“Too frivolous,” he decided at length. “Might be all right for a bantam, but—no, I don’t like it. I was thinking of something like Hurricane Hicks or Rock-Crusher Riggs.”
“Don’t do it,” I urged, “or you’ll kill his career right from the start. You never find a real champion with one of these fancy names. Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack Johnson, James J. Corbett, James J. Jeffries——”
“James J. Billson?”
“Rotten.”
“You don’t think,” said Ukridge, almost with timidity, “that Wildcat Wix might do?”
“No fighter with an adjective in front of his name ever boxed in anything except a three-round preliminary.”
“How about Battling Billson?”
I patted him on the shoulder.
“Go no farther,” I said. “The thing is settled. Battling Billson is the name.”
“Laddie,” said Ukridge in a hushed voice, reaching across the table and grasping my hand, “this is genius. Sheer genius. Order another couple of tawny ports, old man.”