The Kill

The Milwaukee's smoky Auditorium, the rumbling shouts rose to a roar. The crowd was clamoring for the kill. Jackie Darthard, a promising 18-year-old Negro middleweight,* was down twice in the third round. At the bell, he stumbled woozily to his corner. To test his reactions, his manager threw questions at him quickly. "What's ya name. . . What town we in. . . What round is it?" Darthard muttered: "Cut out the jive, I'll get this guy." The guy he had to get was 160-lb. Bert Lytell, also a Negro and more noted for shiftiness than for a punch. But after the sixth round, Darthard looked in terrible shape. His manager tried questions again and got only a thick-tongued reply: "All I know is I'm fighting in Milwaukee." Then Darthard began tossing crazily on his stool and complaining that his head ached. He slumped over, mumbling incoherrently. They put him on a stretcher and carried him, unconscious, into a dressing room.

A few hours later, he was dead of a brain hemorrhage.

It was the third pro ring death this year. Even promoters were beginning to worry a bit -- if not over the victims, at least over what state boxing commissions might do to the boxing business if the public got aroused enough at the needless killings.

California has ruled that all pro boxers must fight with 8-oz. gloves instead of the usual six-ouncers. Michigan has reduced the three-minute round to two minutes.

Connecticut has now ruled that on knock downs a boxer must stay down for a count of eight. Illinois recently announced that all boxers must take a rigid medical exam (including skull X ray) once a month and before each fight. (Jackie Darthard, it turned out, had complained of "an awful headache" after a fight last fall.) Wisconsin, too, had tightened its rules.

Jackie Darthard simply had the bad luck to fight there before the new regulations went into effect.

* Rated No. 5 in the U.S. by Ring magazine.

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