Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/180

 the tenth round. I remember breaking away from Nate, and that's all I do remember till I'm sitting in my dressing room when the fight's over. But here's what "Tad," the famous sport writer, says about that brawl from then on. I clipped it out of the paper:

Gents, this was one for the book! When "Six-Second" Smith flopped on his stool at the end of the ninth frame, it looked like it was time for the customers to go home and argue about the fight. But this two-fisted fighting fool from Drew City had other plans for the evening. With his jaw fractured in two places, his body a raw red from Jackson's terrific pounding in the clinches, Smith raved and struggled with his frantic pilot, Nate Shapiro, who wanted to throw in the old towel and save his boy from further mutiliationmutilation [sic] or the knockout that seemed as certain as sunset. With only half a minute before the bell, Shapiro, seeing no chance to keep Smith in his corner, drew on his canny ringcraft in an attempt to save a hopeless situation. He knew that if the champion discovered what he had done to Smith's jaw, he'd simply crack him there again and it would be curtains. So he told Smith to drop from the next body punch, take a count of nine, and then get up bent over as if badly hurt. The foxy Shapiro hoped this would make the champ think he's busted one of Smith's ribs and cause him to devote all his attention to Smith's body, leaving the burn jaw alone.

An old trick, men, but it worked! Jackson slammed a left to Smith's wind early in the tenth and Smith went down as if hit with an axe. He was up at nine,