Camera v. Loughran

Carnera v. Loughran

In the first round, Primo Camera lumbered out of his corner and shuffled his huge feet while Tommy Loughran dabbed his lantern jaw with a left jab. In the second and third rounds the champion tried to rush the challenger against the ropes but failed; Loughran, fast on his feet, landed one solid right hand punch. The fourth round was Loughran's, but by now Camera had learned how to crowd his opponent into the corners. In the fifth, he caught Loughran against the ropes and began to smash his face with wide clublike blows. A blonde woman near the ringside let out a piercing scream. Alarmed, Camera turned his head to see what was the matter. When he looked back, Loughran had danced out of reach.

To the crowd of 10,000, smallest in 43 years for a heavyweight championship fight, in the Miami arena last week, this was an amazing beginning. Weeks of intensive sneers in the Press had led them to believe that the bout between a 270-lb. champion from Italy and a challenger who was five years older and 86 Ib. lighter was as unfair as it sounded. Now, on a windy evening with rain pattering on rows and rows of empty $20 seats, they became aware that the spectacle under the warm cone of light at the centre of the Madison Square Garden stadium was an exciting contest between a clever, courageous boxer and a nervous, clumsy monster, embarrassed by his own size and the hostility of the crowd. When Loughran ended the fifth round with a smashing right to Camera's chin it looked for a moment as if the little man might win after all.

After the fifth round. Camera did better. Loughran's tactics of running in and clinching made it impossible to land a knockout punch but Camera wrestled away from the challenger as best he could. He rushed out of his corner in the eighth and caught Loughran against the ropes for a second. In the tenth, he made the mistake of courteously touching gloves, as if it were the last round. At the end of the 14th, Loughran was dazed enough to start for the wrong corner of the ring. During the next round, Loughran managed to cling groggily to his huge adversary until the bell ended the fight. Three judges gave Camera a unanimous decision.

To Madison Square Garden, which lost $20,000, last week's was by no means the most costly heavyweight championship fight on record. That distinction still belongs to the Tunney v. Heeney bout of 1928 on which $200,000 was dropped. Camera's failure to knock out an opponent who has only been knocked out twice in 148 fights caused most sportswriters to deride him for his victory last week. Nothing he has done since he landed in the U. S. in 1929-, an illiterate monster with a French manager, has won him any praise or popularity. After last week's bout, Challenger Loughran, lauded as the finest sportsman among U. S. prizefighters, spoke of "rabbit punches and backhand blows," complained that the champion should have been disqualified for stepping on his foot. Monster Camera was more polite: "He [Loughran] was fighting a great fight. ... I should have knocked him out but it would have been shameful to treat such a courageous opponent in such fashion. . . ."

Bankrupt because he cannot find enough opponents to furnish him with the means to live as a champion should, Camera was further harassed last week when a Daytona night club garnisheed his $15,000 purse. He planned to visit South America, fight Victorio Campolo, a monster like himself.

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