Compared with football, boxing is gentle as the ancient pastoral pastime of tending sheep. A ten-second knockout, to the football man, is a joke; he'll get knocked out thus fifteen times every game. The rules of his sport give him three minutes to wake up—or the time which spells the boxer's finish multiplied eighteenfold. He is trained and exalted to a point of Spartan fortitude which is at once the wonder and disgust of the pugilist. He will continue to play with a sprained ankle, with a twisted knee, with a shoulder out of joint. He never leaves the arena of his own volition; he has to be dragged out—usually held by main force flat upon a door. In his world exist no towel or sponges.