Boston Massacre

Televiewers last week finally got more violence than they could stomach. The blood and brutality took place, not on a crime show or a western film, but in the lightweight championship fight between Challenger Tommy Collins, 133 Ibs., and Champion Jimmy Carter, 135 Ibs., televised over NBC from the Boston Garden. After two relatively even rounds, Carter hit Collins (an overblown featherweight) a hard left to the jaw. For an instant, Collins remained dazedly upright; then he fell backward to the canvas as if poleaxed.

It was the first of ten brutal knockdowns in less than five minutes of fighting. By the time Collins' seconds had climbed into the ring and forced reluctant Referee Tommy Rawson to stop the fight in the fourth round, 24-year-old Boxer Collins was a rubbery-legged, bloody-faced wreck of a man who had to be carried to his corner. Even Announcer Jimmy Powers, speaking for the sponsor, Gillette Safety Razor, murmured that "it was incredible that they let it go so far."

Across the nation, TV stations and newspaper offices heard an angry buzz from viewers. "That fight set boxing back 400 years," protested a fan in Pittsburgh. In San Francisco a man shut off his TV set because "my wife and kids were crying and I couldn't stand it any longer." A Virginian wired the Boston police that Referee Rawson should be "charged with attempted homicide." In Los Angeles, ex-Welterweight Champion Barney Ross swore that he had never seen "such a brutal affair in a ring in all my life." Robert Christenberry, chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, cried: "Everything we've done to make it a clean, competitive sport they've thrown to the wind. Where were the doctors? Why didn't they stop it quicker?"

In Boston, Referee Rawson appeared surprised by the uproar. He explained that Collins, though repeatedly knocked down, "was never hit badly." What was more, the one-sided fight probably looked worse on television than it actually was. Said Rawson: "I didn't want to deny Collins that one chance of winning the greatest fight of his life." At week's end, the Massachusetts State Boxing Commission decided that "there was no negligence on the part of any official connected with the contest, and apparently Collins suffered no serious damage."

Most of the nation's sportswriters, before the bout, had called the fight an obvious mismatch. New York Post Sportswriter Jimmy Cannon put part of the blame on the NBC network: "The fight racket is now television's responsibility. It rs no longer an arena sport but a family divertissement. The networks should decide what their cameras gaze upon."

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