Some Sting for September

Chances are, the sellout crowd would have come anyway. Toronto's citizens are soft touches for sports; they would have packed the Maple Leafs' ballpark for a dog show--especially one that got the magnificent ballyhoo laid down for last week's hoked-up "world heavyweight championship" squabble. The figures: that elegant gypsy, Light Heavyweight Champion Archie Moore, and Canadian Heavyweight Champion James J. Parker, otherwise known as the Saskatoon Statue.

Gaudy Pitchmen. The show was the joint effort of some of the most gaudy pitchmen in the fight racket. There was ancient Jack Kearns, owner and groom to seven whilom world champions, the man who took so much money out of Shelby. Mont, when Jack Dempsey beat Tommy Gibbons in 1923 that he almost broke the town. There was fat Jack Solomons of London, the ex-fishmonger, determined to give the brawl some real English class. There was a Canadian mining promoter named David Rush, a talented sport with an improbable aptitude for turning penny stocks into folding money.

Almost as if the promoters could not quite count on their fighters, the show started long before the bout. Ringside sportswriters were asked to turn out in formal clothes, and many of them went along with the gag. The aisles were thick with red carpeting, as if Governor General Vincent Massey himself was about to grace some extraordinary state affair. But when the houselights darkened and spotlights shone on the home-team dugout, the only notable to appear was James J. Parker, proud in a blue silk robe trimmed with white. He marched to the ring, wary-eyed and handsome, protected, for the time being, by his seconds and five skirling bagpipers from Canada's 48th Highlanders. Next came Archie, his entourage six uniformed U.S. airmen and his only music the raucous booing of a home-town crowd. As Archie stepped through the ropes to shed his cerise-and-green cape along with his shimmering black-and-gold robe, his natty mustache and carefully trimmed imperial chin tuft quivered with scorn for the ill-mannered fans. He was more than ready.

Sweet-Scented Clubs. As for the fight itself, "Doc" Kearns and Co. need not have worried about the talents of such an old (42) trouper as Archie Moore. With a skill perfected in tank-town arenas and sweet-scented boxing clubs all over the world, Archie wasted no time half-blinding the Saskatoon Statue with slicing jabs to the eye. Then, the fight well in hand, he carried his man for nine rounds, gave the crowd its $148,500 worth before the referee mercifully stopped the slaughter. "I could have finished him in the eighth," Archie confided later, "but I stepped back just to show the crowd I had some sportsmanship."

Time is certainly running out, even for so able a performer as Archie, but if last week's scrap did nothing else, it demon strated that he Still has plenty of sting left, even after the awesome sledgehammering he took from Rocky Marciano last September. Besides netting him a neat $51,975, the Parker fight served no tice that Archie Moore will be no push over when ex-Olympian Floyd Patterson, the hot young (21) pretender, fights him for the official world heavyweight title in September.

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