Cat's Paw

The first and second rounds were about even In the third, Sharkey's left hand, quick and dangerous as a tiger's paw, be gan to flick Schmeling's nose. It nicked more frequently in the fourth and fifth, jarring Schmeling's jaw, stabbing his right eye. Schmeling began to come in more savagely in the sixth and seventh which was just what Sharkey, a smart counter-fighter, wanted. He moved away, boxing beautifully, stiffening his left arm against Schmeling's head, shifting so skilfully that Schmeling, in his eagerness to land a solid punch, several times fell into the strategic blunder of leading with his right. Schmeling likes to let his opponents work hard in the early rounds, cut them down slowly when they are tired. In the eighth round against Sharkey, he began to increase his pace as his admirers expected. Blocking punches with his gloves and el bows, he drove Sharkey around the ring crowded him into the corners, smashed short punches to the side of his jaw. Shar key's left eye became swollen, discolored. Schmeling had a cut lip. In the ninth round then the tenth and the eleventh, it looked as though Sharkey were tiring, as though Schmeling had planned his fight well and might even be able to win as he pleased in the last rounds. Instead, Schmeling came out a shade more cautiously in the twelfth and Sharkey's savage, feline left paw began to flick his face savagely again. fought. The last Schmeling four was rounds fresher in were the last round, the fastest of a sharp but not particularly dramatic match. When the bell ended it. he ran lightly to his corner. Sharkey followed him. When Schmeling sat down on his stool, Sharkey placed one foot on the lowest rung and leaned down to talk. What he talked about was not revealed but his gesture was so nonchalant that it was seized upon afterwards as a significant item for the furious arguments that followed the fight. Four out of the last five heavyweight championship fights have had acrimonious aftermaths but last week's was based on something more tangible than a hypothetical poisoning (Dempsey- Tunney), a "long count" (Tunney-Dempsey), a questionable foul (by Sharkey in the fight which gave Schmeling the heavyweight championship two years ago"). Last week a large number of the spectators thought the decision went to the wrong man. While Sharkey leaned over Schmeling, Announcer Joe Humphreys collected three slips of paper on which the two judges, sitting on opposite sides of the ring, and the referee, long-legged Gunboat Smith, had written down the name of the man they thought had won. One of the judges wrote down "Schmeling. other judge and Gunboat Smith wrote "Sharkey." Most spectators at last week s fight were sitting far back from the ringside. They got a good view of Sharkey's boxing at long range, thought he won easily. Most reporters and spectators sitting close to the ring thought Schmeling had done more damage, that Sharkey, after being ahead at the seventh round was beaten at the finish Radio Announcers Charles Francis Coe and Graham McNamee helped confirm the ringside impression that Schmeling had won. Mayor James J. Walker did not help matters by jumping into the ring and blurting through a microphone that "Schmeling should have won." Schmeling's nervous, hard-boiled little manager, Joe Jacobs, asserted that his fighter had been "robbed," implied that the New York Boxing Commission had used Sharkey as a cat's paw to fetch the world's heavyweight championship back to the U. S. The Commission promptly, indignantly suspended him tor his abusive talk. Observers suspected that the customary dispute would have its customary result: a return match before an even larger crowd than the one of 70,000 which last week amazingly filled Madison Square Garden's new saucer-shaped stadium at Long Island City. There were last week few available opponents for the deposed champion to meet. Two of the few, Mickey Walker onetime middleweight champion, and Ernie Schaaf, Boston stablemate of Jack Sharkey, stopped being eligible when both were beaten by supposed inferiors on the same night. In Manhattan, Schaaf lost a ten-round decision to Stanley Poreda of Jersey City. In Cleveland, Walker fought rubber-kneed Johnny Risko whom he had beaten twice before. Fat around the stomach, Walker was knocked down in the second round, lost the decision after twelve. Best prospect for Schmeling, when he sailed home last week, was a London bout with Negro Larry Gains of Canada, who lately thrashed huge Primo Carnera.

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