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THE SllTUI{D.R.Y
EVENING POST
9 1
Foun4ed A D 1728 1,y Benj. Franklin
Volume 208 5c. THE_ COPY PHIL.llDELPHI.ll, P.ll., JULY 6, 1935 Number I
TE T p
l
With EDDY ORJCU1I1r
OME of the stories are true. the bag about those old times, I'll throw in
When I crawled through the ring ropes with him and give it all a good going-over.
Sat Reno, twenty-five years ago this When I retired, back in 1904, a lot of the
Fourth of July, I guess I was tagged with the experts claimed I was unbeatable-that I
biggest collection of stories that had ever was· just na.turally so big and fast and tough
been told or printed about a :fighter. If it and strong that there was no use expecting
hadn't been for the stories, maybe I wouldn't any other :fight r to beat me. I never did
have been in the Ting against Jack Johnson agree with that.
that day. I was the undefeated champion of I was not a "natural." I was a "made"
the old-line heavyweights-the line of Cor- :fighter.
bett, Fitzsimmons, Choynski, .Ruhlin and The night I fought Fitzsimmons for the
Tom Sharkey. Building me up to the first title, I was twenty-four years old, weighed
big-money :fighter of the modern days, they better than two hundred pounds, could run
dug up all the old-time yarns about me and the hundred in under eleven seconds, and
invented a lot of others. could do the standing high jump to the
They peddled plenty of stories before I height of my shoulders. I fought from a
ever got in that ring at Reno, and before crouch that made it hard to hit me where it
nightfall, that Fourth of July, a lot more hurt; Fitz was the greatest body puncher
stories had started going the rounds. there was, but he wrecked his hands on me
People still ask me: '' Is it true they slipped that night. I fought with my left hand ex-
you the peter just before the Johnson :fight? . tended, and I had a knockout in it that never
Were you doped?" They still ask : "Is it true traveled more than a few inches. But how
that back in your :fighting days you dared much of that could you call natural?
Johnson to battle it out in a saloon basement,
and Johnson wouldn't?" They ask if it's Wha t the R ecord Books Don,t Show
true that I knocked out Jim Corbett when I'
was his sparring partner at Carson City.. T WAS no more natural for me to run the
They want to know if it's true that I bet I hundred, barefoot, in ·eleven seconds, than
· against myself, the first time I fought Fitz- it· was for any other two-hundred-pounder.
simmons, and if it's true that I claim I I'd worked for years to build up that speed.
knocked him out with a push in the face. The crouch and that left hand weren't nat-
"Is it true?" people ask. ural; I'd spent hundreds of hours of drilling,
Well, some of the stories are true-that's trying out this idea and that, sweating my
the only answer that covers them all. My head off and taking plenty of punches, before
angle on them would have to be my own, I had them readied up for a man like Fitz-
though-the :fighter's angle. I'd have to tell simmons. I trained like a horse. When I
things the way I saw them, and I saw them didn't train-well, I went in untrained
from inside those ropes. against Jim Corbett once, and he boxed the
ears off me for twenty-three rounds, before I
_!'low it Can be Told :finally got to him. It wasn't just natural for
me to lick the other boy.
'M NOT the only man that knows what it If I'd been a natural-born :fighter, I might
I feels like to be champion of the world. have been a killer in the ring-I had the
But I'm the only guy who knows exactly strength for it. But I thank God I didn't
what old Bob Fitzsimmons looked like to have that temperament. I only once went in
young Jim Jeffries, in the ring at Coney the ring angry, wanting to hurt the other
Island. And I'rri the only guy that knows fellow. I only once tried to hit the other boy
what it was like to be James J. Jeffries, hope as hard as I could-and that time I missed.
of the white race, when they rang the bell at I worked out in training with the roughest
Reno on July 4, 1910. :fighters I could hi.re, but I never in my life
After the Reno thing, there was a long time knocked out a sparring partner, and never
when I didn't want to talk; there wasn't tried to.
much I could have said, anyway, without I fought only one prelim in my career, and
sounding like a bum sport. But that's all I got to the top in ten starts after that. The
over with now-twenty-five years gone by- record book makes it look quick and easy-
and 1f there's anybody I'm sore at, I don't like I was some kind of a ring wonder. But
know who it is. Reno don't hurt me, now, the work I did doesn't show in the book.
any more than the last sock old Fitz hit me ROBERT A, MILLER, LOS · ANGELES I fought my first pro fight when I was sixteen
with. If anybody gets a kick out of punching 1935 years old, and I put in eight years of the
