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Show I SPOR T LIGHT , New Fighters Are Question Marks I By GRANTLAND RICE ' THE 230-POUND REALTOR, working work-ing hard at his new profession, was still willing to talk about his old. The name is Jack Dempsey, now a hustling real estate operator up Louis is today. I first got in condition condi-tion with road work and rope skipping, skip-ping, bag punching and the other training aids a fighter uses. I took on the softer ones first. Big fellows who were not too fast to keep out of the way who made bigger targets. tar-gets. I really got in shape. But I soon found things were not working too well. I could still punch. I could still hurt you. But I was also getting get-ting hit with punches I should have ducked. I was also missing openings I shouldn't have missed. "When you are in your prime, at your best eye and fist and brain work together. You see an opening vnti niiTiph fit tha efilTIA time Y Vfew I and down the west coast. The 58-year-old Manassa Maul er, still no pushover for anybody, looks with a rather morbid mor-bid eye on the fight game of 1951. "I see where Joe Louis fought GrantlandRice much ,mPtroed and you punch at the same time, the time you've thrown the punch the other guy Is out of range or has the punch blocked. It was always easier to fight a big, slow-moving fighter than a smaller, faster fellow fel-low who was so much harder to hit. It was much easier to hit Firpo or Willard than it was to hit Greb, Tunney or Gibbons." It might be recalled that Dempsey fought 35 rounds with Tunney and Gibbons with only one knockdown recorded. He knocked down Willard and Firpo a) total of IS times in the first round. Quite a difference. Jack is still a wrestling, fast-moving, fast-moving, far-traveling citizen who Can't stay too long in any one spot. The extreme care he uses in bringing bring-ing up his two attractive daughters is beyond any copying. He has set a record, if any such records are in the books. He isn't too sour on the modern fight game, but he is far from being bullish. "It has taken a terrific dip In the last few years," he says. "It needs much more help than it is getting." Two Aces The time to render Judgment on a case comes when all the evidence is in. The evidence in football ended after the All-Star game in Los Angeles An-geles and furnished full proof that Paul Brown is football's leading coach and Otto Graham football's Individual star. Bob Waterfield was just about as good a passer. But Graham was not only a fine passer but also an able ball carrier in times of stress. Graham and Brown, of the Brown football family, compile about tne best combination of player and coach that football has known. This combination doesn't bank on any one game. It banks on five tough, rugged seasons against the best pro outfits in the game where no one has yet stopped this pair from reaching its top objective. The amazing Brown had devised the winning plays and Graham knew when to call them and how to use his right arm and both feet in carrying things out. fight against Be-ahore." Be-ahore." Jack said. "At 210 pounds Louis was nearer his old weight, but he is still toe old and slow to ever reach championship cham-pionship form, In my opinion. It will be ft miracle if he can handle those old reflexes, which really wreck yon. I mean where you see an opening and are just s split-second too late in punching. Or you see ft glove coming and are just ft split-second split-second late in ducking. It works bad both ways that , reflex action. I don't believe Louis can get back in shape to beat Es-tard Es-tard Charles, who is younger, faster and today a better boxer. Yes, I know Louis can hit. He can hit and hurt. But he got Beshore because Beshore waded In and asked for it. Hitting ft moving target Is something different. dif-ferent. "We've got to wait around to see how a lot of things will come out," Jack said. "For example, they seem to me to be hurrying Bob Murphy and Rex Layne. Young Murphy, a good puncher, looked hot in the east. But remember a fighter out here named Stevens outpointed out-pointed Murphy and later knocked him out. And at the time Stevens didn't look too hot. Rex Layne from Utah is another. He whipped Joe Walcott, which doesn't prove too much. I know he has won 27 out of his 28 pro bouts but the fighters he met were not too good. I'm not knocking Murphy, Layne, Stevens or anyone else. I'm simply saying they haven't proved much so far against any real class. There's no use building up a young fighter too high. "If Joe Louis, after the way he looked in two fights against Walcott Wal-cott and the one against Charles can reach the top again, it will be an all-time record. He was such a fine champion in his prime that he may make it. But I doubt it, knowing know-ing how tough It is to fight your way back." Fighting Back "After my second fight with Gene Tunney," the Mauler continued, "I decided later to find out just how good I was. I was younger than |