I have been on intimate terms with every heavyweight champion since James J. Corbett. When Corbett died, I wrote thirty articles on his career for the King Features Syndicate. To my headquarters, facing the main entrance of Madison Square Garden, have often come Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Jack Sharkey, Joe Louis, Jimmy Braddock, and many other great names of the past and present. Their photographs look down on me from the walls of my office and jog up my memory as the fleeting scenes of the days that have gone into the record books press for my attention. Although there aren’t as many great fighters around today as in the past, they are the best we can now muster and we must be content with them. As a class, the boxers today are more wholesome, more eager for the good things of life than those of the old days who often spent their substance and their genius with the prodigal hand of the waster. I have seen almost every heavyweight championship bout in the past half century, and most of those in other divisions—bouts that reach across a stretch of many exciting years—years of prosperity, war, depression, and change in boxing technique. They are years that saw the legalization of boxing throughout the world, the promotional extravaganzas of the great Tex Rickard and the million dollar gates, the reign of two of the greatest heavyweights of all time, Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis, and the rise and fall of Mike Jacob’s empire. I entered the field of journalism as a sports writer during the transition period of boxing—the repeal of the Horton Law abolishing the sport, the beginning of the club membership era, and the subsequent adoption of legalized boxing throughout the world. It is satisfying to be a part of the new era, but a nostalgic treat to be able to look back on the old. [Illustration: 2] MY BOYHOOD YEARS I became interested in boxing the day I learned how to make a fist. I began to show interest in journalism when I contributed to the monthly magazine at Public School No. 15 in Lower Manhattan. Later I became its editor. As a youngster, I loved athletics of all kinds. I played baseball, basketball, rode a bike with sufficient skill to do tricks on it, boxed and wrestled. And right here I want to pay tribute to the Boys’ Club, the Brace Memorial School, and Christodora House, which all through the years have done so much for the youngsters of the East Side of New York where I was born, November 3, 1887. At the Brace Memorial School and the Boys’ Club, I learned to appreciate the value of organized, supervised athletics. It was one thing to exercise in the streets and yet another to become involved in the closely regulated activities of a club.