Name: Career Record: click Alias: The Durable Dane Birth Name: Oscar Mattheus Nielsen Nationality: Danish Birthplace: Copenhagen, Denmark Born: 1882-06-05 Died: 1954-02-07 Age at Death: 71 Height: 5' 7? Reach: 67? Managers: Billy Nolan, Willus Britt

Ad Wolgast and the incomparable constitute a glorious chapter in ring history. But the stories of thoseFor sheer courage and stamina, Battling Nelson stood in a class all by himself. His classic battles with , Nelson fights have been told time and again. Here, for the first time, is an intimate, heartwarming account of the fascinating, little-known incidents in the life of this fabulous old champion.

MUMBLING INCOHERENTLY, the shriveled little man shuffled into the charity ward of Chicago State Hospital. The doctors looked at him with a mixture of pity and awe. His eyes were blank and his once muscular 133-pound frame had wasted away to a mere 80 pounds. A brash young attendant said callously: "Huh! Another derelict. We're sure getting a lot of them these days." An elderly attendant shot him a cold look. "Do you know who that 'derelict' is?" he snapped angrily. "That 'derelict' is Battling Nelson, one of the greatest fighters who ever lived."

Old Bat, who had licked immortals like Aurelio Herrera, Young Corbett, Jimmy Britt, Terry McGovern and the incomparable Joe Gans, was 71 years old when he was ruled insane and committed in January of 1954. The psychiatrists' diagnosis had been chillingly brief: "Incurable senile dementia." Nobody will ever know what went on in Nelson's tortured mind as he dribbled away his last days amid alien surroundings. Occasionally a flicker of interest would his lustreless eyes and he would try to talk. But the words trickled out in a jumble of meaningless phrases. Those familiar with the ex-champion's spectacular career could pick out place names here and there and link them with some of the famous battles that had earned him riches beyond his dreams. Names like Colma... Goldfield... Point Richmond... But what could they make of such mystifying phrases as electric lights... cracks in the floor... sheets of snow... my seven dollar suit...? It was hard to make any sense of this babbling because Nelson, in his wild hallucinations, was conjuring up the broken images of a past less concerned with his great triumphs than with the vivid fragments of memory that often overshadow the important events in a man's life.

One such fragment came glimmering out of Fond du Lac, Wis., early in his career: a strange bout with a crude battler named Young Scotty. Strange because everytime Nelson floored Scotty the electric lights would go out! The Bat was puzzled. Scotty's head had been slamming the floor with a jarring crunch. Was it possible, Nelson wondered, that the impacts were in some way disrupting the makeshift wiring? After six knockdowns - and six blackouts - it suddenly dawned on the Battler that he was being hoodwinked. By that time, however, Young Scotty had managed to last the eight-round route, robbing Bat of a well-deserved kayo victory.

Battling Nelson was always ready 'to fight anybody, even if it was for only a ham sandwich' Nelson never forgot the incident Another that stuck in his mind involved two bouts with rugged Harry Fails two years earlier, in May of 1901. Nelson, only 18 at the time, had fought 25 bouts - some of them for as little as a $2.50 purse. This was peanuts even in those days, but comparatively good money to a boy who had made only 15 cents a day as an ice cutter in his home town of Hegewisch, Ill. Both Nelson and Fails were dissatisfied with their showing in the first bout, a six-round No Decision contest held in Omro, Wis. Eager to settle matters, they quickly agreed to a rematch, for which the promoter promised to sweeten the purse (Bat had gotten $5 for the first figh