A return match was arranged a year later, and on May 20th, 1920, this pair fought again for the Championship at Olympia. Beckett in the meantime had been summarily knocked out by Carpentier, but had himself knocked out Frank Goddard in two rounds, Eddie McGoorty in seventeen, and Dick Smith in five. He had become more confident, more adept. He was not a great boxer, is not now, and is never likely to be. But he had improved. Nor had Wells been idle. He had knocked out Jack Curphey in two rounds, Harry Reeves in four, Paul Journee, the Frenchman, in thirteen, and Eddie McGoorty in sixteen. This last was a terrific fight, but McGoorty was quite out of training. Wells had also beaten Arthur Townley, who retired at the end of the ninth round.

What I might call the cochranisation of boxing has now for some time past enabled vast crowds of people to watch, in comfort, altogether too great a number of championship fights. The popular excitement about these contests, or the majority of them, is largely artificial—almost as artificial as the reputations of the “champions” themselves, the result, that is to say, of purely commercial advertisement. Of course, the case of Bombardier Wells is singular. Long ago, before the war, he had his hold upon the popular imagination (if such a thing exists), because he was tall, and good-looking, and “temperamental.”

As for his methods, a friend of mine who used to judge Army Competitions in India, and who saw the All India Championship of 1909, used to say that he never knew a boxer who so persistently stuck to the plan of campaign that he had previously thought out as did Bombardier Wells. Perhaps that is the secret of his mercurial career: perhaps he always has a plan of campaign and sticks to it—successfully or not, according to the plan of his antagonist. Wells’s antagonists have a disconcerting way of doing something fresh and unexpected, and the plan is liable to be a hindrance. The most crafty boxer may have a plan which he prefers, but he is able at an instant’s notice to substitute an alternative scheme suited especially to the caprice of the man he desires to beat. Carpentier does that. Wells, as already said, likes scientific boxing just as other people like golf, and he is apt to be disconcerted by fierce sloggers just as a golfer would be disconcerted (I imagine) by some one who invented and employed some explosive device for driving little white balls much farther away than can be done with the implements at present in use. Circumstances or the advice of friends pushed Wells—in the first instance possibly without any special desire of his own—into the professional ring. And people still flock to see him there, or at all events they did so in 1920, chiefly because the ring was, for him, so strikingly inappropriate a setting.

Beckett, on the other hand, takes naturally to fighting. He is not nearly such a “good boxer,” his style is not so finished as Wells’s, his footwork, though variable, is not so adept. But he knows how to smash people, and I should say (intending no libel upon a gallant as well as a successful bruiser) likes doing it.

The majority of people who came to Olympia to watch the second fight between those men probably wanted Wells to win, for the inadequate reason that he looked so much less like a boxer than his adversary. They were disappointed. Wells began better than usual, for he seemed ready to fight: but his own science was at fault in that he accepted Beckett’s invitation to bouts of in-fighting, when he ought to have done his utmost to keep his man at long range. Beckett accepted the situation comfortably, and sent in some hard punches to the body and a left swing to the head. During the last minute of the round Wells did succeed in keeping him away and landed a succession of fine straight lefts; but these were not hard blows, nor did Wells attempt to follow them up. Joe Beckett was imperturbable and dogged, but very cautious too. He kept his left shoulder well up to protect his jaw from Wells’s right, and when he did hit he hit hard. There was no sting, no spring, no potency in Wells’s hitting. And he was careless. He gave Beckett an excellent opening in the second round, which the new champion used admirably with a hooked left, sending Wells down for seven seconds. And he kept on pushing his way in for the rest of that round, once leaving himself unguarded in his turn and inviting the blow with which Wells, if he had put his weight into it, might well have knocked him out. But the blow was too high and not hard enough. The third round was the last. Beckett gave his man a hard left, and Wells broke ground, somewhat staggered. They came together and for half a minute or more there was a really fine rally, Beckett hit the harder all the time, and presently with a swinging left to the body and a beautifully clean and true right hook to the jaw he knocked Wells out.

CHAPTER X
GEORGES CARPENTIER AND JEFF SMITH

If an unnecessary fuss has been made about those affairs of other boxers which have nothing whatever to do with boxing, there is some excuse in Carpentier’s case, if only because he is the first Frenchman to achieve real distinction in the sport.

Georges Carpentier was born at Lens, in the Pas de Calais, in January of 1894. His father was a collier, and the boy, directly he was old enough (which probably meant long before he was old enough), followed his father underground and worked as a pit-boy, earning his five francs a week. At about this time a jovial little man whose face is now as familiar as Carpentier’s, François Descamps by name, was managing a gymnasium in the town. It was at this time that a wave of athleticism was passing over Northern France, and the boys of Lens, Carpentier amongst them, used to regard this gymnasium as their chief amusement after work hours. Amongst other exercises, Descamps encouraged a certain amount of boxing—“English” boxing. La Savate had practically died out, and the days when “Charlemagne” the Frenchman, “kicked out” Jerry Driscoll, the ex-sailor (amongst whose pupils have been some of the best of the English amateurs) were unlikely to return. Still, though boxing was at this time a popular enough show in Paris, few Frenchmen themselves actually boxed, and Descamps was, in providing gloves at his gymnasium, rather in advance of his time.

Descamps forbade the use of these gloves by boys whom he had not yet taught, and when one evening he caught young Carpentier thrashing a much bigger boy with them and by the light of nature, he rated him soundly: but he kept an eye on him. He was a natural fighter. It soon became apparent that he must fight; the inward urging was there, insistent and never for long to be denied. And the boy, all untaught, could defend himself.