The Alaska daily empire., 1918-04-30

Some men retire from their chosen field of endeavOr, and pass rom within the rays of the spotlight for all time. But not so with John l.. He loved the fight game as no oth- CT man loved it. Every big contest that was staged in America from the day that he became warrior until the day of his death, found him al the ringside. He was an enthusiast over boxing and one of the keenest judges of fighting men in the coun- trv-except where an Irish fighter was concerned.
 If ever was his belief that good two-fisted Irishman was the peer of any other style of battler. And be cause of that favoritism John L. sometimes went a bit awry in his estimates of Irish fighters. But, on the whole, John l.. knew a real fight CT when he saw one.
 The champion of champions" had no patience with the present day heavyweights Jess Willard never appealed to him as great fighter John l.. often classed Willard as "a joke" Willards lack of aggressive ness angered John l.. and the fact that Jess wasn't knocking out foes in the first or second round of each fight mystified him.
 "Why, if I'd had that fellows height and weight in my prime, I'd have taken on two fighters at the same time every night in the week and whipped both of 'em."
 And John l.. was about right!
 Ring methods of the present day angered John l..
 "They don't fight nowadays - all they do is hug each other" exclaimed John L. just short time before his death "The ring rules call for three minutes of fighting but about ninety-nine per cent. of the so-called fighters now defraud the public that pays to see 'em battle. They fight only about 30 seconds in each round; the other two and a half minutes are spent in hugging each other.
 "Clinching is unavoidable at times but this time of clinching dozen times in each round-well, that's cow ardice. Looks as if the boys were afraid to fight each other-afraid of getting hit And yet they call them selves fighters.
 "The fight game hasn't improved in a scientific way since 1892. in stead it seems to have gone back in that respect. The old-timers - the boys of my day and a dozen years afterward didn't have the benefit of teaching like the present day crop of fighters! They didn't have corps of high-class trainers nor the benefit of fully equipped gymnasiums Yet they were miles ahead of the fighters of the present time in skill, cleverness and endurance powers
 "Cauliflower ears are common now adays. There weren't many in my time. And the reason is the fighters of old didn't do any wild swinging. When they shot out a punch it was at a target-and no good fighter makes the ear a target. But now the fighters rush at the other, swing a wild one for the jaw and jump in- to a clinch, Rarely do they hit the jaw but those unaimed wallops often hang against an ear-and cauliflow- CT results"
 In one of the chapters in this story I gave an affirmative answer to the question: Was John l.. ever the heavyweight champion of the world ?" In looking through the clippings be- fore me, find that some years ago the same question was put to John Land he answered it in this way:
 q certainly was the heavyweight champion of the world. The title had passed from one man to another until it reached Paddy Ryan. He was the American champion without a doubt and in tracing down the worlds championships one finds that it be- longed to Joe Goss. Ryan whipped Goss-and that made Ryan the cham