| OCR Text |
Show ! ! Sporting Life. ' 1 1 INCIDENT TO THE CONTEST AT COLMA. i It! The men are in Britt's corner with Nelson ' i crowding Jimmy so close that he is almost against j J i the ropes.. Britt is fighting desperately, and in an ' ' j p attempt to get away starts a vicious right to the 0i ' jaw of the Dane, but the blow falls short. In a j : twinkling that awful left that had worried the ; J Californian every inch of the way, shot to his I'M jaw, followed in an instant by Nelson's right on ;!''(' the other side, and Britt sank in a heap, and ' j j rolled over helpless, while Graney counted off ' nf f the fatal seconds, j i I ; For a moment the breathless thousands about j ! ; . the ringside seemed stunned, and then a mighty ! J j j ' i roar thundered a greeting to the greatest man in j , 1 1 j f his class, and everyone joined in the tumult, for ; i i , there was not a man who witnessed that battle of i battles not even among the delirious mob that i had hissed the Dane when he entered the squared j j j I circle who was not willing to give his mete of I jf, praise for what had been accomplished, and the I; S' manner of the accomplishment. Ill By now the fight is history, and the story of ,1 it has been read by everyone who has watched the 1 1 career of the Hegcwisch lad and that of the man j : whom he defeated, but a few of the incidents at- j I tendant upon the great contest may prove of in- j; -1 terest to the local admirers of the sport. 1 ! Two gamer men than Battling Nelson and j James Edward Britt never stepped into the ring i ; and it would be impossible to crowd more real , f S ' fighting than that witnessed in the Colma contest ' U , into an equal number of rounds, ojij 1 After the battle Britt stated that he had made ,p a mistake in mixing matters so much, but even W. W. Naughton, the dean of sporting writers, ! I ' L and always the champion of his friend Jimmy Britt, stated that the better man won, and that Nelson can whip the native son any time in a finish fight There isn't a man who sat within that Colma enclosure on Saturday who does not share that opinion. Just how Britt could keep from mixing, in that fight, was hard to see, for the Dane forced the battle in every round, whether the round was his or his opponant's, always ready and willing to take three blows for every one he gave, boring in, in the clinches, and doing terrible execution whenever his left was free enough to hook to the jaw. And Nelson is more than the Durable Dane since he administered the dreamland punch to Spider Welch at the Salt Palace a little over a year ago. He is far more clever, and' didn't take all the punishment offered. Britt failed to land many a blow that had the earmarks of danger in it, but in the course of the bloody work of the day, those he landed were at a ratio of about three to one. However, the men were not boxing, they were fighting as never before, every second of every round with anybody's fight up to the sixth. Then the tide of battle favored the Dane, and it looked bad for Britt, who was swaying before be-fore the onslaught of the battling one. At this crisis Sam Berger, in Britt's corner, threw some water on "The Pride of California" and pulled his features away from the ringside just in time to avoid Graney's foot, which was traveling fast in the direction of them. Then Brother Willus got a signal to Britt to swing with his right, and he did it to such effect that he took the force out of Nelson till the end of the round. The remarkable remark-able rally of Britt after this exciting round was not the least interesting feature of the contest, which moved along much in the same way as the rounds preceding the sixth, until the twelfth, when Jimmy had the Dane's head spinning from a series of terrible punches delivered as fast as he could send them in. In the fourteenth,. Nelson repeated his performance per-formance of the sixth, and from then until the finish, it was only a question of when, with Britt clinging tenaciously, and the battling one giving no quarter, and asking none. And then he did a manly thing, for as soon as Graney had counted the final second, the new "tampion walked to the quivering form of the 'man he had whipped and helped to lift him to his corner. At the weighing in of the men at Harry Cor-bett's, Cor-bett's, though my favor was the other way, the fight looked like nothing but Britt. He seemed to be stronger, in better condition than Nelson, who had a drawn appearance as he took his place upon the scales. But that is the panther type, and just what condition this wiry young man was in, was proven by subsequent events. The sadness in the Britt camp and among the supporters of the native son was pathetic. If I lived forever, I couldn't forget a great blubbering foreigner who sat near me, .and jumped to his feet excitedly as Britt went down. The man gave one gasp, and when Britt did not rise great tears rolled over his inflated cheeks, as a cateract of language fell from his lips, "C'est vrai! C'est vrai mon Dieu, Breet ees out I" One San Francisco paper is not a great favorite favor-ite with the Britts, because, it is said, that the journal has given all the fighters a fair shake, and not taken all that Brother Willus has stated, as gospel. This was the cause of an amusing incident on the way to the gate after the battle. We walked out near the Britt party, and as we met them, the popular city editor of this journal caught the eye of Willus Britt, and with something akin to a broad grin, said: "How do ycu do, Willus?"' Game to the last and impertinent as ever, Willus wrned on his tormentor exclaiming: "Go to !" The last I saw of Britt was the back of his head as he whirled away in his motor car between his father and Spider Kelly. But even the back of that head was sad as far as you could see it. The last I saw of Nelson was in the Palace Hotel, surrounded by a curious mob of guests; his nose was cut, his eye was a little darker than his healthy tan and his left hand was bandaged. There was a durable smile on his fearless countenance, and he walked with the spring of a young panther for that is the type of the master of James Edward Ed-ward Britt. TOD GOODWIN. |
