Salt Lake Telegram | 1934-03-07 | Page 15 | Boxing in Need of Housecleaning If it is Ever to Regain Prestige

Boxing in Need of Housecleaning If It Is sEver Ever to Regain Prestige Game Gam Now at Lowest Possible Ebb Writer Thinks Titleholders Are Freaks or Playboys By Dy PAUL GALLI GALLICO CO NEW YORK March 7 One One thing is certain the old methods methodi i wont won't work with boxing promotion any more They are as dead as the Hoover Hoo administration prohibition and the reputation of at the bankers A new deal Is called for in large arge scale boxing promotion New methods must be installed new Ideas brought in But what and how How to replace the old build up and ballyhoo methods that hauled so many customers through the he turnstiles that made so many hundreds of or thousands of dollars I Presents Touch Tough Problem I have often otten wondered what I would do if I were suddenly placed at the thed head d of ot a sports promotion organization organization like Madison Square Garden and given the job of ot building up boxing box box- ing ng and making it pay How to gauge the temper and temperament of ot the public How to find out what thc they want and then how to get it for them after I had found out One thing is certain the taxpayers ers want twice as much for their money as they did eight years ago And yet et today there are fewer star bouts and boxers available than ever before I have often wondered whether the cycle of at boxing in this era is not nol at an end a complete end and whether we are not vainly trying to toL Infuse life into a corpse from which L the ghost fled a few years ago whether it were not best to admit the cycle ended and turn our attention atten tion to something else until the next one begins until real fighting men return to the ring Look back over the past and see how boxing has hit definite e peaks There was the era of at Jeffries and Tom Sharkey Corbett Fitzsimmons McCoy Wolgast Bat Nelson Britton Lewis McFarland Terry McGovern and others of that stamp said by those who still remember to have been the greatest fighting men everto ever evex everto to draw on six ounce gloves Golden Decade Boy Then came the boxers of the golden golder I decade Jimmy Wilde Pancho Villa Kilbane Johnn Johnny Dundee Benn Benny Leonard Mickey Walker Carpentier Dempsey Firpo the Gibbons Tunney Greb Sharkey Harry Wills WilIs Berlenbach Delaney Delancy And who Is Js 1 S there today Two men Barney Rosand Ross Ros I and Jimmy Consider the facts The heavyweight heavy weight champion Is a c circus freak his foremost challenger a playboy The light heavyweight title holder is a clown and a the middleweight middleweight middleweight middle middle- weight champion changes hands hand every three or four months there ther I Is S no featherweight or 01 flyweight champion champion cham pion The boys simply have bave nothing to sell and they would have no new way of selling it even if they had So now I have the feeling that fighting will have to go back to the small intimate ultimate smelly fight clubs for a little lit lit- t tle b while again before I can expect once more tg don the royal purple