The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-10-29

of the better boys.
 Nowadays pugilistic champions will not risk their titles unless their op- ponents deposit million dollars and guarantee to make a specified weight at certain minute. They figure it down to very fine points. But there was time, within the memory of the older fans, when boxers weren't so darn particular, and were willing to take a chance. Two of these game lads were George Lavigne, the Sag inaw Kid" and Joe Walcott, the Barbados Demon" They were little sawed-off runts in physique, but either of them would have fought a six-foot heavyweight. As a matter of fact, Walcott did do just that when he met the great Joe Choynski in a New York ring in 1900-and what's more, the diminutive black stopped his man in seven rounds. Choynski was a fraction of an inch short of six feet while Joe the Giant Killer stood only an inch and half over five feet
 A fight between two such game lads as the French-Canadian and the
 
 full of thrills-and it certainly was Just 21 years ago today, Oct. 29, 1897, the sports had their last opportunity to see these two sawed-off gladiators in the ring. The fight was staged in San Francisco, and Lavigne, who was then lightweight champion, won i'll a dozen rounds. While this battle was full of interest, it lacked the ginger of the earlier meeting between La vigne and Walcott at Maspeth, N. Y, in 1895. Old time sports will tell you i that that was the greatest fight in the world. For. 15 rounds the little fel- i lows banged away at each other, l hammer and tongs, and in the e2d it was called a draw. It was generally l conceded that Lavigne had the shade on his dusky opponent.
 Walcott challenged all the promi- nent heavyweights of the day, includ- | ing Fizsimmons and Tom Sharkey, but the whole bunch side-stepped the stunted little darkey. Of course, Joe 1 couldn't have licked such men as | Fitz and Sharkey, but he certainly would have, made them extend them selves.
 When Kid Lavigne went to Eng 1 land to fight Dick Burge for the light weight championship of the world, in 1 1896, he again took on a man several sizes larger than himself. Jack Me Auliffe had repeatedly refused to meet Burge, owing to a difference over weight, but that didn't bother little ] Lavigne.
 | When Lavigne, who looked like a kewpie, crawled through the ropes at | the National Sporting Club of London [ on the night of his bout with Burge, the British fans could hardly restrain their mirth. Burge lowered head and shoulders over the little Canadian. The British champion had been a five to one fayorite before then, but when the two were in the ring the disparity seemed so great that Lavigne looked | like a 100 to 1 shot. But Lav1gne won! You could have knocked those London fans over with feather.
 He didn't have any easy time of 1t, for Burge was a sure-enough fighter, and not slap artist. On one or two occasions, in fact, he rocked Lavigne with blows that looked like sleep punches. But the Saginaw Kid only shook his head and bored in. The end came when Lavigne put across a knockout in the 17th round, and the ancient edifce rung with cheers for his valor. The British sports showed ] themselves good losers, and several of