The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-21
PROHIBITION HAS ROBBED BOXING OF GREAT CEREMONY
No Longer Do Ring MoguIs Stage Inspiring Rites On
 Signing
By wESTBROOK PEGLER Leased Wire to The AEe-HeraId)

NEW YORK, July 2O.-Of prohibi- tion the men in the prize fight busi- ness know very little, having had slight experience if any at all in the same, It may be a pretty good thing. because some of the better known managers have been doing very we'll with speakeasies and truck deliveries of case goods for the last four years. And then, again, it may not be such a happy phenomenon after all. because of what it has done to the cere- mony of signing prize-fight articles.
 The signing of articles used to be an enormously ceremonious rite, in- cluding coronation, with sporting high priests present in faTn anklets. brown derbies, striped suits, yellow oVercoats and gloves of rum brown compleXions. Mingling with them as privy members the sporting house. hold would be champagne agents from along Broadway; gamblers, shareholders and ex-champicns, the last-mentioned a little seedy and run down as rule by comparison with the others.
 There would be "reminiscences and booming merriment, as little knots of these people got together in some big room and talked for perhaps an hour before the ceremony. Newspaper men got lots of fine copy by adjust ing their wave lengtrs to these con versations, and young kids, new to the writing business, could dash out copy for weeks afterward with the deep tone of old authority on fights that were fought when their daddies were just in rompers. The scenarios of some classic fiction have been picked up that way
 How It Was Done.
 At one end of the room, usually the ballroom of a big hotel, under o1,op a1i 6a of of tai, there would be long table with pens and ink on it, and glasses and big silver bowls of cracked ice, and with a dozen chairs arranged at the rear side near the wall.
 Presently the challenger would come shouldering through the crowd, looking like a dock walloper in dock walloper's idea of the sort of clothes the swells on the avenue were wearing. Cheers now for the challenger and sounds as of corks popping.
 After due delay, the champion would walk in, shake hands with the challenger and take chair beside him at the center of the table. The promoter would then edge in his chair between theirs and Abe Attell would climb on window ledge somewhere behind them and project into the picture the most astonishing nose that ever preceded a man through life. The managers, stake holders, wine agents and "personal friends" would take the rest of the chairs. both boxers would take pens and draw little doo-dads on the pa pers, the real articles having been signed hours before, and at that in- stant. the flashlights would go off. catching all present with their eyes, shut and their mouths open.
 A Beautiful Ceremony.
 Them one and all would drink the rest of the champagne. There would he some arguments and few friend lv fights. Abe Attell would rattle the bones temptingly in his hand. It was a beautiful ceremony.
 The signing of articles by Jeffries and Johnson and by Willard and Moran were the last great exercises of the kind in these parts. Now the rites are forgotten. There is signing of articles. All is legal and commercial and very dull.
 There was some sham about the signing by Dempsey and Carpenter, but the wine agents were gone and their wine with them Abe Attell was in wrong a the time because of the 1919 world series business, and the house detective gave him a toss when he tried to come in.
 The Dempsey Gibbons agreement was signed in a Chicago hotel bath room. Perhaps the lads had pint with then but more likely they dfdn't for managers now want to keep their heads clear to read any riding clauses that may have been dropped into documents involving hundreds of thousands
 O O O
 Signed In Ferry House.
 The DempseyWillard fight articles were signed in a ferry house on the Jersey shore of the Hudson river be- cause fighting wal illegal in New York and the contracts would not