HE
'MY SPINE,'
THE IRON MAN
by GEORGE WHITING
N
OT for nothing did they call you the Rochdale Thunderbolt. You broke your neck when a saddle girth slipped at the end of a morning ride, but you were one of the greatest middleweights this
came back country ever produced-so you
fighting. Diphtheria laid you low, but you beat that rap, too,
But then, ore blacked-out Sporting distructions were few night in war-time London, you and eagerly sought in those damaged your spine in a tight dangerous days. Small wonder, that was less than three minutes therefore, hat promoter John old, and you were brought very, Muldoon
gold-mine on his very nearly to the end of the hands when he announced the road. Three years later, you matching of McAvoy with a
young managed a brief and pathetically barrel-chested brave kind of come-buck.
called Freddie Mills. Every seat the hall was sold in a matter Finally. you
stricken of hours. were from the waist downwards with Infantile paralysis. Nowadays, you are helped to a ringside seat to watch the punches of inact
men
Such are the final bleak phases
of Jock in the blustery career McAvoy, born Joseph Bamford
in 1908,
as
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1954.
GASPED AND WAS FINISHED
And Milla? Two years pre- viously, if Freddie will forgive me, I should have described hum Just another booth-reared
stame and Aghter robust, rugged, but apparently getting nowhere in his efforts to achieve middleweight fame.
teeth,
**
THE FIGHT THAT FINISHED
THE CHAMPION
musclo... and
Д
the
HIGH KICKS BRING IN
THE DOLLAR TOURISTS
somo
By Andrew Petrie
of having a good
show
The guides have stiff tests to simplify this by
There unobtrustive leaflet whose pages
such can be manipulated to beat known the equivalent of British money In thirteen different foreign house in London's currencies.
Roubles .are not shown.
mutters: "Hold Shy at 34, McAvoy still
Backstage, two big men held Even
hurt offered the rich red meat of Freddie, I've
my back McAvoy down while Dr Philip Referes Hardwicke steps awiftly Kaplan shot the fight son of
pain-allaying
London. Holidays Association, which difficulties uggression to
to the side of the stricken boxer, infection between the spine and TN movie houses 1042.
across runs Britain's tourist pub. time in Britain. now hopping on his right log the left kidney. McAvoy,
his
America a short film is licity here and over- For there are difficultles-be- and gasping! "My spine, my face still twisted, talked dis-
ginning with the currency. Tho spine! I can't go on.”
a red hot poker showing before the main seas. jolatedly of a
Travel Association tries to foeling" that had sped through feature. As yet no word comes from his left leg out there in the ring
Jaming an the referee, and Ted Broadribb,
the doctor murmured a spot It shows plump British pass before qualifying. astute Mills's very
manager, diagnosis of a pulled lumbar actress Hattle Jacques in are even trick questions, shouts urgently from the corner
Rochdale high leather boots and frilly as: which is the for his man to wade in and Thunderbolt was borne away to pants doing
old. Public despatch the helpless but still
hospital. upright McAvoy,
fashioned high kicks and famous Regent Street? Two years later, McAvoy was singing in a fruity music-
The answer-thero is none. deprived of his middleweight | hall voice: "Don't Dilly Soon, as spring gives way to title and fined £200 by the Box-Dally."
summer, the work of the Asso- Ing Board of Control for falling
the It's part of Britain's at clation will bear fruit and defend it against Ginger
When
for
Another blight prospective guides will be bury. And he was 37, he traction Badd,
spite of what some critics say is pleasure is night life; they say essayed a come-back, but retired visitors.
three comparatively after
corny advertising. the Associa- thero ben't any. unnoticed wins against rank-
tion is pulling in the tourists, and-file opponents in 1848,
not in hundreds but in hundreds disabled from McAvoy, still
of thousands, pallo, has writtes from a wheel- seen by the eye of a boxer. Says than 250 men and women are expected, and many of them London's expensive night apois, chair his commentary on life as
"If I never
the
Then, on the lush rations of a Royal Air Force corporal, he began tilting at the big boys, outpointed McAvoy at Liverpool during Dunkirk days, and won tho promise of a cruiserweight title shot against Harvey if he could lay low the Thunderbolt in London.
