Milk & Money

(See front cover)

Pugilism's fatted calf gets fatter every day. Since Heavyweight Champion Tunney retired (August 1928), and Arch-promoter Rickard died (January 1929), and Onetime-champion Dempsey went vaguely into promoting and got himself talked about for night-life and a chorus-girl (TIME, June 10), the chance has grown more and more solidly golden for some young man to smash his way forward and, while satisfying the popular demand for a Greatest Fighter of Them All, have a good time and amass a fortune.

The chill that fell over the boxing world when Promoter Rickard lay, with cheeks rouged and his best suit on, in a glass-covered box at Madison Square Garden, did begin to pass last week when showgirls from Florenz Ziegfeld's Whoopee turned out to sell tickets for a fight on June 27 in the Yankee Stadium. Although ostensibly to benefit New York poor children by swelling the Milk Fund, and although the world's championship will not be at issue, this fight loomed far more significantly than the inconclusive Dempsey-promoted by-play at Miami last winter between U. S. Heavyweights Stribling and Sharkey.

The two Milk Fund fighters are both foreigners. To become Champion, the winner would probably have to whip Sharkey, who "won" at Miami, and perhaps Dempsey, who has never formally "retired" since losing to Tunney. But one of these two foreigners is called Champion of Europe. And the other one looks and fights more like the Dempsey of old than any one since that Dempsey.

Schmeling. Max Siegfried Adolf Otto Schmeling would be a long name to in scribe on the Tunney-Muldoon trophy which indicates the championship of the world. But Herr Schmeling, who is as soft-spoken as Tunney and as agreeable as Carpentier, would not object to his three middle names being left out. He it was about whom the long, loud, prefight ballyhoo was mostly centred last week, for he it is who is dempseyesque.

He was training in Lakewood, N. J., on what is normally a stud farm. The finishing touches were being applied to his style -- a short left hook which many called vicious; the dempseyesque "weaving" which looks so well in the ring and keeps the other man guessing. Chiefly it is in the Schmeling right that the Schmeling might resides. It is swift, potent, and from it came all the early German knock outs which gave Schmeling fame and ideas. Black, red and yellow German flags fluttered all over the Lakewood camp because Herr Schmeling never forgets that he is a German. He likes it to be known that whenever he returns to his Fatherland, as he did after knocking out Johnny Risko last winter, he immediately calls on his mother near Berlin.

Like most Germans, Schmeling is musical although he plays no instruments. He was named Siegfried after a father who in turn was named after Composer Wagner's fire-braving hero. Sometimes at Lakewood Max Siegfried is called to dinner by the twanging of a ukulele.

His entrance into pugilism was casual. "One time," he says in recently but well learned English, "I was in Muhlheim. I walked into a gymnasium. There I saw two men boxing. I said, 'That seems like good fun. Let me try.' So they gave me some gloves and I boxed. I knock him out."

At one time Schmeling was an art student. He was also a miner, a structural iron worker, a copyboy in the advertising department of a German newspaper. He wanted to be a sailor but his mother said nein. Since he has learned English he revels in Conrad, Jack London, Western stories. He solemnly avers that in German he reads Gerhart Hauptmann and, of course, Goethe, Schiller.

After his first haphazard fisticuffing success Max became, in comparatively short time, Germany's champion.

He stands 6 ft., 1 in.; weighs a little over 185; is 23. For newsphotographers he poses willingly on horses, in trees, with dogs or cats, but never with a woman. Unmarried; he was once quoted as saying: ''Marriage is such a serious and important venture that one should contemplate it for a lifetime before deciding whether to make the plunge. That's what I'm engaged in doing."

Like many another boxer he plays much golf. He likes cinema and has spent much time studying movies of Jack Dempsey's fights. He wears a gold wristwatch with a black silk band. In his upper jaw he carries two large adjacent gold teeth. When he speaks he gesticulates gracefully.

Uzcudun. Paulino Uzcudun, "Champion of Europe," is training in Hoosick Falls, N. Y., birthplace of William F. Carey, who succeeded Promoter Rickard at Madison Square Garden. Last week Promoter Carey visited him there. Unlike Schmeling, Uzcudun, a Basque woodchopper who wore shoes for the first time at the age of 24, is almost always noisy. He likes to sing and dance, both of which he did last week in honor of the Carey visit. He claims to be the champion woodchopper of the world. When Max Schmeling heard this, he tried to chop wood, too, but desisted after he struck nearer his foot than the log. Pauline Uzcudun, sister of Paulino, is also a Basque woodchopper and weighs 220 Ib. Uzcudun likes to have women around his camp, big and little, relatives or not (see cut).

The Uzcudun style consists of many wild gyrations, of leading with rights. He is no boxer as Tunney was a boxer, but he is an oppugnant fighter with a fine disregard for other people's punches. He was assuring everyone who would listen last week that he would defeat Schmeling with no trouble. Schmeling said he would defeat Uzcudun, intended doing it with his left although he might with his right. Uzcudun's known ability to "take it" (stand punishment), and uncertainty whether Schmeling can "take it" or not, was what made Uzcudun a 7-to-5 favorite in last week's betting.

Campolo. Perhaps the most interested spectator of the Schmeling-Uzcudun duel will be one Victorio Maria Campolo who last week arrived with friends in the U. S. from the Argentine. He stands 6 ft., 6 1/2 in.; weighs 225 Ib.; scorns everybody's boxing ability but his own. Of his countryman Luis Firpo he said last week: "He is fat, he is disgusting, he weighs 275 pounds and looks like a wine barrel. But he intended coming to New York last spring anyway. He will not now because I am here."

Campolo enjoys the distinction of being already rich. Son of a South American cotton-grower he has had three automobiles since he first learned to drive. The late great Tex Rickard had heard of him but just as he intended bringing him to the U. S. Campolo was knocked out by Nebraska's Monte Munn. He intends retrieving his laurels next month by fighting the winner of the Heeney-Maloney fight He said that if he were knocked out in the U. S. he would immediately return to the Argentine.