Jan. 15, 1925

Benny Leonard, lightweight champ since May 1917, can stand up to the blows of his fellow man, but can't to the tears of his mother. For a while she has tried to convince her son to give up boxing. Finally, he throws in the towel.

"I am retiring from boxing for the love of my mother, who has begged me not to fight again," the 28-year-old Leonard said in a five-page statement.

Fears for her son's safety and the ever-present thought he might come home from a fight severely hurt made his mother apprehensive and insistent in her demands that he retire, the statement said.

Leonard, though, will return to the ring in 1931 after the Wall Street crash of 1929 leaves him virtually penniless.