Evening star., 1937-02-19
RATESAbOVE TH|L
FANS THERE CLAIM
Man Facing Risko Tonight
Reminds Them of Their
Earlier Ring Greats.
BY GRANTLAND RICE.
OS ANGELES, February 19.-
Fight fans up and down the
West Coast will be listening in

WCSI SOdSL Will Uc lLotSlllllS
attentively when Freddy Steele
fights Babe Risko in New York tonight,
because out here they think very well
of Steele and are impatient of the
rival claim of the Frenchman, Marcel
Thil, to the world middleweight title.
Out here Steele is the world cham
pion-for all the dough from San
Diego to Seattle.
Maybe one of the things they like
best about Steele is that he is real
coast product-born and reared in
Tacoma, where they knew him as a
high school base ball and foot ball
player before he turned to fighting as
profession. The coast always is GS
proud of its fighters as it is of its
weather (this Winters weather not in
cluded), but beneath the pride it has
taken in some of its outstanding ring
performers lurked the irking fact that
they weren't natives of this colorful
strip of the country, but merely were
native sons by adoption.
Go All Way on Steele.
JAMES j. JEFFRIES, for instance,
was born in Carroll, Ohio, and
Jimmy McLarnin in Ireland, and Max
Baer in Omaha, Nebr. In fact, the
only coast fighter to grab title in
recent years who was born out here
was Young Corbett Sd, who held the
welterweight championship briefly and
was relieved of it by McLarnin.
But they can go all the way on
Steele, and, from what they tell me,
guess they're justified in being proud
of him. They've seen lot of him be-
cause, while he has been campaigning
for five years, he had all his fights on
the coast until a month or so ago,
when he stopped off at Milwaukee on
his way to New York to fight Gorilla
Jones. He went swinging up and down
the line-Tacoma, Seattle, San Fran
cisco, Los Angeles, San Diego-beating
the best the Coast had to offer and
the best that could be brought out here
for him.
Remindful of Old Days.
TT TAKES the older fans out here
back to the days when the coast
towns, with special emphasis on San
Francisco. turned out fighters to lick
the world-or come close to it. James
j. Corbett, who brought John L. Sulli-
van crashing down and revolutionized
the sport Of boxing-Abe Attell, clev-
crest American featherweight who
ever lived, and exceeded in clevernesS
only by one man he ever met, the
astonishing little Welshman, Jem
Driscoll-Jimmy Britt, top-fight
lightweight in the days when Joe
Cans ruled the roost-Eddie Hanlon,
who was just kid when he was
fighting the best featherweights and
lightweights in the country-the
almost fabulous Aurelio Herrera, the
Mexican lightweight who trained on
straight rye and black cigars, could
hit like middleweight, and once
almost split Bat Nelson's skull with
a punch-Willie Ritchie, who wrested
the lightweight title from Ad VOL
gast-Joe Choynski, the wiry heavy
weight who gave away 20 or 80 pounds
to some of his opponents and battered
the daylights out of most of them.
Some great fighters have ranged up
and down this coast, making their
regulations in savage fights and draw
ing the crowds. Fellows like Stanley
Ketchel and Jack Dempsey and Bob
FitZsimmonS and Tom Sharkey, who
dropped in and started punching
Ketchel, from Grand Rapids, by way
of the copper mines of Montana
Dempsey, from Manassa, Colo-Fitz-
simmons, from Cornwall, England, by
way of New Zealand-Sharkey off a
battle wagon in the Pacific Fleet.
These fighters and others. who
swarmed in here when California was
the flstic center of the world and the
biggest promoters were Uncle Tom
McCarey and Sunshine Jim Coffroth,
won the crowds and held them and
were heavily backed wherever they
fought.
A MiddIeweight Revival.
RUT the big thrill, of course, always
is inspired by the homebred.
Steeles rise has been especially well
come, because for some years the mid
dleweight title has been passed around
by some very inferior fighters, with
the result that interest in the middle
weights fell off badly. where once
they ranked right behind the heavy
weights and lightweights. Now the
division is being revived. Granted
there are some good men among the
middleweights, it is easy to like them
because they are big enough to hit
hard and small enough to be fast.
They have provided many great fights
and developed some great fighters
like the original Jack Dempsey and
Ketchel and Ketchels arch rival Billy
Papke, the Illinois Thunderbolt.
Steele apparently has it in him to
capture some of the lost glory of the
middleweights. He won the American
title from Risko and he not only beat
Vince Dundee, but in the process broke