| OCR Text |
Show CILUWIN 10 1 BE CIIEI BOUT MJIIPl Lightweight Situation Favorable Fa-vorable for Frankie; Ertle and Coulon Matched; Bat Nelson Once More. CHEAP SHOWS HARM NEW ORLEANS GAME Legitimate Promoters Hard Pressed; Boycott on Madison Madi-son Square Garden Is v Bit of Spitework. . By T. a ANDREWS. NEW ORLEANS, La., March 17. Don 't be surprised if Freddy Welsh, tho world's lightweight champion, is matched to battle with Frankie Callahan, Calla-han, the Brooklyn B5-poundert for the title before tho end of June, or beforo the time for Welsh's announced retirement, retire-ment, July 7. Such a card is on the books and it is a pretty safe bet that it will go through, barring unforeseen complications. When Callahan fought Jimmy Hanlon here a couple of weeks ao and stopped him, he made a big bit with the boxing fans of the Crescent city, and his work prior to that had been jnst as good. Ban MeKetriek, who manages Callahan, is close to Harry Pollok, manager of Welsh, and Daniel has been bringing Frankie along at, a pace that he feels should compel his pal It a rry to gi v e him the edge on a match with the champion before he retires. re-tires. It matters little about the offers made by Richie Mitchell, Benny Leonard Leon-ard and' Johnny Dundee to Freddy for a twenty -round fight with the title at stake. Mitchell made the best offer of all $12,000 cash win, lose or draw, all the picture privileges and an extra $3000 or even $1500 for expenses, with the promise of an additional gift if he won the championship. Dundee also made a good offer, and so did Billy Gibson for Leonard. Callahan in Line. If looks now as though Callahan would beat the rest of the real contenders contend-ers to the post for the big match. Ho : has been signed bv Dominick J. Toi-torich, Toi-torich, promoter nf the big club here, for two fights the first with someone to be selected (which in all probability will be Joe Mandot and at a distance of fifteen rounds), the second with Champion Welsh, with tho title at stake. Just paste this in your hat and see how the trend of the lightweight title fight goes on. Should Callahan defeat Welsh for the title it would mean that the rest of the boys .would ha ve to wait their turn or have an elimination t onrn a-ment a-ment among the msolves. And Callahan Calla-han would have a dnndv chance of boating boat-ing the champion over the marathon route, for he has the staying power and can stand an awful pr.ee. Again, if it should result in a draw. Welsh could retire undefeated, turn his title over to Callahan, as Jim .Jeffries did once to Marvin Hart, and all would be serene, se-rene, except for the contenders left out in the cold. Getting right, down to brass taeks on the lightweight question, it might, be well to state that on form the bovs best entitled to men) Welsh for tne championship are Mitchell and Leonard, and as t h e.y a re m at eh ed for a ten -round battle at tho big Milwaukee Auditorium Au-ditorium Annl 17, it might result in one of them being eliminated. Tn that event Welsh would have a real championship cham-pionship math on his hands. Callahan is a grand little lightweight, and no one will deny it, but on past performances perform-ances Mitchell ami Leonard seem to have the class for first, try with Web.'h, Cheap Shows Harmful. New Orleans is having a touch of the same bitter medicine in the boxing gajno as was handed out in Milwaukee a year ago tho damage from cheap-priced cheap-priced shows. At one of the theaters where boxing shows are staged every week tho prices ransje from 10 to MO cents, as at some of tho cheaper vaudeville vaude-ville houses. The bouts are of poor class as a rule, which should be expected, ex-pected, and the result is that much harm has been done the fame. Tho fans expect cheap prices al! the time, and the result is that the promoters find it almost impossible to do business busi-ness with the better class of fighters. Dominiek J. Tortnri'di. the blading promoter, pro-moter, is disgusted with the wav things have been rnnninu and ii would not take much to make him throw up tho si i on re and dismantle his big a i en a . What with some of the alleged sta rs asking for .'10 ppr cent and per cent, of the gT,q each, nnd paying nut small fori u ncs fur I aihva v fa