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m On Second Thought After 20 Years On Fight Beat By BARNEY NAGLER NEW YORK, N. Y., June 29. The things you remember after two decades or so on the fight beat: The visit to Madam Beys camp camp at at Summit Summit. N. N. m camp camp at at Summit Summit. N. N. J., now run by her son, E h s a n s , and the heavyweight in training there for a bout at the Garden. The fine gathering of guests in the old house on "-3 hill and the beautiful blonde on hand with a suave gentleman. "Who is the guy with the girl?" you asked, and and somebody somebody ex- and and somebody somebody ex- explained he was a friend of the heavyweight, or something. You went home convinced that all was fine in the boxing business if a pretty girl and her gentleman friend spend a Sunday afternoon at camp. .And then, learning a few days later, that the lady wasnt a lady at all and that the gentleman was a man who only lately had escaped with his life hi as gangland massacre. The time a fighter out of Chicago, in the Sam Pian-Art Winch stable, Davey Day by name, was fighting at the Hippodrome, since gone and forgotten. He had had a tough one that night, but had won, -and back in his dressing room he lay back on the rubbing table and relaxed. A fight writer came into the room and stood by the rubbing table just as the lightweight fighter reached back of him, picked up an impressively weighty book and handed it to another fight writer. "Thanks for returning the book," the -writer said." The other journalist was most impressed with the fighters apparent erudition. For years he carried with him the notion .that Davey Day easily was the best-read of fist-men. Then, one day, the one who had thanked Davey Day for returning the book was asked about it. "Oh, that, that was nothing," he explained. "I left the book at the training camp Day was at. He just brought it in with him and returned it to me." Another day, at Ehsans, when Freddie Steele was int raining for a non-title bout with Fred Apostoli in Madison Square Garden, a bout that is remembered here as one of the most exciting of J all, and the impression made by Steele as a fine young man who surely was the best-trained in the world. And then the realization the day after the bout, which was won by Apostoli on a knockout in the ninth, that Steele was something less than in condition for the contest. The announcement the next week or so that Steele had been secretly married j put it all in" perspective. The day in Stillmans gym, only a few weeks later, when Benny Leonard, long retired at the time, offered a theorem that has held up ever since. "Fighters who get married just before fights are never any good," Leonard said, "because theyre in love and the wonderful feeling of just being in love robs them of any instinct for hitting another guy on the head. They just want to be nice to everybody." I Marcel Cerdans training camp when he was training for the title-winning bout with Tony Zale. The press conference was attended by 20 or so writers and the question put to the great fighter from Arique du Nord concerning his future in boxing. j "I will be fighting a long time," Cerdan told the interpreter. "Doesnt your wife, back home, find it difficult with you being here while shesH in France?" Cerdans face indicated that he wasntH sure he had heard the question correctly and then the answer. "Oh, no, my wife not like that. ShA knows fighting is my buisness, like youiM business is writing about fights." H The old pro just wouldnt, and couldntH understand that anybody wasnt able txfl comprehend his devotion to his craft. And the news, a year or so later, thaH Cerdan had died in a plane crash in thfl Azores. H ! The night in Madison Square GardeB when Henry Armstrong took the featherH j weight title from Pgtey Sarron by overM powering the hairy little man, from AlaH bama. The persistence of Armstrongs aH tack was overwhelming, and then to vis him in his dressing room and to hear hu speak. A pleasanter little fellow nevH laced on gloves and laced his. oppositions with mqrethorpu gh consistency, " . My, the things youemember. "M
