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allows it to remain there. Instead of using his left for jabbing—a gesture of rejection—he prefers to apply a lashing hook to the body, and then bring it up to the jaw. If he misses the second half of the punch, and the other fellow, in straightening up, gets his head wedged under Saddler’s crooked elbow, there is little the champion can do about it except uppercut with the other hand to teach him better ring manners. And when a smaller man locks one of Saddler’s gloves under his arm, Saddler can hardly be blamed for trying to pull loose, even though he may swing the little fellow completely around in doing so. If at the end of this snap-the-whip he steadies his partner with a chop on the chin, it is, conceivably, to stop him from going through the ropes. Among today’s boxers Saddler is almost the last dispenser of the old-fashioned amenities. He himself is built like a bundle of loosely joined fishing poles, but they are apparently pickled bamboo; he takes a good punch, and his thin arms and legs never seem to tire. But the public, instead of appreciating his fresh approach to his role, resents his efficiency.

One boxing man who agrees with me about Saddler is Charlie Johnston, his manager. Johnston is also the handler of Archie Moore, the light-heavyweight champion, who has been boxing since Roosevelt’s first administration. One day in the summer of 1954, while I was visiting Ehsan’s training camp near Summit, New Jersey, a pugilistic Yaddo where Moore was doing his thinking for a forthcoming fight, Mr. Johnston made a definitive appraisal. “Saddler is a great champion,” he said. “But Moore is a great, great champion.” Saddler was in residence at the time, training for a couple of bouts Johnston had booked for him in Venezuela. Since Saddler had spent 1952 and 1953 in the Army, Johnston was bringing him along on a diet of opponents carefully graded in significance. Military service is supposed to dull a fighter’s edge, because the Army routine interferes with serious training. Saddler was training as hard as if he expected a tough battle; when he went down to Caracas he knocked out his first opponent in one round and his second in three. Johnston, who operates from an office on Times Square, drives to Summit every day when he has one of his champions there, and drives back in the afternoon. He is a serious man, his champions are serious fighters, and Ehsan’s is a serious place. On weekends, when Johnston thinks the fighters have earned a bit of dissipation, he takes down a box of jelly doughnuts.

“Doesn’t Saddler get bored down here nights?” I asked him.

“Why should he be bored?” Johnston said. “He can talk to Moore about boxing.”

When I read in the newspapers that Saddler was to defend his title against a fellow called Red Top Davis in Madison Square Garden on February 25, 1955, I felt as pleased as if I were going to see a favorite actor in a new vehicle. I knew little about Davis, but I was confident that Saddler would interpret him in an interesting manner. It would be the champion’s first defense of the featherweight title since his last fight with Pep, in September, 1951.

On the Sunday morning before the fight, I drove down to Summit with Johnston to see Saddler spar. Mrs. Johnston rode in the front seat with her husband; it was such a beautiful day, she said, that he had insisted she go along for the ride. They picked me up in front of my apartment house, and then we drove to the Capitol Hotel, where we collected a radio announcer for the Argentine Ministry of Information; he had a medal to present to Saddler on behalf of Perón. Johnston maintained cordial relations with Perón, and carried on a brisk import-and-export trade in boxers with him. The Argentine, a small plump man with a blue beard, said he hadn’t had any breakfast and didn’t want any. He told me he traveled to all countries where Argentine athletes competed—especially automobile racers—and broadcast reports to Buenos Aires on how they were doing. The job sounded all right to me. “Three fighters Sandy knock out nineteen-fifty-one in South America,