Evening star., 1938-03-15
JESS FINE FIGHTER,
DEMPSEY ASSERTS
Other Ring Giants Decided
Fai|ures-Younger Baer
Victim of Size.
By GRANTLAND RICE.

and weighs 240 pounds, and a fellow
that big usually isn't impressive, ex-
cept to fight managers who seem to
be beguiled by size.
Fight managers scour the earth for
fighters and bob up every once in a
while with mammoths like the younger
Baer, Primo Carnera and Ray Impel-
lettiere. Only few years ago the late
William Muldoon talked very seri-
ously of forming a dreadnaught or
superheavyweight division, with a
championship of its own. But nothing
ever came of It.
Ring records bear out the generally
accepted notion that man feet tall
or thereabouts and weighing from l80
to 200 pounds is big enough to lick
anybody. Sullivan, Corbett, Jeffries,
johnson, Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling
and Louis fit snugly within those di-
mensions, while Fitzsimmons. one Of
the greatest of all heavyweights, was a
few pounds on the light side.
As a rule, when fellow is any
bigger than that, he is likely to be
cumbersome and muscle-bound. And,
strangely enough, easily hurt and
tempted to chuck it when the going
gets rough. It probably is part of
natures law of compensation that
gave rise to the expression, You can't
have everything"
Willard an Exception.
The eXception-in our time at
least-to the rule that great big buy
can't be very good fighter was Jess
Willard Jess wasn't great fighter,
strictly speaking He might not have
reached the heavyweight champion
ship If Luther Mccarthy, built in the
more accepted physical proportions,
hadn't been killed in the ring when
he seemed on the straight road to
the top of the heap.
But Jess was a better fighter than
many persons sbelieve-especially those
who never saw him. On that point
I offer the testimony of two men
qualified to speak for him. One was
Jack Curley, the other Jack Dempsey
To begin with, Willard was just
about as tall as Buddy Baer, but was
heavier by 20 pounds or so and was
cast much more ruggedly. He came
to the ring late, quitting his Kansas
farm when things had broken badly
for him and he was in desperate need
of money. They laughed at him in
the beginning because he was such
a clownish fellow, but he was deter
mined to get some of the money he had
heard they were paving to prize fight
ers, and he applied himself seriously
to the task of learning something
about the business.
In those early days, with affluence
a million miles away, he trained hard
and his condition, plus natural
toughness of jaw and body. made him
almost impervious to punishment.
Too Much for johnson.
He carried terrific right-hand up
percut. It was with this blow that he
knocked Bull Young down so hard in
q San Francisco ring that Young's
back was broken, which caused his
death in hospital the next day. He
waded through all the rest of the
white hopes and Curley picked him
as an opponent for Jack johnson be-
cause he figured Johnson couldn't hurt
him.
There have been lot of whispers
and some loud talk, too-about that
fight in Havana in which the title
passed to Willard, but Curley's very
plausible version of it was this:
johnson wasn't knocked out, but
he had gone about as far as he could.
Willard that day was the most mag
nifcently conditioned fighter I ever
saw, and johnson, who wasn't very
hard hitter, anyway, couldn't make an
impression on him. The fight was in
the 26th round, with 10 to go, since
it was scheduled for As rounds So
Jack probably decided that, while he
could get up, it wouldn't do him any
good, since, even if Willard didn't hit
him again, he couldn't possibly mud
die through 10 rounds more"
Dempsey's Slant on Jess.
Willard, as champion, became fat,
lazy and arrogant. He was scornful
of Dempsey, refusing to believe that
a man as small as that could come
even close to beating him. But Demp-
sey cracked his jaw, his right cheek
bone and some of his ribs, gave him
frightful beating, almost knocked him
out in the first round and reduced him
to bloody pulp in three rounds. Will
lard refused to come out for the fourth
round, thus being the first heavyweight
champion to surrender in his corner,
and was tagged as gutter.
Il don't want to sound as though I
. am Dragging" Dempsey said long after
the fight, "but there are few heavy
, weights that have seen who could
have beaten Willard. The truth OF
the matter is that probably couldn't
have beaten him either if he hadn't
thought was sucker. He wouldn't
listen to friends of his at Toledo who
tried to tell him something about me.
He trained badly and came into the
ring in poor condition.
He tried to hold me off with soft
tab, and the first time 1 hit him I
knocked him crazy, so that for the
rest of the round he didn't know where
he was. In spite of that, he came back
so strongly, especially in the third
round, that he almost tore my head
of with one of those uppercuts and I
was rapidly fighting myself out trying
to flatten him.
II was the happiest guy in America
when I saw he wasn't coming out for
the fourth round. The fight was get
ting to point where it was no pleas
ure for me, either"
So the big guy, although missing
greatness as a fighter, must have had
something. At least, he had more
than any Of the other diversified heavy
weights.
copyright, 1888. by the North American
Newspaper Alliance, Inc,