Light and Heavy

In Manhattan a new lightweight champion, Barney Ross (Bernard Rasofsky), faced an old one, Tony Canzoneri, whose title he had won in Chicago last June. Canzoneri, who felt that he had been "jobbed" out of a decision the first time, was still confident. He landed the first effective punch, a left jab to the jaw, followed by a left to the stomach. Ross countered carefully with a jab to the head, a right to the body. Before the round was over, the crowd of 35,000 was sure of what it had come to see--a fast, intelligent battle between an aggressive fighter and a savage counterpuncher.

In the seventh, Ross opened a cut under Canzoneri's right eye. In the ninth Canzoneri accidentally hit below the belt; the flurry of rights to the face with which he followed did no good because Referee Arthur Donovan scored the round for Ross. By the eleventh, tough little Canzoneri could see that Ross, who had never fought beyond ten rounds, was not tiring as most people expected. Toward the end of the round, when Ross had him pinned against the ropes, he whipped out a desperate left hook that caught the champion squarely on the jaw. Ross stood up straight and shook his head but before Canzoneri could hit him again, the bell ended the round. Ross had the best of the last four rounds, but how close the fight had been showed in the decision. One judge voted for each man; Referee Donovan's vote-he had scored four rounds for Canzoneri, three even, eight for Ross--gave Ross the decision.

Enraged because his son had lost, Canzoneri's grizzled Italian father climbed quickly into the ring, seized his son's stool to throw at the judges. Police restrained him. Fat Mrs. Sarah Rasofsky chuckled while the crowd cheered. Since gangsters murdered Mr. Rasofsky several years ago, her pugilist son has supported her. She goes to most of his fights, says: ". . . If I look at the other fellow all the time, maybe I will hypnotize him. At Barnele I don't look." Of her son's inclination to spend all his earnings on luxuries like having his Chicago barber, Harry Gilbert, come East to cut his hair last week, Mrs. Rasofsky disapproves. Her recollection of how his career began: "In a tough neighborhood we lived there was a lot of kids, bums, so he organized himself a little gang, they should give them back. And that is how it came in his head to be a fighter. I don't think he did a great thing for the world like Lindy. But I am not sorry. Only he should not get hurt."

In Chicago, onetime Heavyweight Champion Jack Sharkey, fatter and more surly looking than last July when he lost his title to Primo Camera, climbed into a ring opposite clownish young King Levinsky. Thirty seconds after the gong surly Jack Sharkey was flat on his back for a count of seven. Soon his left eye was swollen, he moved groggily. Warming up, Levinsky floundered in fiercely, sometimes wildly beating the air, sometimes carefully beating Sharkey's pate. When Sharkey landed a nasty loin-blow, Levinsky returned it. When Sharkey won his only decisive round -- the seventh -- Levinsky came back to pump blow after blow at Sharkey's head, then at his body. After ten fast savage rounds, the judges unanimously gave the decision to Chicago's Levinsky, highly elating the onetime fish peddler's Maxwell Street friends, many of whom had climbed over Comiskey Park's fence to watch the bout.

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