Tom Sharkey vs. Gus Ruhlin
After a slight spar in round one, Ruhlin led with his left but was met with an effective counter to the body from Sharkey. The Irishman clinched and held, and was quickly in trouble with the referee. Ruhlin slipped down and his adversary became too impetuous, and was nearly disqualified through striking his man before he had gained his feet. Sharkey was very busy when the round ended.
When the fight resumed Sharkey was again cautioned for holding and Ruhlin took control of the centre of the ring. Three times he jabbed the sailor on the face and got nothing back. Sharkey then missed a wild uppercut with his left and before he could recover, his opponent drove a left and then a right home to the head just as the bell rang.
In the third, both men boxed for the head with little success although Sharkey landed one left jab to Ruhlin’s face.
Both men were guilty of holding in the fourth but a clean jab to Sharkey’s face left him looking “flushed” and “distressed” and he “appeared pleased” when the round ended. Tom came out to take more punishment, but tried everything to disguise the fact that the fight was slipping away from him. “This is not so easy for you as in New York,” he told Ruhlin. The bravado fooled no-one at ringside.
In the sixth, Sharkey looked “used up”, a nasty cut now worrying him over his eye. “With his usual gameness however he kept going after his big rival in determined style.” Sharkey was running on instinct.
When Ruhlin backed him into a corner in the seventh, Sharkey showed excellent footwork and got out of danger.
In the eighth, he took further punishment and in the ninth, he was forced back onto the ropes and was hit hard with both fists in the ribs.
All the same, in the tenth, Sharkey goaded Ruhlin again: “You could not beat me with a hammer!”
“However, for once,” noted an onlooker sadly, “the sailor boy’s ideas were wrong.”
Sharkey tried to rush Ruhlin but took a hefty punch on the draw, staggered and reeled back his corner.
Sharkey was out on his feet now and when he stood up for the eleventh he clutched Ruhlin around the neck and dragged him around the ring. Eventually they broke and every time Ruhlin struck Sharkey went down. Four times in all. Sharkey got up each time but the last time, he struggled to his feet, he really did not know where he was. As the round ended, Sharkey’s corner went to his aid and tried to get him ready for another push. But Tommy Ryan, one of his seconds, knew the game was up. He walked over to Ruhlin’s corner and gave in on Sharkey’s behalf.
Ruhlin walked across the ring to shake his opponent by the hand and left the ring, some onlookers said, without a scratch on him.
Sharkey remained where he was, tears rolling down his cheeks. “It was somewhat pathetic to see such a game boxer in tears,” decided a reporter with the Sporting Chronicle. A reporter filing for American newspapers said the fight had been “one of the most determined and desperate struggles ever witnessed in the National Sporting Club”.
Some observers said Sharkey, reduced almost to insensibility, then raged against his seconds for their intervention. All agree he was cut, beaten and angry.
Back in Ireland, Tom’s family and the old fans who had followed his fistic adventures closely through the pages of the Dundalk Democrat read what appeared to be an obituary for that career. The sports columnist known as ‘Philistine’ wrote that not even “Herculean” Sharkey could continue to take such “thumpings” as that handed out by Ruhlin. “While it is generally thought that Ruhlin must have come on immensely in his form,” he concluded sadly, “the usual opinion is that the sailor has gone back very much, and now has not much else but his undauntable pluck to recommend him.”
Losing the £2,000 purse and getting beaten by Ruhlin would have been only part of the disappointment; realising he was no longer the fighter he once was would have poured salt on the stinging wounds, wounds laid open by the realisation he would never have the chance to fight for the world title again.
But perhaps on that special night there was a wound that went deeper still. For, there in the crowd, was Tom’s father James Sharkey who had come to watch his son in a big fight for the first time. James Sharkey, now 78, had travelled to London to celebrate his son’s successes on the world stage, but instead he was watching the sun setting on his career.
(by Greg Lewis)