McAvoy weighed in at 1281. 2lb. Mills, after a night in turkish bath in the West End, was three pounds heavier. The stage was set, the house was full, top brass abounded in the £3 ringside scats, and 5,000 of re-
FIGHT'S END
Ringsiders, sately on the sido to airman
of the ropes where no backs are broken, have by now recovered their voices sufficiently to land noday volume to the appeals of Mills's seconds. But a pop-eyed Mills makes no move. Instead, the timekeeper hits his bell for the end of the round-for the end of the fight, and for the end of championship road for the once all-conquering McAvoy.
Mills's hand is raised in a victory which, hollow as it appears, is to lead him to the championship of the world. Referee and seconds aid McAvoy to his stool. find that he cannot sit, and lift him gently over the
hands of ropes into the officials waiting to carry him off to a dressing-room couch.
of
86 K.O'S
Consider McAvoy, Не had never been stopped; he had knocked over more
opponents either Dempsey of (86) than
va settled down to an hour Loula; he had k-o'd New York's honest fisticuffs as a blessed claimant to the world middle-
lief from the war-noises off, weight title, Babe Risko, In the
McAvoy Arst round of contest; he had conceded every collecting £750 each from our physical advantage and stayed 10 ticket-money. rounda with the redoublable tion.
Henry Lewis John cruiserweight championship
world; he had taken the British middleweight title from
catch-weight
for
Could the punishment absorbed in and out of the ring have been a contributory cause to that final tragedy of pollo? We shall never know, and yet, when the news of McAvoy's illness reached us in 1947, there were many whose memories flicked back to the strange and painful happenings at the Royal Albert Hall five Lens Harvey, won Lonsdale years earlier on February 20, Belt outright, and marked
1042.
two notches on another.
tho
of the
MCAVOY TODAY. He survived diphtheria and a broken weck. Then polic
lald him Joy.
EVEN THE
up
And Mills
were
We wanted ac-
NO SCORE
McAvoy strode from his stool, licked a len at Mills's bluish chin, and followed through with his right lo the body, almost before Mills had got his arms moving. Milla countered. missed, took a light right on his ribs, hustled McAvoy to the ropes, and was then culled of by referve Ben Hardwicke. No
score.
Another wide-armed rush by Mills, a side-step by McAvoy, and the knowing ones pinong us shrugged our shoulders in diffident acceptance of the re- minder at class, us always, was about l Sell. Very BOOK the real punching would begin
It never did. Without a blow tuving been scen, McAvoy's right leg shoots crazily from under him, he gues down on one knee, and grins his way out of an absurd situation na Milia, checking his charge, helps a fallen rival to his feet.
The courtany 1 acknow- ledged by the custary touch- salute of gloves, sand the men #pring apart to resume (or, rather, starti) the hostilities we have paid to pee. But the "fight" that never began is over.
BACK HURT
-
McAvoy, the fron man from Rochdale, drops his arms, twista his muscular body, cluiches the left side of his back with both gloves, and raises
pain-
distorted face to the roof of an Albert Hall strangely, uncannily silent. These things have hap pened too suddenly, too unex- pectedly, for us to make up our minds, or our lungs, about them.
Mills, the nearest witness, is equally unprepared. Ho stands stock-stili in bewilderment
as
McAvoy, between clenched
SPANIARDS
SAY "HI-YA, BUD!”
