The Alaska citizen., 1915-09-06

has the IlGht To name Ills Su'Cts sor. A championship isn't a thiu- It's got 10 be won in a fair fighf and by a knockout.
 Decisions shouldn't go in a cham rionship fight There's too mucr room in them for crooked work Also too much room for a referee, opinion.
 That's why l say that Jack John son was never a real champion until he whipped Jim Jeffries ir 1910. He called himself champion after defeating Tommy Burns ir 19oS but there never was any ground for the claim.
 To begin with, Jim Jeffries had no right to hand his title over to Marvin Hart This came about af ter Jeff's laughable fight with Jack Munroe the big Butte miner that he knocked out in two rounds. Be cause there were no good men in sight the champion announced his retirement
 JEFF GAVE IT OVER.
 i year later he refereed a fight between Marvin Hart and Jack Root. The big Louisville plumber knocked Hart out in twelve rounds and Jeff turned the championship over to him Even if Hart had been made of championship stuff. Jeff had no right to give him the title
 But Hart's general dubbiness made the whole thing look bad. The best fight in his record was twenty round decision over Jack Johnson, who was then looked on as sec ond rater. Most of the people he whipped were middleweights and a man named Bill Hanrahan had knocked him out in one round,
 If Jeff wanted to retire, the cham pionship should have stayed vacant until a number of elimination con tests had brought the best man to the top. Unless I'm whipped be fore. l mean to quit the ring in i've years and when I do the rest of the fellows will have to fight among themselves for my shoes.
 Hart didn't do much with Jeffs gift In 1906 he met Tommy Burns, 2 little fellow who stood head and shoulders under him. There was 70 knockout, but Burns got the dtti- slCu by beating the life out of he Ilumber.
 THEN BURNS TOOK TITLE.
 Sc Buns called himself the cham pion then although the whole his tory of the ring makes it plain that a championship changes only by a clean knockout. Burns was whip ped by Johnson, and then Johnson called himself the champion of he world
 While Jem Belcher was champion of England in 1883, he lost one of his eyes while playing game call ed racquets. On account of it he re tired from the ring. and put his title down to be fought for
 The two best men left in the ring Were Joe Berks and Hen Pearce, the famous Game Chicken, The two men met twice, and each time Pearce handed the big butcher an awful beating At that he laid no claim to the championship until he had also whipped Spray, Carte and Gully, who, by the way, won the championship later on.
 When he had proved himself. and when his challenge did not meet with any takers, the sporting writers of the day agreed that he had won the right to be called champion Of England.
 Jim Belcher, however. was a good deal like Jeffries. A lot of people got after him to enter the ring again, and they bounded him until he thought that he owed it to his country to fight the Game Chicken
 He had been out of the ring two years, during which time he had not taken care of himself. Also he had only one eye. But he felt SC sure of victory that he named 800 guineas ($2,5OO) as the stake for Pearce to cover.
 The fight was pulled off near Duncaster, about 15O miles from London. A ring twenty feet square was put up and then inclosed in a fortyfoot ring. This second bar rier was to keep the crowd back from the fighters, for it was some times the case that the packers Of a man would cut the ropes when it looked as if he would lose.
 The accounts of the fight show that it was some desperate battle, although it lasted only thirty-five minutes. Belcher fought with won derful courage, but the blind eye made him miss many blows and also take a good many that he ought to have let slip by.
 BELCHER DRAWS BLOOD.