns defeated
Lang in six rounds, but this last time
the bout went the full twenty, and
there was much dissatisfaction when
the referee decided in Burns favor.
Burns, they say, did very we'll for
! about ten rounds and then 1oafed.
! A day later news came that Lang
| had broken his hand in the ninth
round, and this further discounted
| Burns victory. Now, half the broken
hands we hear about when fights are
over are merely injuries of more or less
trivial nature; but. assuming that Lang
injured his hand sufficiently to prevent
him having free use of it, it looks as
though the fates were kind to Tommy
Burns, the argument being, of course.
| that If both his hands had remained
| intact Lang would have defeated the
| Canadian.