Beer Barrel Palooka

As a general rule, a tough barroom bouncer figures to hang a shanty on the most rambunctious college guy. After the brawly bouncing around that occurred last week in Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium, the rule still stood.

Boxer Lou Nova, who spent three years at the California College of Agriculture, is a serious sort, reads books, diets, sleeps long, goes for some queer fangles in fighting. For the Baer fight, for example, he trained at the yoga roost of Dr. Pierre Bernard, the Omnipotent Oom of the Sunday supplements. Half an hour before the fight his handlers came into his dressing room, found him standing on his head--relaxing, he said. Thus relaxed, he handed Max quite a pasting. But Tony Galento, the Orange, N. J., barman, is most relaxed with a bung-starter in his hairy paw. For a week before last week's fight he smoked a dozen big black cheroots a day, drank two or three beers after workouts, did road work nights until his wife came down from Orange and saw to it that he got some sober rest.

When the men came into the ring, the odds were 3-1 on Nova. But what went on after the opening bell made mugs of many an expert--John Kieran, Hype Igoe, Jack Dempsey, Jim Braddock, Tommy Loughran. Not since the day of Elbows McFadden had fight fans seen such a bar-roomy brawl. In the first round Tony butted and backhanded. In the next, he wrestled and elbowed. Then Nova, whom the trade calls a get-even fighter, forgot his boxing orders and set out to get even. From then on he never had a chance. Tony butted, gouged, rabbit-punched, hit high & low, dropped Lou with two lefts and an airplane spin, dropped him again and bounced on him, thumbed Lou's badly cut right eye and heeled it with his glove lacing, swung so hard with his murderous left that his pants almost fell off. Finally, late in the 14th, with quartfuls of blood on the canvas, on the referee's shirt, all over Tony & Lou, Referee George Blake stopped it, with Galento leading by all the tricks abjured by the Marquis of Queensberry rulebook. Nova, downed five times, was blinded by blood, rubber-legged, licked.

Tony Galento had won the goriest knockdown & drag-out since the days of the last-century bully boys.

When it was over they carried Lou to a hospital with a good start on his first cauliflower ear. Tony went back to his New Jersey barroom, with his puffy eyes on Detroit and a great bully-boy future. Said he: "I'll knock out dat bum Louis in two rounds."

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