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Show FRANK K. BAKER ' TELEGRAM SPORTS EDITOR km Thosc finicky folks who watch a great offensive star like Byron White and complain that "he doesn't block" won't get much of an audience from the coaching fraternity. fra-ternity. A few individuals dared to point the same finger fin-ger of complaint at Bill De Correvont, the Chicago school j boy who scored 210 points in ten games this season while gaining 106t5 yards from scrimmage. As De Correvont's coach. Bill Heiland had an immediate imme-diate answer. He said: "Asking De Correvont to block would be like hitching War Admiral to a wagon load of hay. But if De Correvont were asked to block he'd be a star at that, too." And that's exactly the way most Rocky Mountain fans feel about the "Whizzer." Jake Kilrain, the old bare knuckle fighter who died at his Quincy, Mass., home this wck at the age of 78, must have thought the modern fighters with their eight, ten and fifteen-rounders were softies. Of course, the action wasn't as furious and pace-killing in his day, but the length of the battles back in the old bare knuckle days more than made up for the faster tempo in modern fighting. fight-ing. Kilrain fought 7$ rounds with the late John L. Sullivan Sulli-van at Richburg, Miss., July 8, 1889, and went 106 rounds against Jem Smith, the British champion, on an island in the Seine river, France, in 1887. Sullivan defeated Kilrain, but the latter always claimed h won. Sullivan was defending the London prize ring championship in this fight, which was staged for a $5000 diamond-studded belt and a side bet of $5000.. .Shortly before be-fore his death Kilrain said in commenting upon the fight that he lost because hia second threw in the sponge while both fighteri were In their corners at the end of the seventy-fifth seventy-fifth round. Kilrain always insisted that, although "we were both exhausted. 1 could have (one on a little further and I thought Sullivan would not come out for the seventy-sixth round." Although few except his most intimate friends knew! it, Jake Kilrain was only his ring name and he was content con-tent to spend his last years behind the obscurity of his real name John Joseph Killion. Kilrain was the man who miftht have been world champion. The man who could take it in a bare knuckle fight for 75 to 100 rounds and ask for more. That' why John Joseph Killion clung to h;s ring alias to the end. He was proud of it. Sullivan and Kilrain wert bitter enemies until long after their fighting days. Sullivan wag born in Boston October 15. 1858. Kilrain was born February 9, the following year, at Green Point. N. Y and wai reared In Somerville, Mass.. a suburb of Boston. Their trails crossed early in life and they became bitter ' rival as they pushed their ambitious ways toward the top of the I heavyweight field. This bitterness carried into their association outside the ring and it was long after their grueling grind in .Mississippi before the passing years softened their regard for lone another. The mellowing years did the trick, though, and J Lhey became close friends. Sullivan died in 1918. I |