bouts, Krieger boxed as a light heavyweight having a very difficult time making the 160-pound middleweight limit. Krieger was a shadow of his former self in the rematch, forcing himself to lose weight too quickly, and Hostak knocked him down four times. Hostak forced Krieger to take the lead, but when he took a defensive crouch, Hostak opened him up with blows to the midsection. In the fourth Hostak knocked Krieger to the canvas with a flurry of lefts and rights for a count of nine. On his second trip to the canvas, the referee called a fourth-round TKO. Hostak became the first boxer to regain the middleweight title since Stanley Ketchel in 1908. After an October 1939 non-title knockout over Charley Coates, Hostak signed for his first bout ever outside of the state of Washington, facing German-Jewish refugee Eric Seelig in Cleveland on December 11, 1939. On December 11, 1935 Seelig fought an NBA world middleweight title match against Al Hostak before an enthusiastic crowd of 10,000 at the Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, losing in a first round knockout of a scheduled fifteen rounds. Seelig sparred cautiously in the opening of the round, but was sent to the canvas from a crushing left hook to the right side of his jaw, and could not resume the bout until a count of nine was completed. A left and right put him to the canvas for the count 1:21 into the first round. Losing the NBA world middleweight title with injured hands to Tony Zale, July, 1940 Nate Druxman rematched Hostak and Zale for the middleweight title on July 19, 1940, before a crowd of 16,000, at Civic Stadium in Seattle. Once again Hostak injured his hands in the bout, while Zale wore him down with a devastating body attack. Before badly injuring his hands, Hostak had his best round in the fifth when he dished out his heaviest punches, and left Zale groggy. With both of his eyes swollen, and his left hand apparently injured, Hostak was dropped in the 12th for a count of nine and again in 13th rounds, before the bout was stopped 1:20 in the thirteenth by referee Benny Leonard and Zale took the title from Hostak. Zale's rushing attack with left hooks to the head, and occasional uppercuts to the chin, proved too much for Hostak, particularly in the second half of the bout. Earlier