Johnny Dundee v Eugene Criqui

Dundee Treated Unfairly.

JOHNNY DUNDEE is making an awful squawk because Eugene Criqui, featherweight champion of Europe, has been given the preference over him in a match with Johnny Kilbane, holder of the world’s title.

Dundee has a howl coming, too. He has been one of the ring’s best little fighters for the past 15 years, meeting all of the leading boxers in the featherweight and lightweight classes, yet never holding a genuine championship. At present he is in possession of the “junior lightweight championship,” a title created by the New York Boxing commission. Willie Jackson handed Dundee his only decisive beating during his long career, knocking out the little Italian with a lucky haymaker in 1917. Dundee squared away this defeat by whipping Jackson on numerous occasions afterward. Johnny has participated in more than 500 battles, his record being one of the most remarkable of any boxer the ring ever produced.

He fought a 20-round draw with Kilbane shortly after the Cleveland Irishman won the title from Abe Attell. Kilbane has sidestepped all offers for a return engagement with the speedy Italian.

Dundee is entitled to another match with Kilbane, but the promoters figure Criqui would be a better box office attraction because of the international aspect of the bout. However, Dundee should get a shot at the winner.

GENE CRIQUI FIGHTS FOR DISABLED VETS

Will Return To France and Fight For Nothing.

NEW YORK, July 19.-Eugene Criqui is a real champion.

The little featherweight war hero is going to return to Paris August 2, no matter what the outcome of his bout with Johnny Dundee, scheduled for the Polo Grounds July 26. He is going back to appear FOR NOTHING against the best featherweight in France. The funds derived from admissions to the bout will be used to aid disabled war veterans.

It is quite a novel experience for a prizefighter to do anything for nothing. Jess Willard, Luis Firpo, Jack McAuliffe and Floyd Johnson recently staged a benefit for the Milk Fund of New York, and the cash they received would support a million babies for a month.

Jack Dempsey only got $220,000 for boxing 15 rounds with Tommy Gibbons in what his manager, Jack Kearns, called “a good workout for Dempsey”. He was to have received $300,000 for the show, and it was only at the last minute that he showed himself “a good sport” and decided to take a chance on his last $100,000.

If Kearns is a “good sport” what kind of a sport would you call Criqui who, in this advanced day of financial frenzy, is going back to fight FOR NOTHING for the disabled soldiers of France?

DUNDEE CHOICE OVER CRIQUI EVE OF BATTLE

Frenchman must win by knockout or lose the 15-round decision, say experts.

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WILL BE A GREAT CROWD

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Another big gate promised for the battle for the featherweight title.

New York, July 25.-No matter which way the fight tomorrow night at the Polo grounds between Eugene Criqui, the featherweight champion of the world, and Johnny Dundee goes, you must hand it to the little Frenchman for his gameness. Gene won the title not more than two months ago and yet he tosses in his championship for the toughest American in his class to shoot at. You don’t often hear in modern times of brand new champions taking such chances with their crowns.

Frankly we think Dundee is going to beat the Frenchman. We are inclined to believe that the elastic Italian is altogether too smart for Criqui. We think that Johnny knows much more than Gene does about the game of hit and step aside.

Expect it to go limit.

The chances are that the fight will go the limit and that Dundee will get the decision. If John is in there at the end of the fifteen rounds he will get the verdict. He surely has had more experience than Kilbane’s conqueror and should be able to win the title on points.

If Criqui wins he should win decisively. He packs a better punch than Dundee and is very likely to put it across at any time. Gene showed against the ancient Kilbane that he carried the sock, but whether he can land it on the careful, lively Dundee is a question.

Dundee has whipped himself down to the required featherweight limit of 126 pounds, notwithstanding the fact he is said to have started training at about 138 pounds. If Dundee weakened himself in the reducing process he is likely to run into a lot of trouble. He can not afford to take chances with the Frenchman. Dundee will need all his strength against the hard-hitting Criqui. If he has not it, there will be another story to tell.

