e would have gone to work and had Willard knocked down
by something which could really and truly knock him down, like a Fifth
Avenue stage or a heavy automobile delivery truck, y'understand, the
result might have been very different."

"Sure I know," Abe said, "but you could easy overdo such a training
method, Mawruss, and end up with an autopsy instead of a prize-fight.
Also, Mawruss, the way it looked to experts after this here fight had
been pulled off, where Willard made his mistake was in training to
receive punishment instead of training to give it."

"Willard didn't believe in training to give punishment," Morris said.
"If he had believed in it, he could have gone over to Europe and
received pretty nearly a year and a half of the very best training a
prize-fighter could get in giving punishment, Abe, and also, Abe, he
would have avoided getting called a slacker by some of them prize-fight
fans, who seemed to be sore that Willard should have quit after losing
only half his teeth and having still another eye to see with, the right
one being blinded in the first round, Abe."

"Well, the chances is that when Willard goes to consult a doctor, which
he would probably have to do after the licking he got, Mawruss," Abe
said, "before he would get the opportunity to tell the doctor that he
had been in a prize-fight, the doctor will give one look at him and lay
the whole trouble to abscesses at the roots of the teeth, and he will
order Willard to go and have the rest of them drawn right away, so he
might just as well have stayed one more round and let Dempsey finish the
job. Also, Mawruss, them fight fans _oser_ cared whether Willard had
served in the army or not. Willard was the loser, and naturally them
Broadway fight fans didn't have no sympathy with a loser, so even if
there hadn't been no European war for Willard not to serve in, Mawruss,
they would of tried to think of some other name to shout at him as he
staggered out of the ring, like Prohibitionist or League-of-Nationer."

"Of course them fight fans had in a way a right to get sore, Abe,"
Mawruss remarked, "because a whole lot of them had bet money on Willard
to win."

"Sure they did," Abe agreed, "but gambling on the personal injuries of
two human beings, even if they do agree of their own will to see how
long they can stand such injuries without growing unconscious, Mawruss,
is my idea of nothing to gamble about. But I suppose the typical fight
fan don't fe