$15,000 for Mother

When Benny Leonard retired as lightweight champion of the world in 1924. only one man (Ritchie Mitchell) had mussed his sleek brown hair in many a long battle. Last week in Madison Square Garden, Benny Leonard was wiping stringy thin hair out of his eyes 30 seconds after tough Jimmy McLarnin began to hit him. The pudgy Canadian welter- weight shook his head at the hardest blows Leonard's bowarms could deliver. What was left, at 36, of the cleverest boxer the lightweight division ever knew was knocked down in the second round. In the sixth he could not hold his paunch in, found his legs behaving like Leon Errol's. McLarnin hit him on the side of his head with a straight right-hand blow. The Errol legs sagged. McLarnin hit right-left-right-left. Leonard tried to back away, could not move: tried to hold, could not lift his arms. McLarnin looked at the referee, who put an arm about Leonard's shoulder, led him to his corner.

Two minutes later ex-Champion Leonard, his hair smooth again, was congratulating his master, grinning about the $15,-ooo (plus $30,000 he had made during his 14-month "comeback") he would take home to his mother, whom he once promised that he would never fight again.

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