BOXING.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2463, 30 March 1909, Page 2

BOXING.

SAM FITZPATRICK AND JACK JOHNSON. WHAT MANAGER DID FOR PUGILIST/ Robert Edgren, New York’s, recognised sporting authority, writing in the “Evening World” of that city on December 30, says:— w “How does it feel to become famous in an hour ? Jack Johnson knows. “A year ago Johnson was just one of the ordinary negro heavy-weight fighters, picking up a precarious living by an occasional fake bout with some secondrate heavy-weight black or white. - “To-day he is on the toil of the heap. Ho can dictate to all others, for he has what they want—the championship title. He can. made'money by just turning over his hand. Theatrical managers are' ready with contracts. Fight promoters offer matches on, his own terms. He poses for moving pictures and gets paid for « it. Patent medicine fakers and ‘beauty doctors’ will pay him for the use of liis name in advertising-their wares. - -• •' ' ‘ ■ . . “And a year ago Jack Johnson was living on ‘touches.’Quite a contrast—today and a year ago. “This means some prosperity for Sam Fitzpatrick, too. Sam needs it as well as Johnson. Since the Peter Jackson days Sam hasn’t been picking gold up in the streets. Everybody: - who. knows Fitzpatrick is glad to see him win out. It’ll be wine for Sam now instead of beer ■ and cheese in a back room. He deserves it. for. lie. surely stuck to Jack Johnson when the big negro wasn’t anything of "a , money 1 maker. "He took Johnson to -England when he had to borrow the fare/ and stuck when he couldn’t get a match to lick a postage stamp. He took/ that dialf-around-the-worki jaunt, to Australia—and there Johnson made good: all of Sam Fitzpatrick’s planning—won - outr--becaine hr a single hour a great -money maker. ' “Good luck for Sam now,- providing that he has Johnson sewed up tight—, hound with, an unbreakable contract.Hh’li- need that—for every manager? of - fighting in theyrorld will try 'to ‘grab? the African-a way- from him.” “ ■ v- - Wonder what the New York scribe •and /American people; generally will say (remarks an . Australian, writer) when they- learn how, the big ingrate dropped Sam Fitzpatrick (even as he .“'shunted” McLean in Sydney a couple of years ' ago) immediately he got. oyer the championship threshold. In my remarks regarding the matter a few weeks hack J just put the case plainly as. it niSrtca.rnVl to-tyia .afirlfciaii

peared necessary, preferring to leave v readers to draw their own conclusions. It will be observed that the New! York writer tells of Sam Fitzpatrick doing much more than I knew »iiy thing-' about. (Sam is a quiet, peaceable fellow, who would sacrifice anything almost to avoid trouble, otherwise he might, very profitably, nave followed advice tendered him . here a few days her fore his departure, in which case Johnson’s return to America must have been delayed indefinitely. I had a communication from Fitz at Brisbane and Fiji, but up to the Makura’s departure from the last-named port there was not the slightest sign of things; “straightening out,” as he had hoped, and the good-natured fellow was just beginning to realise that the harvest, labored for so long, andfin connection with the bringing about of which liejiad sunk all his savings, was gone completely for ever.