Who, of all the sports present, will ever forget the memorable night
at the Golden Gate Arena, when Young Glendon put Tom Cannam to sleep
and an even greater one than Tom Cannam, kept the great audience
on the ragged edge of riot for an hour, caused the subsequent graft
investigation of the supervisors and the indictments of the contractors
and the building commissioners, and pretty generally disrupted the
whole fight game. It was a complete surprise. Not even Stubener had
the slightest apprehension of what was coming. It was true that his
man had been insubordinate after the Nat Powers affair, and had run
off and got married; but all that was over. Young Pat had done the
expected, swallowed the inevitable crookedness of the ring, and come
back into it again.
The Golden Gate Arena was new. This was its first fight, and it was
the biggest building of the kind San Francisco had ever erected. It
seated twenty-five thousand, and every seat was occupied. Sports had
traveled from all the world to be present, and they had paid fifty
dollars for their ring-side seats. The cheapest seat in the house
had sold for five dollars.
The old familiar roar of applause went up when Billy Morgan, the
veteran announcer, climbed through the ropes and bared his gray
head. As he opened his mouth to speak, a heavy crash came from a near
section where several tiers of low seats had collapsed. The crowd
broke into loud laughter and shouted jocular regrets and advice to
the victims, none of whom had been hurt. The crash of the seats and
the hilarious uproar caused the captain of police in charge to look
at one of his lieutenants and lift his brows in token that they would
have their hands full and a lively night.
One by one, welcomed by uproarious applause, seven doughty old ring
heroes climbed through the ropes to be introduced. They were all
ex-heavy-weight champions of the world. Billy Morgan accompanied
each presentation to the audience with an appropriate phrase. One was
hailed as "Honest John" and "Old Reliable," another was "the squarest
two-fisted fighter the ring ever saw." And of others: "the hero of a
hundred battles and never threw one and never lay down"; "the gamest
of the old guard"; "the only one who ever came back"; "the greatest
warrior of them all"; and "the hardest nut in the ring to crack."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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