re-. Fro: rioter Tortorieh has a rifht tn howl. It i'i the same old storv the boxers and their marngers will accent aav old price in Xev York or Chicago, but the moment mo-ment Xew Or'eaus is mentioned, or any smaller eif v. the 11 suck or sign " gnrv nut and IIkv v:niit the earth. Rome of t hese davs the whole hunch of promoters pro-moters in the smaller cities will get together to-gether and band the " rrub-it-n II ' ' managers man-agers what 'thev deserve. KfforK pre beine made lire to bring Johnnv Krtle. the St. Paul Ki'wnie, nnd Jolninv Cnnlin, the former bantam-veiL'bt bantam-veiL'bt rlmmp'tm. tofHhor ffn- a f'iftnn. i o u ; i d ba' t le in A nril. : 'onion is a big favor it'1 'ro. and would nrovo a bijr card, while the fans v.a n t to set a glimpse of the little fellow who tried to c rab t lie title lvfore Fete Henna n won it. Promoter Tnrtorirh has mado 1 he bo v a L'ood offer, but whether Krtle and his mnnn I'cr, 'Mike MeNnlty, will ncerit another question. Ertlo has often signified his willingness to meet foul on and the ma t i-h nmv hn (Continued on Following Pace.) CALLAHAN MATCHED ' ffl IE CIIP1 j (Continued From Preceding Pa, ) I 1 made here, although the ex-chami j would prefer the ten-round route to thos i ilf teen-rounrl distance. .Reports from St. Louis are to the rf- Jf feet that Battling Nelson, former i-Jr weight champion, is to fight a youujr lightweight named Pierce .MattheviKui St. Patrick's dav over the twelve -fun in I route, if the Battler does not realize that he is through as a fighter the promoters should have the good sense -to notify him and not permit the contest, con-test, it is hard to understand whv ! some promoters will stand for exhibi- ' tions of that kind. The Battler is certainly cer-tainly not in condition to put up a real contest all that could be expected expect-ed of him would he to show himself (so different from his real self) and be the receiver general for a lot of punishment. pun-ishment. He has the nerve and the heart, but not the stamina, and there is a chance of serious cnnspmipnepn nnv time the one-time ehampiou enters the ring, if the promoters want to show Nelson to the fans, let them do so in an exhibition bout of three or four rounds, one minute each, and advertise it as an exhibition and nothing more. Kelson was a wonderful fighter not a boxer and his name will go down in fistic history as one of the real battlers bat-tlers in the lightweight division, but why spoil an excellent record with such miserable encounters? The sad rol-lapse rol-lapse of Ad Wolgast, the lad who won the title from Nelson, should be a warning warn-ing to the Battler and promoters alike. Boycott on Garden. Is it wise on the part of some of the managers of star boxers in New York, joined by a few western lights, to boycott the Madison Square Garden club in the big city, contrplled by Grant Hugh Browne, just to get even for alleged al-leged wrongs of the past at the hands of the matchmaker, Jimmv Johnston? It seems that when Johnston had the handling of the matches a vear or so ago he favored his own stable of fighters fight-ers and ignored the others, according to accusations made, and now the man- agcrs of such boys as Freddv WelsL Benny Leonard, Charlie White, dier Bartfield, Frnnkie Callahan, Carl Morris and others refuse to permit per-mit their proteges to appear at the Garden Gar-den while Johnston has the making of matches. To offset the stand of the big quartette of managers, there are numerous others who want to fill in the dates, but thev are not as good cards and for the time being Browne is up against it. Pete Herman, the new bantamweight king, is out with a statement to the effect, that he will meet any opponent the management may select at. the Garden, bovcott or not. However, with all the agitation against boxing in New York at this time, it looks like poor management on the part of someone to trv to bring about more t rouble. t would be better bet-ter if the different factions would trv to work together for once and endeavor en-deavor to save the game in the Umpire Um-pire state, which has been serionslv threatened for some time. The wonder is that the game in New York slate has been able to stand up under all the knocks aimed at it in the past year or two. |
