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Show Sporting Life. On Monday night, August 18th Salt Lake City got a $20,000 fight for ten cents. Square, honest, and with every promise fulfilled, Root and Gardner gave an exhibition rarely equalled and every seat in the vast arena should have held a spectator. Many stayed away, because they did not realize real-ize the importance of the event from a sporting standpoint, and others let two or three dollars hold them back, because they have been persistently persist-ently flimmed all winter and spring by the bums who donned the padded mits at the fake exhibitions exhibi-tions at the athletic club. The champion of sixty hard-fought contests in the twenty-four-foot ring, Jack Root of Chicago went down to honorable defeat on Monday night, at the Salt Palace ring in the seventeenth round, at the hands of the newly crowned king of middleweight mid-dleweight championship in the fistic arena, George Gardner of Lowell, Mass., after giving and taking the hardest kind of punishment and fighting against defeat at the hands of the fastest, wickedest, wicked-est, and gamest fighter in his class that ever entertained enter-tained a Salt Lake audience." Both contestants were in the pink of condition, stripping at 165 pounds and each seemingly confident confi-dent of the outcome being certain victory for himself. him-self. Steiner, Donnelly and Murtaugh were behind be-hind Root, while Alec Greggains, Barry, Hopper am Wertz stood behind the doughty man from the land of pork and beans. Nearly 3000 sports from all over the country took in the event. Harry Hynds the referee made a host of friends by his fairness and accuracy accur-acy in decisions and although he got one accidental acci-dental crack in the ear in forcing a break away suffered less than the average umpire in a base ball game and came up smiling after each round. W. M. Wilson of Denver was time keeper for Gardner Gard-ner and Lou Houseman for Root, while B. R. Peltz officiated for the management. The fight was a red hot affair from the start, both men forcing the battle during the first six rounds, when Root showed signs of the gattling gun short arm blows he had received on the ribs and stomach, and thereafter, save for one or two nervy rallies, fought on the defensive. Gardner wore a confident smile from beginning to finish and frequently bestowed a wink on the press while being winded by the seconds after the rounds. Root swung several wicked blows even up to the last round and seemed to have plenty of steam behind them to put his man to sleep but Gardner was an artful dodger and evaded punishment by closing in and delivering a constant tattoo of right and left punches on Root's wind, which tactics finally fin-ally won the gi eat battle. ! During the fifteenth round several blows were i delivered by both contestants in the clinch which were plainly apparent to spectators who were close to the ring as fouls and as honors were eaBy on that score there was no necessity for the referee to interfere, except by the caution he gave the fighters. Both men were badly out over the left oyo and Gardner's nose dripped the claret from the second round. At the close of the tenth round Gardner's seconds told their man to make a wind up of Root and the now champion forced the fighting with that object in view to the end, hut was unable to drop his man for ten counts until the seventeenth round when a series of wicked upper cuts, a volley of short arm rib roast-ers roast-ers anda terrible jab in the stomach stripped the erstwhile champion of his hard won laurels and landed Gardner champion of the middle weight class of the world. As was predicted by this paper in its last issue n fairer, gamer fight was ever seen in Salt Lake flnil the big eyent went pff wjttipufc a single feature to mar its success. Managers Mulvey and Houseman House-man having redeemed every promise made to the public as to the great event. The preliminary wrestling match between Eugene Eu-gene Thompson of this city and Prof. G. C. McLaughlin Mc-Laughlin of Montana, resulted in a victory for the local man and was in keeping with the evening's even-ing's events, clean, square, fast and the victory went to the best man. P. Alonzo Cook was referee ref-eree for this event and his fog horn voice made a hit. Three or four ladies (?) heavily veiled, occupied occu-pied box seats and divided interest with the pugilists. pugi-lists. Men are naturally imbued with considerable of the brute nature and it hardly seems out of place to see them at the ringside where men who have become trained fighting machines batter and beat each other until they are covered with blood, cut and bruised and resemble angry bull dogs more than human beings, but when the high ideal of woman is prostituted to the extent of mingling in and becoming a part of the vast seekers after blood letting sport, who assemble at a prize fight, it cannot but cause a blush of shame to mantle the most caloused cheek of the average man. Is the honest fight pulled off at the Salt Palace going to result in such a revival of interest in boxing that the vags and bums who pretend to be fighters, and who have been loafing about town the past few months will have a chance to fix matters to get into the lovers of good sport for a few more simoleons? It ought to be a quick forced ride on the "rattlers" "rat-tlers" for them, or a berth in the barred quarters at the county expense. Most of them are bar room, toughs, vags, general loafers, and a menace to the city generally, and the whole mess ought to be run out of town. The flag was finally dropped on poor old baseball base-ball for the season of 1902 last week, marked by the passing of the Grand Old Man of the Game in "Utah, Col. Buck Weaver of the Lagoon team. Buck certainly did everything in his power to bring about a revival of the game, after the blowing up of the old league, even obtaining possession of the park and receiving full power as manager and captain of the fast team which he had ready to jump at the word; but the gamey bunch from Ogden, who were so full of all kinds of promises as to the swell team they would place in the field, and even advertising a game in the newspapers, quit like dogs and sloughed the whole scheme. Gimlin wrote a letter to Weaver saying that things had better be dropped until next year, and that the latter's best game was to get control of the grounds for next year. Weaver immediately accepted terms witn Walla Walla, up in the Butter and Egg league, while the rest of the players joined the Ping Pong, Tid-dlediwinks Tid-dlediwinks and other "meal ticket" leagues. |