Eagan Out

As a middleweight Army boxer, Eddie Eagan won the championship of the Inter-Allied game sin 1919. As an Olympic light-heavyweight he won the championship in 1920. At Yale he was U.S. amateur heavyweight champion, and as a Rhodes scholar in 1924 Eagan won his boxing "blue" at Oxford, coached his teammate and pal "The Fighting Marquess" (of Clydesdale), now Duke of Hamilton.* As a successful Manhattan lawyer and a lover of boxing, Eagan won another plum in 1945: boxing commissioner of New York State.

But last week Eddie Eagan finally took a count of ten. He resigned his job, and the ink was barely dry before Governor Dewey appointed his successor: Hotelman Robert Christenberry, 52, whose favorite indoor sport is watching wrestling matches on television.

The shift came at a time when boxing's reputation was at its most unsavory low; in the past 19 months three boxers have died of injuries suffered in New York rings. The International Boxing Club, which controls the boxing arenas (and therefore the boxers) in most big U.S. cities, was under heavy fire for its habit of refusing fights to boxers who do not sign an exclusive contract with I.B.C. And Congress was getting ready for a full investigation of I.B.C.'s monopoly.

No one would put the full blame for boxing's sorry state on ex-Commissioner Eagan. But he was never one to crack the whip over boxing's hoodlums. Wrote New York Herald Tribune Sport Columnist Red Smith: "Eddie Eagan is a genuinely sweet guy. He is profoundly honest and profoundly sincere, diffident, humble and considerate. The first two qualities are indispensable in a boxing commissioner; probably the other three are a handicap." Smith also had a warning for Christenberry: "This veteran hotelman will find the fight mob noisier than convention drunks, less manageable than a weekend football crowd, and accomplished in more devious dodges than an absconding deadbeat."

Last week, less than 48 hours after he had taken office, Christenberry got a fine example of just what Columnist Smith was talking about: the featherweight championship fight between Sandy Saddler and Willie Pep. After nine rounds of butting, thumbing, gouging--and one wild wrestling spree which brought the referee down in a free-for-all tangle--Pep sullenly threw in the towel.

Boxing Commissioner Christenberry demanded a full report from the principals, the referee and the judges. It looked as though Wrestling Fan Christenberry might have to give boxing's dirty linen a much-needed airing.

-Eagan's companion in a round-the-world tour, during which they fought the best amateurs in the British Empire.

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