Look for another big gate.

Both fighters were under the 126 pound limit today. Dundee scaling 124 ½ after a light workout and Criqui a half pound less.

The advance sale reached $100,000 today, according to promoters, who announced they expected it to exceed $150,000 by tomorrow night. Arrangements have been made to handle a crowd of 65,000.

DUNDEE-CRIQUI MILL TONIGHT FINDS EITHER MAN GOOD BET

NEW YORK, July 26.—Eugene Criqui, the Frenchman with a sheep bone for a jaw and a policeman’s night stick for a right hand, will meet Johnny Dundee, the esteemed Italian-American with the leaping complex, at the Polo grounds tonight im a fifteen round bout for the featherweight championship of the world. It will be John’s tenth attempt to do an Isadora Duncan to a world’s title and possibly his last. He has become somewhat elderly and can no longer frolic with the grasshoppers.

John, however, is conceded to have better than an even chance by no less an authority that John Patrick Kilbane. The latter might be classed an authority on the subject. Ten years ago, he fought a titular draw with Dundee and less than three months back was ill-advised to leave his jaw and title in the path of Criqui’s right hand.

That incident prompted increased respect for Criqui’s ability, but not sufficiently to make him a pronounced favorite in tonight’s affair. In fact, many believe Dundee’s speed will carry him through fifteen rounds to the official decision, it being the prevailing impression that the Frenchman must either score a knockout or finish second.

Criqui’s style is to hot shot the enemy with one punch. He follows his man like a hip pocket and usually takes quite a beating before he can bring him down.

On the question of whether Dundee’s feet are faster that Criqui’s punch, hangs the fate of tonight’s bout. The Italian, somewhat passe after having indulged in nearly three hundred fights, is still an elusive target and a very tough citizen altogether. It is just as difficult to hurt him as to hit him. In this respect, he figures a superior bet to Kilbane, the worst of whose delinquincies was that he couldn’t shake off a punch and come back-a talisman of age. Dundee, likewise, is believed to be slipping. Not long ago he lost his 130 title to Jack Bernstein and although many critics failed to concur with the verdict, Johnny obviously was not the man who carried Benny Leonard to the limit of eight separate occasions and made the rest of the lightweight colony hasten elsewhere. He seemed to lack his accustomed speed and endurance and that is tantamount to stating that a ladder needs rungs. John is no great shakes as a puncher.

Criqui himself is no schoolboy. He has been around and about for twenty-nine years and spent four of them in the war, leaving a shattered jaw behind him at Verdun. However, he has one asset that most featherweights lack—namely, a punch.

The men will weigh in at the featherweight limit, 126 pounds, this afternoon. Dundee is not expected to experience much difficulty in making the weight, Criqui none at all. The latter was slightly above the 124 pound mark with his finger nails clipped for the Kilbane affair.

Interest in the bout is not exactly at fever heat, the all too recent meetings of Willard and Firpo and Leonard and Tendler having taken some of the edge from the present issue. Only the belief that the fight is likely to be Criqui’s last in this country for some time, particularly if he wins, and the fact that it has been a very careworn year for champions, may induce the boys to say it with greenbacks at the box office.

The boys like nothing better than to see a champion unfrocked and the pleasure has been all their’s for the last twelve months. Britton, for example, lost the welterweight title to Walker and Greb was dethroned by Tunney, Kilbane by Criqui, Wilde by Villa and Dempsey won the decision, but lost much prestige against Gibbons. In addition, Villa was separated from the American flyweight title by Frankie Genaro during the season. Only Joe Lynch and Johnny Wilson, who did not fight, and Benny Leonard, who disposed of Lew Tendler so impressively on Monday, managed to retain their titles.

Regardless of the uncertainty over the outcome, it is hardly likely that a capacity crowd will view tonight’s proceedings. The Polo grounds has accommodations for upwards of 60,000, but championship bouts are becoming bromides and New York is fast running out of cash customers.