Heavyweights

Because their two previous fights had been peculiarly uneventful, the crowd in Madison Square Garden for last week's bout between Heavyweight Contenders Ernie Schaaf and Stanley Poreda was one of the smallest of the year. The fight was one of the most exciting. Poreda, a handsome, over-confident Pole, came out en- thusiastically for the first round. He outboxed Schaaf and continued to outbox him in the second until, when the round was more than half over, Schaaf landed the blow that really settled the fight. This was a short right uppercut which caught Poreda squarely on the jaw, landed him on the ring floor so suddenly that he forgot to stay down for a count of nine.

Poreda, wobbling badly, was floored again just before the bell but had sense enough to box his way through the third round. In the fourth Schaaf's huge right fist, hard and heavy as a stone, dropped him again. By the time the fifth round was over, the Pole was clearly ready for a knockout. Ready to supply it, Schaaf rushed out of his corner in the sixth, battered Poreda's head with left hooks, then landed one more smashing right. This time Poreda stayed down for nine full seconds. When he lurched up, still stubborn enough to be smashed once more, Referee Arthur Donovan stepped in front of him, awarded the fight to Schaaf.

The Schaaf v. Poreda fight, first of an "elimination" tournament conducted by Madison Square Garden to find a suitable opponent for Champion Jack Sharkey in June, served further to complicate the situation which currently exists among U. S. heavyweight pugilists. It might have helped clear things up except for the fact that one of Schaaf's two managers is Champion Jack Sharkey and the other is Champion Sharkey's manager, fat Johnny Buckley. Next bout on the Schaaf program would properly be against huge Primo Camera with the winner to meet Sharkey for the title. This prospect seemed drab because 1) Sharkey has already beaten Camera, 2) it would seem improper for Schaaf to fight his own comanager. As a preliminary step toward straightening out the difficulty, Manager Buckley last week agreed to cancel his contract with Schaaf.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.