Dirtiest Game

In 1912, Benjamin Leiner, a skinny little Semite with a pallid, solemn face, had his first professional prizefight. Five years later he won the lightweight championship of the world by technically knocking out Freddie Welsh. In 1924, after a fight with Pal Moran in which he hurt his right hand but retained his championship, he retired. Said he: "My mother does not want me to fight any more."

At that time, Benjamin Leiner (Benny Leonard) had about $500,000 which he invested in real estate and a professional hockey team. A clean-cut little man with sleepy eyelids, confident, protruding underlip and well-defined paunch, he continued to be a familiar figure about training-camps, gymnasiums and other haunts of pugilists. Before every important fight he gave his expert opinion on who would win. In 1926 he allowed himself to be interviewed for Collier's. Said he: "My mother has pledged me against return to the ring. . . . They [promoters] know I've always kept my word. . . . I'll certainly keep it with my mother. . . . Unless you're a champion or a near champion, it's the dirtiest game in the world. . . ." A year ago Benny Leonard became boxing coach at the School of Business of the College of the City of New York.

Last week, aged 35 and four months, weighing what he said was 149 lb., and what some observers estimated as high as 165, not discouraged by the fact that all his oldtime opponents have retired (to become, variously, a boxing instructor, policeman, haberdasher, poolroom proprietor, truant officer, referee, ironworker, gambler, newspaper vendor, sporting goods salesman), Benny Leonard announced his return to the ring. His onetime manager, Billy Gibson, was in a private sanatorium, but Leonard has taken up with a new one--crafty Jack Kearn, onetime manager of Jack Dempsey, present manager of Mickey Walker. Manager Kearns planned a fight between Benny Leonard and Dave Shade in Chicago this month, which the Illinois Boxing Commission promptly refused to sanction; a subsequent campaign for the lightweight, welterweight and middleweight championships. Promoter Jimmy Johnston remembered he had a seven-year-old contract for a fight between Leonard and Walker, hoped to utilize it.

Said Benny Leonard: "I have lost some money. Who hasn't? But I still have plenty. One thing that had a lot to do with my decision to come back was the insistence of my friends. . . ." From Benny Leonard's mother, who still lives in Manhattan, nothing was heard.

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