Dan Conway’s Corner
When my emotions stabilized after the announcer in Tokyo’s Olympic boxing arena said, “In the red…” and my tears eventually dried up after watching Kellie Harrington’s run down her face into her mask, I thought about ‘Philadelphia Jack O’Brien’ and something he said in 1938:
“I had heard that Ketchel’s dynamic onslaught was such it could not readily be withstood,” O’Brien said, “but I figured I could jab his puss off… I should have put the bum away early, but my timing was a fraction of an iota off.”
‘Philadelphia Jack’ was a professional boxer who took Bob Fitzsimmons’s world heavyweight title by stopping him in the 13th round in San Francisco in 1905. O’Brien never defended the title. He abandoned it.
The Ketchel reference was to a 10-round No Decision contest he had with the fearsome Middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel in 1909. O’Brien was saved by the bell at the end of the 10th round.
The “I figured I could jab his puss off… but my timing was a fraction of an iota off,” comments were made 29 years later.
Watching Kellie Harrington I thought that in her first round against Beatriz Ferriera her timing was a fraction of an iota off, and I wondered how she would cope in the second and third rounds.
Ferriera (28) is a powerful and aggressive opponent. She sets up and boxes in a style more professional-looking than that of a 3-round amateur.