By IAN MERCER
down
the
Palma, Majorca, for them) are, of course, out in pesetas a your ago, may now
and night club pro- cort 250, of about £2, 3, 0. So they are coming at foret,
last! After many false men on the job.
prietors have got their publicity American cigarettes, oddly
enough, are cheaper on alarms and much political Strolling
black market than they used to the Borne, beno doubt a gesture of grati- aldeplay, America is get- Palma's leafy promenade, the ting bases in these parts in other night, I caught sight of a tude to America for the econo- return for aid to Spain. good example of this night club mic ald she is giving Spain.
As this agreement gets art. The notice read: underway so, after count- less.centuries of peace, the tranquillity of the Balearics: and the Spanish mainland is.grayely threatened.
Last week, the Diario de Mallorca, one of Palma's
"WELCOM TO OUR
AMERIKAN ALLIES OPEN TILL I AM.
25 BEAUTIFUL GIRLS TO CHOICE.
BEER AND STAKES. “ HOT DORGS TOO!" Yet, in spite of the undeniable leading dalilea, started its fact that prosperity approaches, firat column in English-for there are quite a few citizens the benefit of the hundreds American invasion with dismay. of Americans who
ON THE JOB
You still hear Spanish and again in the capital's more brassy bars, for all have not yet learned the idiom of Brooklyn. Nevertheless, they are doing their best, and even beggars may greet you with a “El-ya, buddy!" and a step on the back,
I'm which (mistakenly
sure) they think is the "American way of asking for aims.
THEY THINK TWICE
For all this learning of the it will mean strange American language, which however, the locals are not
are For onb thing. already here, not to mention working overtime, the thousands who are ex- (money or до money) a doing as well as they hoped. pected to arrive in the Spaniard never does if he čan Their visitors from across the course of the next two or possibly avoid It. Such senseless Atlantic (once reportedly
he maintains, is un generous) now appear to think three months.
Becondly, there are twice or even three times ban signs that the Americans - Ki- fore parting with their cash ready here do not subscribe to and when they no part with it the belief that those who serve the transaction is on a small ilme scale. Only the other day I Shopkeepers, too, are propar- them should spend their ing by going to the Berlitz doing nothing and then having saw an apparently prosperous rest afterwards the Boston banker, give a poor alá School at night and feverishly a good writing out new price labels by basis upon which Spanish Arsh five centimos which,
philosophy is founded.
with the pasets worth 3d,
could There le an Ided that - the (without)
called a fortune. hardly be whisky.
The truth of the matter the G's, you American Invasion will lead, as set- around to fixing a It has done elsewhere in Europe, there's a kinda" trade rucematon
may be to Indiation. The idea would under way back home, which
ich is asusing the nyaders to
which
Pate for as litla ng 122 x not seem far wrong, i for
TOM - Blok Marlowe The Indation has already berum, their
*way? Wakan hæverisms by lhfit
The Hat four, mönma,
he:
became
Aare
Study Of Facts
come
from
In
across
to this
No Night Life
on
visitors'
+
Continental visitors, in parti- cular, are accustomed to start painting the town red at eleven p.m. or so--when. Britain closes Back in London more This year a million visitors up and goes to bed, except for
brushing up on
such will
T'a up to the hotels and res world's
champion, at least facts as: the bullet which Atlantic. Last year Americans
And taurants to do something about brought £38 fought among those kings of the killed Nelson is in Windsor country as holiday visitors. In 14, says the Association. ring. Every night I had was o
Britain's Ave years Aght Castle; the dagger which the last joy to ma...until that
have killed Wat Tyler is in the charms
earned with Mills."
from WORLD COPYRIGHT RESERVED. Fishmonger's Hall; the Im- visitors £500 mililon-a lot of
perial State Crown has money. NEXT SATURDAY:
3,000 diamonds.
These visitors have come, and "Let's forget the alibi,” They are
have the guides of
niany
returned for sold the Golden Boy.
the British Travel and second visit, in spite of the
Pan American Presents
It cannot do everything, and one of its complaints In that even more visitors would come
if the whole country pulled Its weight. But already, there X the prospect of Britain becoming the premier holiday spot in Europe.
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