Career

ln a shabby, smalltime sporting-club in Brooklyn, 2,000 representatives of the fertile social sediment in which prizefighting has its roots last week watched a preliminary bout between two light heavyweights. One was a shaky, timid Negro, the other a slow-footed, lumbering white man with a scarred face and a flat nose. In the first round, the Negro fell without being hit, then, in the second, took a left hook on the face and was counted out. Like most cheap preliminaries, it was mediocre entertainment and the crowd booed. Unlike most cheap preliminaries, it was described at length in metropolitan sport pages, much discussed by prizefight enthusiasts. This was because the winner was Paul Berlenbach. onetime (1925-26) light heavyweight champion of the world. As many has-beens have done before him, but with more public sympathy than most. he was beginning to try to "come back." Berlenbach was a deaf mute until he was 14. Then a kite he was flying brushed against a high tension wire and the shock made him able to hear and speak, though with a difficulty which was later to make people think him "punch drunk." In 1923, when he was a Manhattan taxidriver, Berlenbach learned to wrestle and won an Olympic wrestling championship. That same year, turned fighter, he developed a dangerous left hook, with it knocked out 22 opponents, and won the decision from Light Heavyweight Champion Mike McTigue. Never a good boxer. Berlenbach was badly beaten by Jack Delaney five years ago (TIME, July 26. 1926). For his fight with Delaney, Berlenbach received $125,000. For knocking out dusky Six-Finger Eddie Clark last week, he got $40. Critics agreed, after watching his ring tactics (more awkward than ever) and his wild left hook (no longer dangerous), that he was unlikely to come far back. Still, they wrote about him. And he got a contract to fight again, this time for $100.

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