Fist Facts

> Boxing last week got an authoritative bible. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of Briton John Broughton's first code of the "squared circle" (later amended by the revised London Prize Ring Rules and the Marquis of Queensberry code), Broadway's dynamic little Nat Fleischer, No. 1 U.S. fistic authority, published the All-Time Ring Record Book.*

Besides tracing the history of fisticuffs from the reign of James Figg (1719-34), first English champion, Historian Fleischer has dug up the records of some 1,500 of the world's prizefighters, the measurements of 32 famed heavyweights, the odds on every heavyweight championship bout from Sullivan-Corbett to Louis-Nova, a detailed explanation of the financial deal on the Johnson-Jeffries fight, and many another fist fact. Samples:

> In 51 fights, Joe Louis has earned $2,263,784.28.

> Biggest single purse ever received by a fisticuffer: $990,445 that went to Gene Tunney for outpointing Jack Dempsey in Chicago in 1927.

>Biggest pugilist in ring history: Charles Freeman, who stood 6 ft, 10 1/2 in., weighed 320 lb.

> Largest crowd at a U.S. prizefight was not the 120,757 that saw the first Dempsey-Tunney world-championship fight in Philadelphia (1926), but the crowd that watched Tony Zale knock out Billy Pryor last summer in Milwaukee. It was a free show put on by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The attendance: 135,132.

> First Negro to be a world's champion: Bantamweight George Dixon (1890).

> Shortest prizefight on record lasted 11 seconds; longest, 7 hr. 19 min.

> There are three recorded instances of double knockouts (opponents knocking out one another simultaneously).

* O'Brien Suburban Press ($5).

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