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Show f ' - ! Ritchie's Meteoric ; Rise to Fame :j Boy WAo Won Lightweight Cham-pionship Cham-pionship on Thanksgiving Day Compelled Recognition by Grasp- I1 ing Opportunities and Substituting for Others on Short Notice , " r . v ;, ' . BY. JIM NASIUM j Corrricbt bj- Ths PMUklpbli Inquirer Company. ' C "I HE gentle pastime of hit-and-get-away, fallen on evil days through 4he J iPl superiority of a few over thai many combined with tho disposition of this j III favcred few to lifeguard their laurels and pick up the easy money that ,j I f J jjs around loose in the "no decision" game that has "been substituted for the real thing by the "wise men of the East' a condition of affairs that has militated gainst the making of important matches, has in recent years pro- ' duced too few individual performers capable of horning in on the spotlit with 8nr0ctionXye Arising press agent eases a wad of soft hale into his sock by digging 'up a husky pick and shovel artist who would have to exert a seveW mental strain to discriminate between a left uppcrcut and a passed ball, anduX : up the headlinea with forecasts of his future until said future is Sdd?SlghSd and smeared over the mildewed Uw to oh J pen by a wallop fl I WJ member of the Truck Drivers' Union, and the spotlight stuff is off. It So it is that in these decadent days of ! "flourflush champs" and false "hopes : when a kid who pacta the does jets his opportunity and grabs it inft wA jg effect that be succeeds m ' Izt through the gateway to success by thc-r force of merit, it is more or less . worthy of note. And ft. more rapid ; and unexpected be his rise m his chosen profession, the mote lustre that is added to the performance. When the boy who baa been Icruwra in the realm of the padded I mitt for -but one short year as Willie Ritchie .grabbed ' I tho honors of being considered the cham pion lightweight face mangier of the uni-! uni-! verse at large from a rough young gentle man named Ad. Wolgast. at Daly City, ! Cal.-, on Thanksgiving Day, it was an, unexpected but none the less popular vic-1 vic-1 tory. in consequence of which the Ritchie ' person has since been hogging about all the spotlight that has been focused on J the great throbbing world of the festive uppercnt. . . , While the defeated champion, Wolgast, was never considered in the same class with Gans, Erne and the other king pm punchers of tetter days by the intelligent critics, lie was generally 'conceded to be j n extremely rugged and nngentlemanly voung person with his fists who could ""cover up" and rough house around in the squared circle with sufficient result tnt success to pile the 6pinal vertebrae of the present crop of lightweights into the roof of their combined lids, which' ' , wasn't altogether u pleasing prospect for ' the lovers of a clean exhibition who much prefer to shower' their plaudits at some moTe edifying spectacle than an ability to assimilate pnnishment and butt an opponent's palpitating gizzard into the roof of his mouth. Wolgast was, therefore, never a popu-' popu-' Ur champion, and when on Thankagiv- ing Day a new star shot athwart the pu- gilistic horizon and showed that he could , not only give a clean-cut exhibition of the "manly art of self-defem," but pes-I pes-I I sewed the stamina to withstand the I "rough housing' of the "bearcat" of the lightweight division, the ability to pierce . his "covering up" defense with clean i nhots at the mark, the courage and con- j. fidencc to carry the fight to his rough l( opponent, and the punch at tho. finish, , be was received- with wild acclaim and o outbursts of tumultuous applause in the realm of fistiana, which is generally con- tidered as representing . the pinnacle of M i popular favor outside the kissing bees of the feminine world. Tho new champion's rise to fame haa been meteoric. Just a year to the nay previous to his acquisition of tho lightweight light-weight supremacy on Thanksgiving Day, 1911 he got his first chance to butt intothe spotlight of the sporting world by boldly jumping into the breach and substituting on short notice for Wolgast when the former champion was stricken with appendicitis on the eve of his battle bat-tle with Freddie Welch at Loa Angeles. Ritchie, who was then a sparring partner part-ner in tho training camp, of Packy Ma-Farland, Ma-Farland, took on the Welsh champion on twenty-four hours' notice, and after an all night ride from San Francisco went' into the ring with Welsh, and although al-though out of condition surprised the sporting v?arld by battling that sensational sensation-al scrapper to a standstill for twenty rounds and having him groggy on no less than two occasions, only his inexperience inexperi-ence preventing him from knocking out the champion of Great Britain. This performance caused the hitherto unknown Ritcliie to be widely heralded es a force to be contended with in the lightweight class, and he wns at once tagged by the champs and near-champs as a- man to fight shy of in the "easy-money" "easy-money" game. Shortly afterward "he came cast with McFarland, and when OifcFarland was compelled to cancel a six-ronnd engagement with Young