If the last decade of the nineteenth century saw the growth of glove-fighting to a high level of scientific achievement, the first decade of the twentieth saw the decline of its management to the uttermost pit of low commercial enterprise. Not that the promotion of any professional athletic contest has ever been entirely free from the besmirching influences of money: it has not. Rascality apart, there have always been hucksters who shouted their merchandise of weight and muscle and skill in raucous and unseemly tones. But when real if degraded cunning is brought to the job, the issues are obscured, and unsophisticated sportsmen, behind the times in business methods, are apt to be deceived. Fighters, you may say, are born, whilst champions are made--in Fleet Street and the complementary thoroughfares of New York and San Francisco. A particular boxer is discussed in some newspaper every day for a considerable period. He is advertised, in fact. You get accustomed to the fellow’s name in exactly the same way as you get accustomed to the name of some coffee or toffee, tailor or tinker. You begin to regard him, quite unconsciously, as an inevitable concomitant of everyday life. And when the paper tells you that he is a champion, you, having a general interest in boxing but knowing very little about it, accept him as a champion. This boxer happens to be a good boxer, wins many fights, and you take it as a matter-of-course. The newspaper pats itself as you might say, loudly on the back for having made a good shot. The boxer happens to be a bad boxer and is beaten every time, and you and the newspaper denounce and deride him--you, because what you thought was your opinion is shown to be wrong, the newspaper which (in collaboration with the boxer’s manager, business-manager, publicity-manager, and general manager) invented the poor fellow: because it is unable to flatter itself. The genuine champion, who will be content with a small c, is not made by newspapers. By his own merits he emerges from the ruck and he makes his own way. But he can make his way, probably, much quicker with the aid of newspapers, managers, who sometimes exploit him, and other sound business methods: and not his way only, but his fortune. Carpentier is a transcendent example. He is a magnificent boxer, who was bound to have made a name for himself by boxing and boxing alone. And we do not grudge him the fortune which boxing and boxing alone would not have brought to him. But we do grudge the vast sums made by spurious champions (or their managers), and the sums much more vast and rolling and altogether disgusting made by the promoters of what are, virtually, spurious contests.