Sport: Jacobs Carnival

In New Orleans on three successive nights in September 1892, the old Olympia Sporting Club exhibited the world championship lightweight, featherweight and heavyweight boxers in bouts defending their titles. That famous occasion is still remembered because on the third night James J. Corbett knocked out John L. Sullivan.

Last week at New York’s Polo Grounds Promoter Michael Strauss Jacobs, as a last gesture before taking over the boxing franchise of the great Madison Square Garden, staged fights for four champions instead of three—all on one night. Into the ring to grace this Carnival of Champions climbed Heavyweight Joe Louis to shake hands with his most recent opponent, Tommy Farr. But Champion Joe Louis, Mike Jacobs’ star attraction, did not fight that night for the paying customers.

Although to accommodate Promoter Jacobs the New York State Athletic Commission waived its 40-round maximum rule and 32,000 boxing fans proved willing to sit on wooden seats for four-and-a-half hours, the perverse indifference of the U. S. sporting public to non-heavyweight boxing encounters kept the gross gate receipts down to a disappointing $232,600. Since Promoter Jacobs had contracted to pay his eight fighters some $190,000 and 10% of the profits went to charity, most striking feature of the second carnival of champions was that it was the first big Jacobs event which apparently lost money.

Middleweights fight at 160 Ibs. and have two current champions. French Marcel Thil, who won the title from Gorilla Jones five years ago on a foul, is recognized by the International Boxing Union, but the New York State Athletic Commission, and the National Boxing Association recognize Tacoma’s Freddy Steele. This dilemma Promoter Jacobs resolved to his satisfaction. He imported Champion Thil, bullnecked, bulging-shouldered athletic oldster of 33, bald on his head but well furred on chest and back. By matching him not against Champion Steele but against the No.1 U. S. challenger, San Francisco’s Fred Apostoli, Mike Jacobs left the way clear for another championship bout. Boxer Apostoli won half of the first eight rounds. In the ninth a solid left hook opened a long gash over Thil’s right eye. By the next round so much blood was running down Thil’s face and trickling through the hair on his chest that Referee Arthur Donovan stepped in, gave Apostoli Thil’s title on a technical knockout.

Welterweights (147 Ibs.) have only one champion, Chicago’s clever 27-year-old Barney Ross who has held the title before and since he abdicated his lightweight title two years ago. Current ranking contender is fierce-faced Ceferino Garcia, a Filipino sugar-cane cutter armed with a looping right-hand punch supposedly suggestive of cane cutting and known as the “bolo punch.” Two years ago in a nontitle fight Garcia knocked Ross down in the first round, but Ross outboxed him for the decision on that occasion. He did so again in a second (over-the-weight) meeting two months later. Last week, with his title at stake, Champion Ross outboxed and gamely outfought Challenger Garcia until the twelfth round. Then, fatigued and bruised by Garcia’s punishing gloves, he fought gamely on, contrived by a magnificent display of ring generalship to keep out of danger until the finish, brought the stands to their feet in admiration.

Lightweight (135 Ibs.) champion is coltish Lou Ambers (Luigi D’Ambrosio), who won the title from aging Tony Canzoneri, some of whose tricks he learned as a sparring partner. Ambers began his career as the “Herkimer Hurricane.” As champion he is such a methodical and cautious defender of that valuable but easily liquidated asset, his title, that spectators now greet his appearances with boredom. Last week he and Puerto Rican Challenger Pedro Montanez carried deliberation to such a point that the crowd grew derisive. After 15 slow-moving rounds, customers hooted and cat-called when Ambers, beaming with delight at the preservation of his property rights, got a deserved decision.

Bantamweights (118 Ibs.) are apt to be the most spectacular of boxers. Their bout was the speediest in the Carnival, despite the fact that neither Champion Sixto Escobar nor Challenger Harry Jeffra regards boxing as a career. Before the bout Champion Escobar announced that he was earmarking his $12,500 share of the purse for a Puerto Rico sugar plantation he wants to buy. Challenger Jeffra, a Baltimore ex-caddy who had beaten Escobar in two nontitle bouts the past year but still wanted to be a golfer, said he would spend his $2,500 to promote his golfing career. After 15 rounds of spirted larruping which Jeffra seemed to enjoy, Sixto Escobar was closer to his sugar plantation. But Harry Jeffra’s hopes of golf had dimmed, for he had become the new bantamweight champion of the world.