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i On Second Thought Fight Ballyhoo Hits Silly Stage By BARNEY NAGLER I NEW YORK, N. Y., May 5.— The only gate thats holding up in San Francisco j — se days is the Golden one. The same cant be said for the gate for Rocky Marci-anos defense against Don Cockell a week from Monday night. Estimates on that one are going downhill faster than Friscos cable cars. When Al Weill first convinced Jim Norris, the boy billionaire, that Captain Sutter wasnt the only one who could take gold who could take gold out of California, he estimated the gross take, including the swag from theatre network television, at between 750 thousand and a cold million, give or take a few not little hands tapping the till. However, Weills enthusiasm is colder now than Ned Irishs smile. It hasnt been necessary to talk to Marcianos warder to come to this conclusion. The way the publicity out there has come up is proof enough. First, it says here, Cockell reportedly was knocked down in training: by an upstart who was put on the payroll in the first place to get himself plastered by the Battersea boy. How this was permitted to happen is not known, it being* the task of Harry Mendel, press officer at Cockells camp, to enfold the large, round fame of the Briton in a cloak of success. Mendel apparently took the oversight as a personal affront. A few days after Cockells drawers were sullied by resin in the practice ring, Mendel caused it to be disclosed that the Britons sensitive agent, John Simpson, was rather disturbed by Marcianos apparently foul methods. When news of this slur on Marcianos manners reached this eastern outpost, a man privy to Mendels tactics said, "things must be real tough put there when Mendel pulls the old foul-fighters chestnut out of the fire. The easterner believed he had heard everything until the wires were burdened with the report that Marciano, of all people, had been flipped in the training ring by one Toxie Hall, an ancient hireling who has been in the champions camp half a dozen times. This one is the topper, the ancient of ancients, and anybody who accepts it as a legitimate portent of things .to come when Marciano faces Cockell should have his record book examined. If it truly happened, it was just one of those things; if it didnt, why it was just one of those things. It has long been the notion of fight camp press agents that it is necessary to destroy the favorite in pre-bout publicity if a match is to enrich the participants, the managers, the promoters and the ticket speculators. This form of iconoclastic indulgence was invoked when Joe Louis was taking on Max Schmeling in their first bout, back in 1936. Louis trained for that one at Lake-wood, N. J., in a setting befitting a carnival show rather than an earnest training camp. Louis was heavily backed against Schmeling and it was the belief of those in his camp that all he needed to whip vthe German was a shave. A haircut might help, some believed. Jersey Jones, who was the press agent in Louis camp, went about his work diligently. He conspired with Jack Blackburn, Louis trainer, to have the Brown Bomber take it easy in the ring. When Jones attemped to convince the visiting journalists that Louis wasnt his young, frisky self, they wouldnt be had. Indeed, they were all for running Jones out of the quiet little Jersey town. Later, when Blackburn tried to take the wraps off Louis by way of really preparing him for the fight, the Brown Bomber just didnt have it. He was really sub-standard, even though the fight historians refused to believe what they saw. As it turned out, Jersey Jones was right in the first place. Louis was his young frisky self. He went out and got himself denocked out by Schmeling. It wont happen that way in Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, a week from Monday night. Marciano is going to make a liar out "of "the" press agents: -
