As already suggested, the interest in many widely-advertised glove-fights is spurious: a passion of sensationalism stimulated by the Press. The fight between Beckett and Burns hardly comes under that head, because there is always a genuine interest in watching the return of a veteran, whether that veteran be boxer or prima donna. Burns had been in the hey-day of his fame when Joe Beckett was a young lad. He had been execrated by sportsmen for his trick of “mouth-fighting,” for trying to intimidate his antagonists by heaping insult upon injury during the course of a battle; and also for his rank commercialism. He had been one of the first “business boxers” to be seen in England, and we had been rather appalled by the phenomena. Since those days we have grasped the fact that there is a practically negligible correlation between professional sport and sportsmanship, so far at least as boxing goes--especially now that men like Jim Driscoll and Pat O’Keefe (both of whom appeared as seconds in Beckett’s and Burns’s corners respectively) have retired. It was from Burns that we first learned the dodge of demanding a fixed fee for a contest--so much down, whatever happened. And Burns, having through his Press agents arranged to be famous and to be a certain attraction to the multitude, could get pretty well what he asked. To set against this unpleasing but no doubt justifiable business acumen, Burns was gloriously plucky. And in his fight with Beckett he displayed that merit undiminished. People remember these things; they remember the fame (never in Burns’s case entirely undeserved) and the good points quite as readily as the notoriety and the bad ones: so that Burns had a great following at the Albert Hall, and, in despite of his age and condition, his chances against the younger and stronger man were considered good.