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Show Dempsey on the Fight Game JACK DEMPSEY was talking about the fight game which he now figures is rapidly going to seed and weed. "In the first place," Dempsey said, "the game, so far as the contestants con-testants are concerned, is only for roughnecks, for tough young fellows. fel-lows. It has no I - Graniland Rice place for nice people. peo-ple. The real fighter fight-er is a street fighter fight-er because he likes to fight. He likes brawls. From the street he moves to some small boxing club and if he is good, he begins to move up. "They have killed off the smaller small-er clubs today. There is no place for the street fighter to go, since he isn't ready for the bigger clubs. "I don't think," Jack said "that you and I are going to see another good heavyweight. It will be many years before another good one comes along. They seem to be getting worse in place of getting better. "When I came up there were a lot of little clubs where you could fight for $10 or less. But you kept learning something. There were a lot of fellows around then who could either box or punch. In one fight I was knocked down nine times before I won. There are not enough fellows who are hungry today. Most of them can pick up $80 to $90 a week. You can't go hungry on that. I couldn't tell you how many times l never naa a aui-lar aui-lar or even a half dollar. And there were no good jobs around. A hungry fighter will fight twice as hard as one well fed. "The middleweight crop Is good," Jack continued. "They should get some action from LaMotta, Graziano, Villemain, Robinson and several others. This Is a pretty fair division. But when you talk about heavyweights heavy-weights you are seemingly talking talk-ing about an entirely different differ-ent group of fighters. They won't train and they won't learn. They get punch drunk before they learn how to fight. It's a funny situation. There are supposed to be 2,500,000,000 people in the world. If there were Just one good heavyweight heavy-weight in this bunch of people he could make $1,000,000 easy. But there isn't a heavyweight fighter not a good one In the lot. Joe Louis is too old and Ezzard Charles is too small and too careful." The old Manassa Mauler is still In fine health. He isn't so old at that. He moves along with a free-swinging free-swinging stride and usually looks to be in a hurry. He is still ref-ereeing ref-ereeing wrestling and boxing matches and keeping busy one way or another. What a harvest a 22-year-old Dempsey could reap today to-day as much as he wanted to carry car-ry away. Looking Back at Some Bowls Taking a fairly long look forward, for-ward, it was Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma Okla-homa Sooners who proved to be the top of all bowl entries. Oklahoma deserved equal rating with Notre Dame and Army this last fall and crushing L.S.U., 35 to 0, confirmed its high ranking promotion. For after all, L.S.U. had whipped North Carolina, Rice and Tulane, three conference champions. Oklahoma starts 1950 with 21 straight. But the Sooners lose more than a few stars, including includ-ing some high grade backs and star linemen, so Wilkinson can hardly expect to keep his 1949 pace. Just when the West coast is going go-ing to break up Midwest domination is anybody's hazy guess. It will be interesting to see whether the Big Ten and the Far West will renew the fading five-year contract on the same basis. It is well known that the Far West wants only the two champions to meet every year. The Big Ten still wants the three-year three-year clause inserted. The contract has another year to run. One of the original ideas of the Big Ten entry into the bowl list was to prevent the South from cleaning up at the Rose Bowl year after year. This idea failed to work on New Year's day when North Carolina, ' L.S.U., Rice and Kentucky Ken-tucky all took away large bags packed with gold. North Carolina carried home over $120,000. Ohio State and California got littl mon-y mon-y comparatively. The Giants of 1950 Being a smart baseball man, Leo Durocher is indulging himself in no idle dreams, about hii pitching pitch-ing selection for the next world series. Not with the Dodgers, Cardinals, Phillies and Bravs barring bar-ring the road. "We've lost a little of our punch," Leo says, "but after all, the Giants were not so hot when they were breaking all past home run records. rec-ords. We'll have much strongei defense." |