Had Enough?

Three years ago Ferdinand Henry John ("Fritzie") Zivic decided to have a doctor straighten out his nose. He knew it was time to quit. Said Fritzie: "You know why fighters get started on comebacks . . . they got nuthin' to do so they drop around to the gyms and finally they say to themselves: 'Lookit those bums ... I can lick 'em myself!' So they go and become bums too. Not me ... I've never heard strange noises yet and I'm not going to ... two or three more fights, then it's all over."

Energetic Fritzie Zivic, onetime world's welterweight champion who had once licked pneumonia, Henry Armstrong and everything else in sight, began to retire--by slow degrees. He had three kids and enough money, he kept telling himself; he was always dabbling shrewdly in dry cleaning stores and peanut stands. He retired in Pittsburgh, retired again in California after his nose was pushed crooked again. His departure got so gradual it made the farewells of Patti, Sarah Bernhardt and Schumann-Heink look like hasty decisions.

After all, Fritzie figured, he had only been knocked out twice in his life, once by one Milt Aron, another time, with considerable insistence, by a third-rater named Laddie Tonelli. ("They coulda counted a thousand over me in fractions ... I was a goner.") When he fought a "retirement" fight in Memphis last year, a local newsman wired Zivic's home-town Pittsburgh Press to see whether it wanted a story about it. The reply: "Don't bother ... we have plenty of old ones in stock."

Last week Fritzie thought he was still full of fight, but the powerful National Boxing Association didn't. N.B.A. told him flatly that he should really quit--for the good of himself, the fans, and the take. Said an N.B.A. official:

"Zivic, as a master of the art of the foil, is able to spar his way out of physical harm's way. But in so doing, he leaves a trail of dissatisfied fans behind. ... He has had more than his day in the ring and his honored name can only be tarnished by a continuance of his present performances. ..." A Zivic fight in Tampa was called off.

Fritzie Zivic, now 33, veteran of 304 fights, and owner of a stable of 17 fighters, couldn't understand everybody's worries. Said he: "I've never been beaten so that I felt it more than a day or two. . . . My head has never hurt . . . I'm still all there." His dress was sharp, his nose potato-shaped, his ears cauliflowered. And he still intended to quit. Said he: "Maybe one more fight in Mexico City next month, then I'm gonna check out."

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