Erne in Philadelphia at the last minute, owing to a damaged eye, Ritchie again jumped in, as a substitute, taking Parity's place on short notice, and although Erne has the six-rouud game down pat, and is a finished artist over the short route, Ritchie, the sub., succeeded in handing him an awful lacing, within the stipulated stipu-lated period. It was this willineness of Ritchie's to jump in and swap punches with any guy in the .game at short notico that stamped binn as a boy with courage and confidence in his own ability, and it was the clean-cut manner in which he handed himself when given tho opportunity oppor-tunity that gained him popular recognition recogni-tion as a boxer of class. But' he had never yet mingled with a fighter of the ruggedncEs of Wolgast, and probably everybody except himself doubted his ability to weather the. rough tactics of I such a bear-cat and be there at the finish, J iLast Uay he was given an opportunity to meet Wolgast in a four-round bout, and succeeded in flooring the then champion cham-pion once with a clean knockdown, but M Wplgnst was then just recovering from nis illness this fact added nothing to Ritchie's prestige, and he was r rank outside choice when this pair stepped into the ring ogain on Thanksgiving Day with tli9 lightweight crown at stake. That Ritchie himBelf did not share in tbio doubt aa to his ability to cope with the rough work of Wolgast is shown by the fight he made against the lightweight champion. He earned the fight right to the Cadillac 'Tocar-cat" nt all times, picked his openings and timed his punches punch-es well, stood toe to toe and slugged with his rugged opponent when it suited hia purpose, and before the eighth round had expired had driven the customary sneering smile from the faco of the champion. cham-pion. Although Ritchie. waB given tho decision on a foul in the sixteenth- round, Wolgast waa then a badly-beaten man, mid it had been plainly evident for two rounds that the .lightweight championship champion-ship was about to change hands. Tho new champion's right name is Gary Stoffcn. the Willie , Ritchie stuff being adopted for professional purposes only. He was born in San Francisco, of German Ger-man parciitB, twenty-one years ago, and divided the halcyon days of his early youth equally betwocu fathoming the most rapid method of finding the shortest short-est distance between two given ' points in the confines of a schoolroom and developing de-veloping his walloping powere on a blind plug hitched to the sand wagon of his older brothers, At fifteen years of ago young Gary Steffen began to apply hiB knowledge of the shortest distance between be-tween two given points on the points pi the jaws of amateur boxers around 'Frisco, 'Fris-co, and soon showed auch ability at the art that ho consented to smear up tho rinz with fragments of shredded gJOWt' ents in the preliminaries to the big fights in the 'Frisco clubs. He was hiding his light under a bushel bush-el in tho preliminary game when Packy McFarlann picked him up as a sparring partner, and recognizing the possibilities m the boy. it was at Packy's behest, that he crabbed the opportunity of taking on Welsh by substituting .for the stricken Wolgast and thereby gained his entry into in-to solcct pugilistic circles. Packy has since . stated that, he and .Ritchie ore faflt friends and will never, oppose each other in tho ring, one of tho reasons the "stockyard champion" ad- van.cca for this being that he considers Ritchie- one boy who can beat him at the weight, Packy touting Ritchie as a "coming, champion" even before hia meeting meet-ing with Welsh. , j&flkv' McFrlend must therefor. k il considered as the .Teal discoverer and tutor of tho. new lightweight champion, and in his general style und deportment in the ring Ritchie, greatly resembles the Chicago flash. Being an apt pupil and much above the average . intelligence shown by tho habitue ot the pugilistic training camp, the new spurring partner booh possessed himself ol much of the nfcock in trade, of the shifty stockyards boy. Inasmuch, as hnge wads of soft kale are now hanging around iust waiting to he plucked by the new lightweight champion, cham-pion, . and the flock of mediocre talent that is at present engaged in the pleasant pleas-ant occupation of erecting ornamentul knobs on the-classic brow, of their fellow fel-low being largely precludes the idea of bis having his pedestal kicked from tin- der him in any great hurry, it 1 gether likely that young G&fJWkfjH'- 3 will find his familiarity with tbaiiib?jBi f cies of the left uppercut a mnca.'isjfR remunerative knowledge than soy jK1 (u ity he might have attained, at nSfB5 S fully diagnosing tho bypothenuis f triangle m tho qld schoolroom. .iiB " All of which only goes to sioir iK you can't always sometimes tell. 'fjB m kid who is out browsing arouwl ."K'.K sand lots looking for new fwtacww S mangle may be pilling up a I50Cf,,3Kl useful" brand of knowledge and ltFWMS f more widespread prominence 3y?B& ft 'hustles out to stab the great Or f, worid in the face than the boob wto.UW bulging brow who is thmkuir ! into premature baldness over BHf PP?K J lem in differential calculus. t '-K |
