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By Root 634 0

at the auditorium just before the beginning of Drake’s bout. My forebodings about the gate had been borne out. The basketball patrons had stayed away, and the hall was only about a third full. The New York newspapermen had gone to the Boston fight, and Billy’s second last stand would be chronicled exclusively by the press associations and the locals. With the house lights out, though, there was a feeling of a crowd and of partisan excitement. A fight crowd in a secondary city like Syracuse is different from one in New York or Chicago, or even Philadelphia—when there is a local man fighting, it is intensely partisan; when both are outsiders, it is objective and skeptical. In this case, Drake was boxing a boy from Poughkeepsie, and although that city is much nearer to New York than to Syracuse, it shares with Syracuse the mystic quality of being upstate, which means in permanent, suspicious opposition to the metropolis. The Poughkeepsie entry, a redhead named Eddie Prince, consequently got a lot of encouragement and benevolent advice, while Drake, who prides himself on a worldly, self-possessed air, impressed the crowd immediately as a fellow one couldn’t trust.

Prince, who had an honest face and a willing heart, fought from a semi-crouch, hitting hard but seldom anything. “Short moves, Eddie, short moves!” the fans who had adopted him called when he missed his long punches. When Drake took him by the right elbow, as if helping him to alight from a taxicab, and then shoved him gently away and hit him with a left hook, a Syracusan shouted, “None of that Bowery rough stuff!” Drake boxed rings around Prince, who kept trying, however. Drake’s good will was evident; on one of the two occasions when he pushed the upstater all the way through the ropes, he helped pull him back; on the other hand, when Prince kicked Drake in the instep, the chawbacon did not even stop to shake hands. In the fourth round, or perhaps the fifth, Prince scored a clean and unexpected knockdown. (Drake later said that he had seen the right starting but, instead of forestalling it with a conventional left, had tried to beat it with his own right. “It was incorrect,” he said. “He hit me right on the chin.”) Rising, disdainful, although forced to accept a count of eight, Drake resumed his demonstration of how to keep your feet even when the ring seems greased for your opponent. “Floor him again, Eddie!” the upstate Republicans chorused, and after every round they yelled to the referee, “Take that one away from Drake!” Annoyed by his own incorrect reaction to the right hand, Drake showed no elation when he got the decision. He is a perfectionist and, I fear, doomed never to be satisfied.

It was a nice fight, providing an excellent emotional warmup for what was ahead. A pair of powerful Negro heavyweights then went at each other for four rounds, going the distance rather to their own astonishment. The bout ran over onto television time, so Graham and Vejar were allowed to go about their business without further delay.

Graham had found in his first last-stand bout that he was no longer fast enough to outbox a man like Vejar all the way; the Stamford fighter has a good jab and quick reflexes, as well as plenty of bottom, which is the London prize-ring word for stamina, and sounds better. He had also found that he couldn’t make his own pace—resting and then spurting, and so winning a series of short fights instead of one long one. This was because Vejar wouldn’t let him rest, or at least because Vejar’s corner wouldn’t let Vejar let him rest. The younger man could go the whole ten rounds at a fast rate. And Vejar wouldn’t spurt when Graham wanted him to, which, of course, was when Graham had already hit him and was in position to hit him again. For a young fellow, and a Latin, Vejar is a cool customer. He is not, however, an exceptionally dangerous hitter. Billy didn’t have to worry much about Vejar’s taking him out with one punch. In none of Graham’s hundred and twenty-five fights had anybody ever done that. In their first fight, though, Graham had nailed