Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-13

he can box with any of the clever boys
 and he squarely outpointed Abe Attell
 in long fight, which in itself amounts to something. Any man who is rangy and fairly strong and can box enough 1 to outpoint Abe Attell will surely hand Bat Nelson lot of things in twenty l rounds and the worst of it. is that If | Freddy does this the English referee | will give the decision to Welsh and he will be entitled to call himself the 1 lightweight champion of the world Of l course Nelson would howl at this. Nel- son has come to regard himself as a sort of a law unto himself. Nelson believes, and a lot of other people be- 1 lieve it, too, that until he is knocked cold in the ring nothing else matters
 he's the champion just the same We all know that Nelson is not
 hard man to outpoint, but we know
 also that he is a mighty tough young
 man to lick. and until somebody con meets with the point of his vulcaniZed jaw for the big count we are likely to hold lightly any small thing like an outpointing.
 But what will happen if Welsh
 fights Nelson? Welsh is a sturdy youth
 who eats nothing but vegetables. He
 Nelson and he has more of the snap
 and dash of youth left in his body. It
 IS almost a foregone conclusion that
 for twenty rounds he will bes able to
 Nelson starts and outpoint Nelson
 throughout. The English people, who
 do not care for the Nelson style of
 fghting-it isn't much to look at-Wiu
 surely hail Welsh as the worlds cham
 pion if he outboxeS Bat and then we
 shall have two champions, for Bat will
 come back to this country breathing
 fire from both battered nostriIs. He
 wouldn't care if all the English ref
 erees in the world, or even King Ed
 ward the Seventh, should decide that Welsh won the worlds championship. To get Nelson's goat you've got to lick him and he never regards himself as licked until he can't get on his feet any more.
 There is a slight suspicion that Bat isn't the demon he was. When old Joe Cans made his last metropolitan appearance the wise boys went away from the ringside remarking:
 IS this the Joe Cans that Nelson licked? Well, no wonder" The gen. eral consensus of opinion was that the morgue wagon was about to back up and stop for Joseph. Certainly his fight with Jabez White was one of the saddest affairs ever seen in the big league. The Cans of two years before would have rocked Jabe to sleep with one nice little right cross on the chin. many as had previously been suspect ed
 Speaking man up tree, don't know about Nelson I heard many sad tales about him shortly after the Gold | held fight. They said that Bat was i physical wreck who couldn't stand up i straight when he got out of bed in the | morning. They said his back had | been affected; that his stomach was in | such shape that it would no longer re- | tain solid food;, that his liver was a | melancholy ruiTA and his kidneys ev- | erything they should not be-
 And then Bat came back and fought ] some slashing fights. Several wise | men have been bunked into ordering | floral pillows for the Durable Dane. as | Bill Naughton dubbed him. but these | floral pillows have withered and died ! and Bat is still here, begging along in the same old way and meditating fur ther atrocities on the English language
 Hogan used to say that a man was never a dead one until his ashes were in the urn. Hogan never knew Bat Nelson, but if he had he would have l added and sometimes not even then"
 We've had Bat on the verge of total | collapse so many times and so many hstic obituaries have been written and | never printed that we are beginning to wonder if there is ever going to be an end to this phenomenon. Certainly he is the greatest little stayer of modern times and the Queensberry public will never credit anything against Bat but a knockout-and it won't credit that until the moving pictures come around