Sport: Louis v. Ettore

Since the days when its left-handed Lew Tendler used to fight Lightweight Champion Benny Leonard so regularly that the names of the two fighters sounded like the title of a corporation, Philadelphia has always had at least one first-rate functioning fighter of one sort or another. Tendler, now a 180-lb. restaurateur, is the manager of Philadelphia’s latest pugilistic hope, a large blond Italian named Al Ettore. Without fighting much outside his home town, Ettore had by last summer managed to get enough local following to justify a bout with famed Joe Louis, who is trying to rebuild the reputation as a superfighter that was destroyed by Max Schmeling last June. Last week, 24 hours before the tenth anniversary of the rainy night that Gene Tunney beat Jack Dempsey there for the championship of the world, Ettore and Louis crawled into a ring in the Municipal Stadium. The fight, which drew a crowd of 50,000, lasted five lively rounds. In the first, two rights put Ettore down for a short count. In the second and third, Ettore, who had promised to knock Louis into the 15th row, courageously belabored his opponent’s ribs, caused the expression of pained bewilderment that Louis wore throughout the Schmeling fight to cross his face again. In the fourth, a Louis right produced another knockdown. Still dizzy, Ettore went down again in the fifth. When the referee counted him out, Manager Tendler helped him to his corner.

Chief significance of Louis’ victory was that it added weight to arguments in favor of a bout between Louis and Champion Jim Braddock before the latter fights Max Schmeling next June. Braddock’s contract with Madison Square Garden prohibits his defending his title before the Schmeling fight. Last week, Philadelphia’s Promoter Herman Taylor explored a loophole in the agreement by offering Braddock a fat sum to fight for a no-decision fight with Louis—i. e., a fight in which Braddock’stitle would not be at stake. Madison Square Garden promptly protested that the champion had no right so to endanger his prestige.