Sport: McLarnin v. Petrolle

Whenever he wins a fight, Welterweight Jimmy (“Baby Face”) McLarnin turns a handspring in his corner of the ring before he makes the conventional gesture of clasping his hands and shaking them over his head. The trick is significant; it seems to be the expression of Celtic characteristics which have endeared him to a public which likes its pugilists Irish. Billy (“Fargo Express”) Petrolle is another kind of fighter. Three years older than McLarnin—26—his face is scarred and flattened by the beatings he has received in the course of a long and intermittently successful career. When they were matched in New York City last week it was their third fight. Petrolle won the first, in Manhattan last winter, by banging his right hand into the face of a McLarnin who had come into the ring poised, apparently, for one hard punch to precede his triumphant handspring. Their next fight was less exciting; McLarnin, who had seemed heroic in his defeat, dismayed his admirers by retreating around the ring and outpointing Petrolle with a cautious left jab.

Although neither one is a champion, or likely to be one soon, 15,000 people came to the third fight last week. Petrolle, as usual, rushed in with chin and shoulders low, peering up at McLarnin from beneath eyebrows that look bushy because they are raised by scars. He won the first round, held McLarnin almost even in the next three, won the fifth. But McLarnin had thought up a new way of dealing with Petrolle. Standing up straight, like the barroom pictures of oldtime fighters, he let Petrolle lead and kept him off balance by stepping in close instead of backing away when Petrolle came in. Just as in their first fight it had been amazing to see how little defense McLarnin had against Petrolle’s right, it was amazing last week to see how seldom Petrolle managed to duck McLarnin’s left. McLarnin nearly knocked him out in the sixth round, nearly did it again in the seventh and eighth, hammered Petrolle when he caught him in a corner in the ninth. At the end of the tenth round Petrolic, still savage, landed two hard rights on McLarnin’s face, but they were too late to do any harm. McLarnin did not wait for the referee to tell him he had won before turning his handspring.