Berlenbach vs. Slattery

Beauty lives in speed--the rhythm of a piece of sculpture; the style of a racing thoroughbred; the bright, scrupulous cruelty of an accomplished boxer. It has been proved a thousand times that neither this speed nor the grace that is its afterglow has much to do with efficiency--that the clumsy nag can often travel fastest, the hardest hitter win--but men persist in betting on good form. This was illustrated one damp evening last spring in a Manhattan boxing ring (TIME, June 8).

On that evening Paul Berlenbach, a onetime taxi-driver with an extraordinarily brutal and stupid face and enormous muscles, won the world's light-heavyweight championship from shifty, tired Mike McTigue. His methods was to plough flat-footed after the Irishman, taking two punches to one for the occasional privilege of bringing home his cemetery left. The referee's decision was unpopular. "A champion is ut," McTigue's followers queried, "that ham an'egger?" They were consoled only because they had seen, in a preliminary bout, a light-heavyweight boxer whose speed and rhythm surpassed anything in the memory of some, and set others thinking of Fitzsimmons and Wolgast. For him--James Slattery of Buffalo-- sports writers flatly prophesied the world's heavyweight championship. "And when he meets Berlenbach . . ." said McTigue's adherents later that evening, fortifying themselves against the dampness and their own depression in the various bars and blind tigers of middle Manhattan, "when he meets this ham Berlenbach. . ." It was fashionable to finish the sentence with a flow of Elizabethan verbiage, accompanied by gestures illustrating the physical distress which would afflict The Astoria Assassin when subjected to violence on the part of Slattery.

Last week, in the white glare of an 18-foot ring, Berlenbach and Slattery touched gloves and began to weave about each other, glaring. Since the spring evening upon which they had simultaneously established their reputations, Berlenbach had been disqualified for stalling in a bout against Tony Marullo (TIME, July 27), and Slattery been knocked unconscious by a blow from the fist of David Shade, welterweight (TIME, July 13). The stalling, many thought was quite to be expected from a onetime taxidriver; the knockout was a regrettable accident. Nevertheless, as the two squared off, not a few, who had learned through experience the pathetic fallacy of style, had their money on Berlenbach.

Berlenbach launched a one-two punch like the slow, alternate strokes of a freight locomotive's pistons. Slattery danced out; he lifted his hands from his sides to flick the sultry visage of his opponent; he mocked and mowed, smiling his smile of a derisive faun; his body flashed with spite. Berlenbach lowered his head. When struck, he shook it from side to side--a bull perplexed by dragonflies.

Ten rounds passed. Berlenbach outboxed, registered no change of demeanor. But Slattery? A tiny spray of blood worked at his lips. The speed was faded that had touched him with beauty like a fire. Berlenbach swung his left hand. Slattery fell, got up again. Four times in the tenth, three times in the eleventh round, his body lustreless now, crumpled under terrible blows. The referee stopped the fight.