There never lived a more ardent fight-fan than Jack London; as a matter of fact, Jack, though he never boxed in public, was a nifty hand with the gloves. The first time I met him was in Jack Cooper’s New York Gymnasium, the place where Mike Donovan, Theodore Roosevelt, and many other noted New Yorkers gathered. London was exercising with the mitts, and he surprised me with his skill. I asked him where he learned to spar. “I was a pupil of the greatest teacher in the world,” he responded. “Old Professor Hard Experience drilled me. When I was a kid I traveled with a tough gang, and had to learn how to scrap, or get my block knocked off every day,” he said. “Then in my hobo days, riding on freights in box car pullmans, I was up against a still tougher game. A young fellow needs to know how to handle himself if he elects to carry on in the tramp life. “But I picked up a lot of glove knowledge sparring with Battling Nelson when Bat was lightweight champion, with Jimmy Britt, Young Corbett, and other cracks. I always liked the game.” London wrote some of the finest fight fiction ever published. He had the gift of making a reader actually see and feel what he described within the ring. Jack had some newspaper experience on San Francisco papers, but the reporter phase didn’t last long, as his talent for fiction soon transferred him to a more lucrative field. Even after he became famous as a novelist, the newspapers and syndicates often paid him big money to act as ring correspondent for championship matches. It was while covering the Battling Nelson-Jimmy Britt match for the world’s lightweight championship in 1905 that London coined the phrase “abysmal brute,” applying it to Nelson’s seeming insensibility to punishment. The iron-jawed Dane took everything Britt could give him in the punching line, until he wore Jimmy down and kayoed him in the eighteenth round. London greatly admired the clever Britt and wanted him to win, but it wasn’t in the cards for Jimmy to come out top-dog. Jack also was anxious to see Jeffries whip Johnson. He was engaged by a newspaper syndicate to cover the Jeffries-Johnson battle at Reno, Nevada, in 1910, and he was hurt as much as Jeffries when Johnson knocked the big Californian out. London was Jeff’s most ardent rooter. * * * * * Like Tad, Bill McGeehan, famous Sports Editor of the New York _Herald Tribune_, was a coiner of phrases. While Tad made friends through his cartoons, McGeehan gained an army of readers through his unique style of sports journalism. His sarcasm, often biting to the marrow, held the attention of his readers to the very end. He was a master of satire, and founded a school of sports writers in this vein which now numbers among its clan some of the best scribes in America—men like Westbrook Pegler of the _Chicago Tribune_ Service and Joe Williams of _The World-Telegram_. They, like McGeehan, are members of the school of sports debunking.