Monday, Jun. 03, 1929
Ring
A title at stake is usually necessary nowadays to make a prizefight notable. Weight and power are usually necessary to make a fight exciting. Yet Eastern ring-watchers felt they had had a good evening last week after observing the earnest efforts of two little untitled men to knock each other out in ten rounds of fighting which looked, from the rim of the Bronx coliseum in which it took place, like a black ant and a dark-haired mosquito battering at each other.
The ant, who was declared the winner by a close decision, was Eligio Sardinias, a young Cuban-born Negro with big round eyes, long arms, an antlike waist and the inadequate nickname of Kid Chocolate. Kid Licorice would suit him better. When he entered the U. S. a few months ago, he had no fame, although in Havana he had won 100 amateur bouts and knocked out 46 of his spidery opponents. In Manhattan his first professional rewards were coffee and frijoles given to him by informal fighting clubs in out of the way places. Now he has more silk shirts than he can count, and his suits of clothes are said to number 365, all of them eminently visible of cut and shade. Even in his training camp he likes to change his clothes several times a day. He has never lost a fight, nor learned to speak English. He fought at 121 lb. last week. Had he weighed three pounds less he might have been declared bantamweight champion of the world, a title at present unassigned. As it is, he is about three fights away from the featherweight title.
The mosquito was Fidel La Barba, one time flyweight (112 lb. or under) champion of the world. A student at Stanford, he wants to go into real estate business. Among books he has read and liked are the Outline of History by H. G. Wells, Round Up by Ring Lardner. Among maga-zines he likes and reads is Variety.