The Defeated

There was no training table in the dingy dressing room, and so the aging (30), beaten fighter had to lie across three wooden folding chairs. He had a bloodstained towel around his head, and he pressed an ice bag against a puffing eye. Except for a short-lived moment four years ago when some thought he had the stuff to go somewhere, Heavyweight Bob Baker, a huge, long-muscled young man from Pittsburgh, had been nothing but a ham-and-egg fighter. Last week, whipped by flashy Eddie Machen, 25, Baker realized that after 59 pro bouts, his pantry was empty.

"I know when I'm through." said Baker. "It's when your will is gone. I got in that ring tonight and I thought, 'Well, here's another one, and if you win it, well, maybe you get another couple of fights, and if you don't, maybe you're through.' Five or six years ago this kid wouldn't have done this to me--step in with a couple of feints and jab me on the nose or mouth.

"I had the good paydays. I went down to Texas to fight that kid. Roy Harris, that's his name. It was the first mixed bout in Texas. I knew I was going to lose. I was fighting a white boy, and no colored man is going to beat a white boy in Texas. I hit him and he went down, and I thought, 'Why, this boy can't fight at all.'

"But I can hear that crowd, and they're counting on this boy. And I said, 'Kid, please get up.' I knew that if he didn't get up they weren't going to let me out of that town alive. I love my wife and I love my kid, and most of all I love me. And I told the kid to get up, and I'm thankful that he did. And after that I was careful not to hit him. So he won.

"I might fight again. A ham-and-egger for a good purse. But I'm not going to fight any more good boys. I'm not a fighter any more. That kid tonight, I don't know. But I don't think he was trying to knock me out. And I'm glad. It'd be an awful thing for a fighter to end up with someone standing over him counting ten."

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