The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-12-23
Fight Business
 In Rough Shoals h Gotham Rings
By Vic
By wEsTBROOK PEGLER

,NLeased Wire to The ASc-Herald)
 NEW YORK, Dec. 22.-The boxing business, which is the Fred Fulton of local politics in all parts of the land probably will receive another swing to the chin at the next session of the New York legislature. NNheth- CT the swing will be hard enough to knock the boxing business for an- other long slumber depends on var1- ous political questions too knotty for the simple mind of the boxing trade and also on the conduct of the profess sion in the meantime.
 There seems to be wild alarm in the gathering places of the 15,000 boxers, managers, promoters sec onds and trainers. There is frantic perturbation, too among miscellane- ols low forms of life which thrive when boxing is on it's feet but lan- guish when it is down. The frenzy would seem. however, to be overdone because any philosophical addict Of the fight profession, with any faith at all in the vitality of the oldest so-called sport, must know that the boxing business needs to be knocked out once in a while for it's own good
 Like Fred Fulton and Joe Beckett, the boxing business can go without being knocked out just so long. Then, | if someone doesn't knock It flat, it begins to be nasty and put bread crumbs in peoples beds.
 On the surface, the misconduct of the fight business would seem to con- sist of some fragrant decisions rem dered in the recent Tunney -Greb, | Shl -Vincentini and Dundee Bernstein fights. None of the de- cisions was bad enough to be crimi- nal. In fact it was a remarkable feat of forbearance on the part Of the judges in the Dundee Bernstein bout that they didn't call the neaitn department and say: Something is aromatic about this fight; please come and take them away"
 They didn't say Dundee made any better fight than Bernstein. What they really meant by their decision was that Dundee was slightly less terrible than the author of the most ear-splitting sqlawk that has dis turbed New York since Jack Rose squealed on the gunmen.
 The howls over these decisions. have directed attention, however, to some more serious weak spots in the anatomy of the fight business. There is the Dempsey Wills matter. Harry Wills was challenger for Jack
 Dempsey long before Luis Angelo Firpo ever had his name in the papers. He stood high above Tommy Gibbons in the professional way. Governors ia Albany handled the | mixed bout" situation with tongs | however. and Dempsey fought the | foreigner and then met Gibbons, but never gave Wills the courtesy of a punch in the nose. Wills and his | friends are very sensitive and when man refuses to punch Harry on the nose he takes umbrage in prodigious quantities. The matter of "discrimi nation" against Wills is most impor- | tant when it is considered that there are many negro votes.
 1 Further. there is the gambling side of the business, and the almost | total monopoly that has been given | to Tex Rickard in New York city which has enriched MT. Rickard ano his packers but which has reduced
 the profits of the smaller promoters in due proportion.
 | There have probably been some crooked decisions in the thousands of bouts promoted in New York city in three years but most of the verdicts have been honest. if not overwhelm
 ngly popular with the packers of the l losers.
 Only in one respect is the move to
 knock out boxing an appalling ma easy money for large school of box CTS and more or less human appur- tenances of the boxing business who | like royalty, have never learned tc
 work. They. of course, would starve
 and a most unsanitary condition would have to be met if they shoulo crawl off into their obscure halnts and go into dissolution.