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 with Knockout Pierce, a guy which nobody but Pierce's father and mother had ever heard of up to then, and which looked like a push over.

This brawl cost Monsieur Jacques Enright exactly $40,000, which was what McManus was goin' to tip him for his second quarrel with Kid Roberts. Knockout Pierce ended the fight a minute and a half before the bell in the first round with a terrific right hook to the jaw. Enright was out so long that when he come to the first thing he asked was whether or not the draft law had passed Congress.

Well, of course, that was the curtain for Enright and the fortunate young Mr. Knockout Pierce become the boy wonder of fistiana. Always a cold-eyed gambler, Jimmy McManus hesitated, however, about signin' him to meet Kid Roberts. The punch that knocked Enright dead might of been a fluke and James didn't want to hire nobody which the Kid would stop with his first feint. Immediately the typewriters opened up on us from all over the ex-Land of the Spree. We was accused of pickin' boloneys and bein' scared stiff of Pierce which had flattened the tough Enright in less than a round, whereas the champion had required seven frames for the same job. Nine out every ten of them sport writers knew in their hearts that it was the beatin' Enright had got from the Kid which softened him up and made him a mark for Pierce. How the so ever, McManus quit to the newspapers and signed Knockout Pierce to meet Kid Roberts in a twenty-round mêlée for the heavyweight championship of the wide, wide world.

A lot of weeks was throwed away like they always is before a championship fight, in selectin' the time,