The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-06-23
VILLA WILL HAVE
 MANY OPPONENTS GOING FOR TITLE
Many Good FIyWeights To Give Champion Plenty
 Of Action
By WESTBROOI2 PEGLER ronsod Wire fO The ARe-Hcrnld.

Ueased Wire to The Age-Hernld.)
 NEW YORK, June -22.-Pancho brown overall complexion to hold a prize ring title, will find many pallid little lads to dispute his sway and give him a harder, though never more courageous fight for it than Jimmy Wilde offered in losing the same to the Filipino.
 Frankie Genaro, American born, 1T New York city is America, of Italian parents, is a square-built little scrap per who wore the starry shield on his gym shirt while flinging gloves in the faces of Europe's best anna teur flyweights at the Antwerp Olympic games in 1920.
 Genaro since hearkening to- the jingle of commercalism, has flung many gloves against the doughnut- | colored forehead of the Filipino, the | only zone of Pancho's version that Is open to thrust when he IS adVanc- | ing with the stealthy creep of pan ther, holding his arms folded before his face. Genaro has beaten him thrice but the last time he did 1t, and | the time he won the odd-siZe title known as the American flyweight championship, most of the rins- side clientele thought Pancho at least had whipped Genaro on points. There | fore, although Genaro got the Amer | ican championship. Villa was chosen to fight Wilde for the world cham pionship which Is the only real championship in any class.
 Two PhiIadelphians.
 | There are a couple of little known flyweights boxing around Philadei- rhia. one of whom gave Pancho an exuberent smashing and earned draw with him in a no-decision 1lght there recently. New Orleans IS shlrhns sweet music about an adolescent as sassin named Al Pettingil Any good flyweight with an appetite for trou- ble, and with strong knees and puhch of like quality, can give Pancno d fipht. as the second rate flyWe1ghtS | have demonstrated, Tn many oA 'he Filipino's bouts.
 The Cory Mess that Villa made or l Jimmy Wilde may have given the | impression that Villa is finishing i battler in the ring, but his recoro bellies it. In Wilde he slmpiS S,,aa nnu the good luck to catch an old cham . | pion who had nothing left but the instinct. and Genaro or Pettingll might have been champion this day had either been lucky enough to get the match.
 Fought 80 Bttles. II, Villa has had S9 fights with all sorts of little brawlers from the hopeless fourth raters to the flashy | aSpirantS who Will now pe pia uoiii {, him with challenges. He has stopped only r of them. He came to New York from the Philippines little | more than year ago ana was dropped into some of the small clubs where his grace of motion. oeau- | tiful show to witness. and his Tar
 fetched heavy slams which alaways
 draw blood made him box-offlce
 fighter from the beginning.
 His first big match was lo-
 rounder with T wizened and muti- lated bantam handy man known as
 sammy Cohen who went 10 rounds 1 and. although whipped, was not in
 much. danger of being put away. Be-
 ing such a Babe Ruth at the Turn stiles, Pancho got the match with
 Johnny Buff when that aged little
 Jerseyman, having lost his bantam
 weight championship of the world suddenly discovered that he still held
 the American flyweight title. Burr
 was all through as lighter so ne exacted the highest guarantee he
 could get and took on Vliia who took about 10 rounds to stop him.
 These little fellows called fly
 weights nowadays would have been
 known as bantams and would have
 had to fight men weighing up to
 I1S hounds under the old scheme of
 weirhts and classifications. Wilde
 was the first real flyweight cham
 pion of the world. the class being
 evolved to make the world safer for
 the tiniest mites when the bantams
 growing bigger. hunched their
 weight figure forward to 122 pounds
 and more.