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THE SR.TURD.llY EVENING POST 17
eye itself hardly swole at all, and the next morning
the black and blue was all gone. But the punch left
a funny kind of red line down my cheek, from under
the eye to the point of my jaw, and the spot where
he hit me was sore for a week.
The Jeffries crouch was famous in the papers next
morning. There was a lot of whoop-to-do about it
being a new style of fighting. Some of the experts
talked wise about it-said it would never get me very
far. Some said it was marvelous. But even the wise
guys couldn't say I hadn't licked Fitz with it.
Fitz himself thought he hit me a lot more than he
really did, that night. My body is short-coupled
and my hips are high, so that a lot of the time when
Fitz thought he was body-punching, he was really
hitting me on the hips.
"Jim," he said afterward, "you got the 'ardest
belly I ever 'it! I 'ammered your belly all night, an'
all I did was 'urt me 'ands ! "

B~ing Up in the Lights
E MADE another famous crack about me, then,
H talking to the newspapermen. "You can 'it
'im," he said, "but y' cawn't 'urt 'im." If he'd
known how I came to learn my crouch, he wouldn't
have said I couldn't be hurt. I never did tell Fitz
about him hitting my hips, though, because l'd as
Coney Island, November 3rd, 1899, Where Jeffries Defended His Championship for the First Time lief all other :fighters felt the same way Fitz did about
body-punching me.
Ten days later I signed to fight Tom Sharkey
Fitz hit me only two real punches, all that fight. matter how bad he looked, Bob Fitzsimmons was again, twenty-five rounds, five-ounce gloves, and the
I could have knocked him out in the second round. I nobody to fool with. I tried him with a left to the purse cut 75-25. But the fight was dated for the
finished him in the end with a push in the face. chin-not a hard punch, just short and sudden. I fall, five months away.
All that is true, but it don't tell the truth about saw him jerk. I saw his eyes get glassy. Fitz was T began finding out what it was like to be up in the
that fight. Fitz was always there-he was there gone. I "pulled" my right hand, right in the middle lights.
every minute, till I finally got to him-and from the of a punch. I didn't hit him. But he was still on his Brady had already printed posters billing "James
second round on, he raked me over with every punch feet and I had to lay him on the canvas. I cupped J. Jeffries, Champion of the World," to show in his
he had. He landed only two bad ones, but there was my right hand and pushed him over. He went down theaters, and we opened in the Music Hall, in Phila-
dynamite in Bob's knuckles, every punch he threw. in a sprawl. delphia, two days after I won the title. Brady kept
I've never said Bob Fitzsimmons was a push- me on the road for better than six weeks. Boxing on
The Blow That Beat Fitzsimmons over-he's one fighter I never underrated-but that the stage, umpiring ball games, showing up at after-
was the way I stopped him. A push in the face. When theater parties-I was on the go all the time. I'll
E CAME out slashing me with his left in the sec- George Siler finished counting, I was champion of never forget the home-coming celebrations in Los
H ond round-a fast, punishing left that stood the the world. Angeles, and in that old Reliance Club. Little Gene
mob up, yelling. But he was hitting me on the fore- I came out of the fight with plenty of bruises, that Van Court, up in Oakland, had promised that if I
head and the top of the head. I fought in my crouch, one bad cut and a black eye. One of Bob's punches- licked Fitz, he would go out and get pie-eyed, but
boring in. Toward the end of that round, I clipped one that I didn't notice when I took it-hit some when I showed up there, he asked me, very serious,
him in the . mouth with my left and knocked him kind of a nerve over my right eye, and it blacked all if I'd let him off. I sure did; I don't think Gene
down. He rolled over and got up. He was glassy- that side of my face. Along sometime after mid- ever took a drink in hi life.
eyed when he stumbled in to clinch; I could have night-don't think I didn't put on a party that Well, anyway, a lot of this was okay, but I don't
stepped back, slipped him the right and knocked him night-I got to a Turkish bath and fixed it up. The think it was ever as good (Continued on Page 67)
out. I didn't do it. They say a :fighter don't have
time to think when he's fighting, but I thought that
one out.
After the round, Delaney said: '' Good Lord, you
let him get away!"
I didn't say anything, but I'd let Fitz get away
on purpose. In the split second that I ha.d him
readied for a knockout, it just came to me that if I
tipped him over then, I'd never get credit for it.
People would have said : "Fitz must have been
washed up, or Jeff wouldn't have got to him so
quick." In the time it took to pull a punch, all that
came to me-and I let Fitz clinch. I took a cha.nee
and let him stay.
Delaney told me I . was in front through the third
and fourth. Fitz went on throwing punches, but I
stayed in my crouch, kept my left in his belly and
made him miss quite a lot. He went wild with it; he
wasn't used to shooting a punch at a big lummox,
and then finding the lummox wasn't there. He
showed everything he had in the fifth. He hit me
with the first bad punch-a right to the eye that cut
a gash deep through the eyebrow. Seems to me the
cut went clear to the bone, but it didn't bleed much.
Remember that beef-brine pickling I'd used? He
got in the next bad punch in the sixth. He sank his
left hand in my belly-when that one landed, I knew
it. But he couldn't stop me. He was poison every
minute, but from the eighth round to the end, I
think old Fitz knew he was licked.
"Left to the body, right to the jaw." That's the
way most of the experts called the knockout, but it
was not correct.
Fitz was in bad shape, coming out for the eleventh. COURTE SY GENE YAN COURT
but I didn't give him any rush. Jack had given me Jeffries and His Trainers at Jlllenhurd. Left to Right (Standing) , Dick Toner, Tommy Ryan, the Cham=
the office to be careful, the way I'd told him to. No pion, Billy Delaney and Martin Dowling. Jack Jeffries and Ernest Roeber, the Wrestler, are Seated