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6 THE SATURDAY EVENING POST July 6, 19:SS

toughest kind of plugging before I got my shot at the I was pretty apt to be plug-
title. The plugging don't show in the record book, ging around the L.A. A. C.
but I did it. gym, learning how to :fight.
At sixteen I was a boilermaker-sounds tough and That gym is where I be-
grown-up, but I was ·only a kid. I'd worked in the gan developing the Jeffries
mines in Temecula, and done a lot of rough-and- I crouch-and I wish I had a
tumble wrestling down there-the miners were dime a word for all the hooey
mostly Cornishmen. I'd worked in the Santa Fe that's been printed about it.
shops. I'd taken a whirl at every kind of athletics The Jeffries crouch was
there was. I always liked that kind of thing, and not my natural style of :fight-
worked hard at it. I'd run foot races for money. ing. It was not invented for
There was a lot of professional foot racing in those me by De Witt Van Court, or
days, and it was always easy to get a bet against Tommy Ryan, or Billy De-
me, because I looked slow and heavy-I was always laney, or anybody else. It
big. The boys around the shop had fixed up a gym, was not a secret that I doped
down in East Los Angeles, and I'd boxed there every out in my head and practiced
chance I got, with anybody who wanted to put on behind closed doors. I got
the gloves with me. my crouch from a left hook
Charley Murray, a gambler, owned the gymnasium to the liver-and a hard left
building. He was a good scout and a good friend of to the liver will give anybody
mine-he'd backed me in several foot races-and he a crouch.
had the idea that I could fight. He got me my first I was boxing a friendly
professional bout. That first fight don't show in the bout with John Brink one
record book, either, but it was one of the wickedest night-Brink was coast ama-
I ever had. teur champion then, and he
"Sure," I said, when Murray asked me if I'd box had refereed my :fight with
Hank Griffin-I thought he just wanted us to spar Griffin. In a fast mixup, he
in the gym some night. When he had me sign an landed the toughest single
agreement-twenty rounds of :fighting, Queensberry blow I ever took.
rules, 75 per cent of the purse to the winner-I like
to have- got stage fright. What a Left Taught Me
I trained ten days, and I worked in the shops
every day, including the day of the :fight. I still had HEN Brink landed that
stage fright when I crawled through those ropes on W left to the liver, I
:fight night-that was my first ringside crowd, and I doubled up, half paralyzed.
thought everybody in Los Angeles was there. It was The pain cramped me, and
in the old Manitou Club. The mob jammed three everything went green in
sides of the ring, in the middle of a long narrow hall, front of my eyes. For maybe
but the ropes on the fourth side were only about a thirty seconds I boxed in a
foot from the wall of the building. Between looking daze. I covered by bending
COURTESY BILLY COE, LOS ANG E L E S
at the crowd and wondering how it would feel to get over and holding my right '
The Great Tommy Ryan in Later Years (Left ) Posed
bounced off that wall, I was good and nervous when With Billy Papke. Looking On is Kid (the Real) McCoy elbow over the cramp in my
the bell rang. side. I held Brink off by
Hank Griffin was a rangy Negro, plenty smart and driving my left hand at him.
plenty rough, but he very soon proved that he I still think that mother, laying· down the law at "Hold it, Jim!" Brink said, all of a sudden.
couldn't knock me out. He proved it by hitting me breakfast that morning, helped make me champion ''You're getting mad!''
with everything he had, as often as he pleased and of the world. I didn't know what the score was. Brink stepped
any place he wanted. I took it. I spent the next four and a half years learning back and hauled off the gloves. I found I could stand
everything I could about how to handle myself in the up and take a breath; I thought the punch had
.R Breakfast,Table Knockout ring. Billy Gallagher, the old-time welter, was coach . busted something inside me. And then I found out
at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and I worked out that when I was doubled up, shoving my left hand at
T SOUNDS funny to say it, but I took it and liked with him there three or four nights a week. De Witt Brink and :fighting him off me, I'd been hitting
I it. That way of looking at things had a lot to do Van Court came in when Gallagher left the club, and hard-so hard that Brink thought I was mad and
with my :finally getting to the top in the fight game. .it was De Witt that really started me out as a boxer; trying to hurt him.
I liked it because I was learning plenty. After the he was smart, knew :fighters, and was absolutely on Well, I never did tell Brink he'd hurt me-I never
nervousness wore off that first night, I got to enjoy- the level. I boxed at smokers for the club. I worked told anybody. But that punch of his taught me I
ing the smart way Griffin worked. I must have out with anybody that wanted me. I worked in the had one place where I couldn't take it, and his
looked terrible, and I took a pasting. But I kept shops all day, I hunted or :fished or tramped the hills throwing the gloves down taught me that I could
trying to :figure things out, watching what he did, on my days off, but after work and in the evenings cover that one spot and still hit hard. Finding out
learning stuff while I went along. And I began trying
to use it. That was the way I worked.
Along about the tenth round, I'd learned enough
to hand some of it back to the black boy. In the
fourteenth, I timed the way he bobbed his head
when he came in, and I caught him, coming in, with
a left-hand smash to the mouth. Gri:ffi.n hit the
ropes on the wall side of the ring. He hit the wall
and bounced off, and he was out in mid-air, like a
dead duck. I popped him on the fly with a right to
the chin, and he was all through when he hit the
floor.
They paid me my first million for that :fight. It
looked like a million to me then-five hundred
dollars; cash money. But my professional career
stopped short at breakfast time the next morning.
Mother looked up from the morning paper.
"Young man," she said, "you're not of age yet."
Mother looked at me very straight. She was a
gentle, quiet woman, and it must have looked funny
to see her bossing her two-hundred-pound boy.
"Until you're of age, you're under my care, Jim,"
she told me, "and I want no more of this."
I said: "All right, mother."
In our family a promise to mother was final. I
went back to work in the shops. A sixteen-year-old
kid with a K. 0. over Hank Griffin was worth money
around Los Angeles then, but I ,had to tell the Corbett and Sulliuan Watching the Young Jim Jeffries Trying On
promoters: "Wait till I'm twenty-one." Fitzsimmons' Crown at Jlllenhurst, New Jersey , in the Spring of '99