Blow-by-Blow

Eddie Eagan won the U. S. amateur heavyweight championship in 1918, the Olympic light heavyweight championship in 1920. He went to four colleges* Denver University, Yale, Harvard (where he studied law) and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Now, at 33, Eddie Eagan feels that he has known and fought enough people to write his autobiography.-- Eddie Eagan was born in Denver in 1898. A cowboy named Abe Tobin taught him how to box when he was 14. In high school Eddie Eagan was interested in history. He observed that most U. S. heroes started out as lawyers, determined to do likewise. Admiring the deeds of Frank Merriwell, hero of boys' books by Author Gilbert Patten, he decided to emulate Hero Merriwell also. He got a scholarship at Denver University. While he was there, Jack Dempsey came to town. They boxed an exhibition match. Eagan gave Demp sey a hard punch on the jaw. "He [Dempsey] hummed the tune 'Everybody Two-Step,' keeping time with his whole body. . . . Then something fell on my head! It felt like a rafter from the roof. . . ." In the War, Eddie Eagan blacked both eyes of a top-sergeant named Boyle in his San Francisco training camp. He went abroad after the Armistice, fought in Franco-American amateur bouts in Paris. Later he joined the class of 1921 at Yale, won the U. S. amateur heavyweight championship when he was a freshman. At Oxford he coached the Marquis of Clydesdale in boxing, then went world-touring with him. While at Oxford, Eddie Eagan met the Prince of Wales. "The Prince soon put me at my ease. He asked many questions about boxing and also about my life at Oxford. The Prince is a staunch Oxonian. . . ." Tex Rickard and many another pro moter invited Eddie Eagan to turn pro fessional. Unlike most good amateur fighters, Eddie Eagan did not do it. but he trained with famed prizefighters like Mike McTigue, Gene Tunney. Cat-footed, slow and soft of speech, gentle as a St. Bernard, he is recognized and received in social and sporting circles almost as though he had been the Champion.

A member of the New York Bar, married (to a daughter of Soapman Sidney Morse Colgate), Eddie Eagan has done no fighting since 1928. Last winter he was a member of the winning four-man U. S. bobsled team in the Winter Olympic Games. Fighting for Fun, a blow-by-blow biography of a unique career, appeared serially in the Saturday Evening Post.

* FIGHTING FOR FUN--Eddie Eagan--Mac-mill an ($2.50).

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