Brouillard v. Jeby

When Mickey Walker retired as middle-weight champion, his title went, after an elimination tournament last winter, to a lean, stubborn, hard-muscled New Yorker named Ben Jeby, who in all his fights showed much more courage than finesse. Last week in New York Jeby had his first chance to defend his championship against a really high-grade opponent. Barrel-chested Lou Brouillard, of Worcester, Mass., much the same type fighter except that he is lefthanded, came running out of his corner in the first round and planted two lefts on a chin that Jeby's previous opponents have found impervious to punishment. Jeby backed away and clinched. By the end of the round, Brouillard was breathing hard but Jeby had absorbed half a dozen more lefts to the face and there was a small cut on his left cheek.

By the end of the sixth round, the cut on Jeby's cheek was an ugly purple welt, his large, hooked nose was bleeding and everyone in the crowd of 12,000 except his managers knew he was a beaten man. At the beginning of the seventh, they counseled him, cruelly, to "go on in." Stumbling, Jeby tried to obey. Brouillard, still fresh after six rounds of arduous butchery, smashed his ribs and then his face with jolting lefts. Jeby stepped backwards, staggered, slipped slowly down to one knee, then fell flat on the canvas, face down. When Referee Pete Hartley's count reached eight, he dragged himself to one knee, then pitched forward while the count went on to ten.

The middleweight championship he won last week is the second title that ferocious, thick-shouldered Lou Brouillard has held in the two and a half years that he has been a professional fisticuffer. Born in Saint Eugene. Quebec, he was moved to Danielson, Conn., when he was nine. Three years ago. a peaceable weaver in a Connecticut cotton mill, he went to watch an amateur boxing tournament, substituted in a lightweight bout and won it. After six months as an amateur, he turned professional. When an opponent broke two ribs on his right side, he tried boxing lefthanded. Says he: "When the ribs are cured, I can't go back to fighting right-handed again. Je reste gaucher." Shortly after his first professional bout, Lou Brouillard won the welterweight (147 Ib.) championship, lost it three months later to Jackie Fields. Now 22 and 160 lb., he plans to win the light heavyweight championship from Maxie Rosenbloom next year. When he goes to a strange town to fight, Champion Brouillard makes a habit of selecting favorable sites for lunch-wagons. He owns one at Worcester, Mass., expects soon to have a chain.

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