The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-09-11

with normal impulses can score
three cruel knockouts in one
night as Dempsey has DONE"
The correspondent, who signs him
self Ex-Pug, writes: MANY boxers I
know are swell kids. Several of
them are high school graduates and
went in for boxing to support fam
lilies. They got as much brains as
the next fellow, but fighting is their
business, SO they have to put their
feelings aside same as men who work
in slaughterhouses. If you ever met
them outside the ring, as you seem
to have, you know they're as human
as you and me.
"Take this Ross who is fighting
Canzoneri next Tuesday. His father
owned a delicatessen store and he
was murdered, so Barney went ahead
and he has been supporting his
mother and his brothers ever since.
From all you hear Canzoneri is also
peach of a little fellow"
I do not say that the boxer, start
ing from scratch, in inferior as
rule to the average youngster. But
all-consuming training grinds and
the rigorS of mercileSs competition
soon transform him into a vicious
automaton devoid of reactions we are
accustomed to considering as normal
Possibly that's going too far. I, too,
have known fighters who were
peaches of little fellows"
But either they quit the ring or drank
themselves into oblivion, or died of
"occupational diseases" like syphilis
or conclusion of the brain (Schaaf)
or signed off to become bouncers at
night clubs and company thugs at
coal mines. The period of awful let
down after fights usually has to be
filled by powerful and ruinous slim
ulants. Harry Greb, who was proba-
bly, the most perfect fighting mechan-
He needed less training for bouts
than any topnotcher in recent years.
He took it easy up till the very
moment of the initial gong, then he
became snarling beast, bent on
destruction. The stream of abuse
he poured into opponents ears
would alone be sufficient to stun
''Ex-Pug's" ordinary thigh school
graduate"
NO wonder after the fights Greb
~ plunged into an almost equally
intense round of street brawls, booze
and women. Immediate transition
into quiet suburban existence is
possible only for freaks like Sharkey.
Greb packed a hundred arenas with
oppressed truckdrivers and file clerks
bowling for blood, Greb enriched a
hundred promoters, Greb died around
the age of thirty, burned out, the
ideal of capitalist sport"
Canzoneri and Ross may be swell
kids" The fact that Barney is good
to his mother indicates nothing, of
course. Every big shot gangster I
know is grand family man after
hours. Hitler is probably a perfect
darling to his boy friends. Jimmy
Walker spends over hundred dol
lars for one of Betty's nighties. Still,
Tuesdays headliners may be two
swell kids.
But I have before me two close
ups of the boys from Sundays Her
ald-Tribune. Look at Ross. He's
been fighting only a few years and
there are still glints of intelligence
in his brown eyes. He's at his peak,
his body is clean and slender, his
face comparatively unmarked. To
be sure, the accompanying interview
carries number of statements which
make you dubious about the boys
sharpness. For one, he remarks
that, fighting as an amateur for sew
eral years, II only brought home ten
twenty, maybe fifty dollars at q
time" Apparently" comments the
reporter, "he considered himself an
amateur until he was paid off ir
three figures"
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