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Show 1 BHiTISH TITLE HOLDERS 1ST ALLENGLISH Wales Well to Front With Champs ; Johnny Coulon Oxitweighed in Pete Herman Bout. Ey T. S. ANDREWS. Special to The Tribune. MILWAUKEE, Wis.. May 26. Most of the boxers or fighters holding ! .-hnnipionships in Great Britain arc al- ! ways referred to as Englishmen, when in fact few of the titles are held by Englishmen. It is true they are Britishers, Brit-ishers, but for rdl that they may bo English. Irish, Scotch or Welsh. Take the champions for 1916 or 1917 and it is seen that four of the championships are held by Welshmen: Jimmy Wilde, flyweight : , Lew Edwards, feather-weight; feather-weight; Freddy Welsh, light-weight. ' and Johnny Basham, welterweight. Joe j Eox, English, holds the bantamweight ' title; Joe Blake, English, middleweight; j Dick Smith, Irish and Scotch, light- i heawweight, and Billv Wells, English, ! heavvweight. Matt Wells, who held j the lightweight title before Freddy j Welsh, was an English Jew and until ; recent ly the middleweight title was ; held by an Irishman, Jim Sullivan. Jem j Driseoll. the former featherweight j champion (until he retired), was a ! Welshman, -which really gives five ti-j ties in, the boxing world to Wales, which speaks highly for the qualitv of box- ers from that section of the I'nited , Kingdom. 1 Lew Edwards, now in Australia., has j been called an Englishman very fre- ! qtiently. but in reality he is a Welsh- ; man. and a coiking good fighter. Since going to Australia Lew has developed ; into a lightweight and has won the last ; six battles he started in without much j effort. One peculiarity of the Welsh boxer is the fact that he can always I bp depended upon to display plenty of j cleverness. Jem Driseoll was a wonder- j fuilv clever boxer and a fighter at the same time, r.s he proved when he deA f'-ared Abe Attell in Xew York when ' Abe was at his best. Jimmy Wilde is another of the same brand a? Driseoll. and although only a flyweight, he has' the refutation of being able to hit like a featherweight. The exception is Freddy Welsh. Freddy is a great ring general and remarkably clever, but never nev-er has been noted for his hitting, although al-though he has a number of lrnockotit s to his -credit, more than manv lightweights light-weights v-ho arp supposed to be slr.g-er. slr.g-er. Welsh has knocked out twenty-?eri twenty-?eri men, hut of late he has bepn content con-tent to box ten rounds and let the other j fellow do all the hard work. It -will i not be surprising to see Lew Edwards ! take Welsh's rlftcp among the light j weights, and if he does (he title vill ; remain with the Welsh people that is, i as far as the British championships go. j Coulon Learns Lesson. When Johnny Coition's father was alive and acted as manager for the bantamweight ban-tamweight champion of those days, he always had a set rule about making matches for the little title holder, and that was the necessity of ma-king the ether fellow make weight. "Pop.1' as Johnny called his father, always insisted insist-ed upon 116 pounds? ringside weight, the poundage recognized by practically practi-cally all boxing authorities, and if possible pos-sible he would make it nearer 112. whirh is reallv the flyweight limit in Europe and Australia. "Pop" always impressed upon Johnny the. advantage of such weight, as it was seldom that the clever little battler scaled over 111 or 112. After Johnny lost his crown to Kid Williams or Baltimore he forgot ibout the game for a while. Then the )ld fever struck him again and he be-an be-an to box off and on, which resulted .n a tour of the west, east and south, fie went along nicely until approached regarding a match with Pete Herman of Xew Orleans, present bantam champion. cham-pion. Johnny conferred with Nate Lewis and Tommy Walsh, his managers, and told them to go ahead. "It was no fault of theirs." said Johnny, "that ?he match was made. I just felt that 1 could beat Petp at any weight and really did not think about, the' ten-pound ten-pound limit rule in Wisconsin. 1 wanted want-ed the match and take all blame on m y own shoulders, as Lewis did not think well of it for me at the weight. I weighed only a bit over 107 pounds in the afternoon, which was a lot below my normal wei2ht, but that was my own lookout. I learned one thinga boxer cannot give away too much weight, no matter how good he may be, fc when he faces a lad of class like Her-man. Her-man. mi e pen p le thought T c on Id have -gotten up and resumed fighting ifter bping knocked down in the third rennd. but to be candid I will say it was impossible, as my kneecap was injured in-jured T have been under the doctor's doc-tor's carp for over a week now. I may box again, but not under such a handicap." handi-cap." Johnny Ertle. the St. Paul bantamweight bantam-weight and at one time claimant of the title, togother w-i th his manager. Alike Mr-Xulty, is making a great roar about the viy reports were sent out from Pittsburg regarding Johnny's aix-romul tilt with Kid Barone, a young Italian bantam of the Smoky City, Johnny and his manager arrived in filwaukee the: other day with affidavits and newspaper news-paper clippings to show and prove that little Kewpie was the winner by a good margin, and not Barone. One wri ter said the Italian won because lie set the pace, although admitting that Ertle dM some very effective work at close ranre, etc. It seems that, someone beat Ertle to the wires that niht and it was put over proper. No wonder Ba-rono Ba-rono wanted something . out of the fisrht; it developed afterwards that the Kid's manager was interested in promoting pro-moting the show and that after Johnny John-ny was paid there remained nothing for the Italian not even a postage stamp. However, reports sent to newspapers bv mnnriers of boxers are not always what they should be as regards veracity and it is a pretty good plan to discount their i value. Managers of. boxers would also j gain the respect of sporting editors by I sending out truthful reports of such I encounters, no matter how much it I mifrht hurt, them. Harry Greb, the Pittsburg middle-, middle-, weight, who was coming along at a j rapid naee, eeems to have met with a i setback in Buffalo the other night when he encountered Jeff Smith, the New Jersey middleweight and claimant of the American title, dreh had been going along so well that he was picked bv many as a contender for the title; in fact, he gave Al McCoy, who alleges that he is champion of the class, quite a severe beating, according to the Pitts-burg Pitts-burg paoers. a few weeks ago. As a result of this match Greb was signed up to meet Smith in Buffalo and while it 'was a 2reat fight, according to all re-' re-' ports, the Pittsburg boy was defeated decisi vely. This certainly makes Smith about the best-looking middleweight in the conntrv todav. outside of Mike Gihbons; and at the present time Smith, through his manager. Al Li one, has a standing ! challenge with $1000 forfeit monev up I to meet Gibbons over the twenty-round route and have the winner declared champion. Tt is up to Gibbons to make good his claim that he is the best mid-, dleweight in the country. |