Harlem Tommy Murphy would cut loose with a line of gab every time he dropped an opponent. A talkative fellow, Harlem Tommy would upbraid his man for not doing well, and then, after he had dropped him for the count, he would remark: “Sorry, old top. Give my regards to the folks when you get home.” Former world bantamweight champion Johnny Coulon, came to pay me a visit when I was in Chicago recently. We discussed some of his fights, especially the one in which he beat Frankie Burns in New Orleans in a twenty-round bout, February 28, 1912. Coulon asked me if I recalled how he kidded Burns out of a possible knockout in the fourteenth round, when Frankie had caught the champion with a corking right to the chin. Coulon was tossed back on his heels. It looked as if he would tumble to the canvas, but he caught himself in time, grasped the left arm of his opponent, backed Burns against the ropes and then, while trying to clear his head, said: “Why, Frankie, you’re a sap. You have a good punch but you don’t know how to toss it. Watch me!” Instead of taking advantage of the position he held by virtue of that stunning wallop, Burns tore himself away from Johnny’s grip and covered up while maneuvering himself out of range of Coulon’s right. While he retreated, the champion fully regained his faculties and, following Burns, actually caught him with a powerful right to the chin that almost dropped the challenger. Burns never knew that he had been duped. But it wasn’t the first time Coulon had come up with this stunt when stunned. * * * * * Fighters are probably the most superstitious of all athletes. In many years of experience with their ways, I have come across some extraordinary cases of ring superstition. Few boxers I have met are free from it. One of them was Gene Tunney. He dismissed luck as a factor in the fight game, although he had plenty of it—for example the “long count” he was given in his contest with Jack Dempsey at Chicago. But Gene affected to despise everything that savored of superstition. “It’s up to me,” he would say coolly. Incidents that would have driven most fighters into a state of superstitious fear had no effect on Gene, and his almost inhuman calm sometimes had a bad influence on his opponents. He never batted an eyelash. He was cool, collected, a study in perfect composure. No fighter in recent years, with the exception of Loughran, approached Tunney’s ring demeanor. Dempsey, on the other hand, was like Jeffries in that he was so nervous that he twitched and tossed, moved his feet to and fro in the resin, worked his hands over the upper strand of the ring, and could scarcely await the call to battle. He was pulling at the leash every moment he waited for the bell. Dempsey had his full share of superstition. He always went into the ring with a dirty old maroon sweater thrown across his shoulders. Once I asked him about it.