"Mighty" Melio Bettina makes the first defence of his newly won World Light Heavyweight title against, "The Pittsburgh Kid" Billy Conn. Both Conn and Melio had similar records and were well experienced but Conn held a noticeable height and reach advantage even if Melio had arguably the harder punches. More info below...
Billy Conn would go down as one of the best light heavyweights in the history but at this time in his career his best fights were arguably ahead of him. Conn had turned pro in 1934 as a welterweight and although his first year as a pro was "patchy" he eventually found his rhythm and became one of the most exciting young boxers on the scene. He fought a number of experienced opponents over the next 4 years including Young Corbett III, Teddy Yarosz, Vince Dundee, Fritzie Zivic, Fred Apostoli and Honeyboy Jones to name a few. In his most recent fight, Conn easily defeated Solly Krieger over 15 rounds. Conn had a record of 45-9-1 heading in against Bettina and although he had a far less than impressive knock out record, he had proven himself to be tough as nails, full of heart and relentless. He had never been knocked out and only once was stopped but that was due to an upset stomach early on his career.
Melio Bettina had a near identical record to Billy Conn with 45-6-2 but the big difference was he had twice as many KO's but he had also suffered a KO loss himself back in 1936 against Frank Zamaris. Bettina had been a light heavyweight since he turned pro in 1934 and had decent success for the first couple years before suffering 4 losses, 3 back to back, in 1936. Bettina regathered himself however and bounced back with decent wins over the next few years against men like Frank Zamaris (in a rematch), Steve Carr, Joe Knight, Swede Berglund and veteran Bob Godwin. In Feb 1939 Bettina was picked to face Tiger Jack Fox to fight for the vacant NYSAC World Light Heavyweight title. Tiger Jack Fox was seen as the favourite heading in (on paper at least), he had more fights, more knockouts and was the naturally bigger man but he was also still recovering from a stab wound near his heart that occurred 2 months prior following an argument with a woman at a hotel. Bettina would force a TKO stoppage in the 9th Rd to win the World Light Heavyweight title. Before defending his newly won World title against Conn, Bettina had a non-title warm up fight against Italian fighter, Italo Colonello, and beat him up so bad over the first 2 rounds that the referee would not let Colonello out of his corner and called the fight off as a 3rd Rd TKO.