The gong struck. The two men advanced. Glendon's right hand was
extended for the customary shake, but Cannam, with an angry toss of
the head, refused to take it. To the general surprise, he did not
rush. Angry though he was, he fought carefully, his touched pride
impelling him to bend every effort to last out the round. Several
times he struck, but he struck cautiously, never relaxing his
defense. Glendon hunted him about the ring, ever advancing with the
remorseless tap-tap of his left foot. Yet he struck no blows, nor
attempted to strike. He even dropped his hands to his sides and hunted
the other defenselessly in an effort to draw him out. Cannam grinned
defiantly, but declined to take advantage of the proffered opening.
Two minutes passed, and then a change came over Glendon. By every
muscle, by every line of his face, he advertised that the moment
had come for him to get his man. Acting it was, and it was well
acted. He seemed to have become a thing of steel, as hard and
pitiless as steel. The effect was apparent on Cannam, who redoubled
his caution. Glendon quickly worked him into a corner and herded and
held him there. Still he struck no blow, nor attempted to strike,
and the suspense on Cannam's part grew painful. In vain he tried to
work out of the corner, while he could not summon resolution to rush
upon his opponent in an attempt to gain the respite of a clinch.
Then it came--a swift series of simple feints that were muscle
flashes. Cannam was dazzled. So was the audience. No two of the
onlookers could agree afterward as to what took place. Cannam ducked
one feint and at the same time threw up his face guard to meet another
feint for his jaw. He also attempted to change position with his
legs. Ring-side witnesses swore that they saw Glendon start the blow
from his right hip and leap forward like a tiger to add the weight
of his body to it. Be that as it may, the blow caught Cannam on the
point of the chin at the moment of his shift of position. And like
Hanford, he was unconscious in the air before he struck the ropes
and fell through on the heads of the reporters.
Of what happened afterward that night in the Golden Gate Arena,
columns in the newspapers were unable adequately to describe. The
police kept the ring clear, but they could not save the Arena. It was
not a riot. It was an orgy. Not a seat was left standing. All over the
great hall, by main strength, crowding and jostling to lay hands on
beams and boards, the crowd uprooted and over-turned. Prize-fighters
sought protection of the police, but there were not enough police to
escort them out, and fighters, managers, and promoters were beaten
and battered. Jim Hanford alone was spared. His jaw, prodigiously
swollen, earned him this mercy. Outside, when finally driven from the
building, the crowd fell upon a new seven-thousand-dollar motor car
belonging to a well-known fight promoter and reduced it to scrapiron
and kindling wood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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