A young boy is killed during an amateur prizefight, leaving his sister, Mary Parker, opposed to boxing and all it stands for. Parker's death leads to the resignation of sports writer Wally Matson, who quits because his editor refuses to print the facts behind the boy's death. The truth is that young boys are being brutally exploited by Joe Taggerty, an unscrupulous boxing promoter who is paying off Wally's editor to silence the story. Vowing to clean up amateur boxing by exposing the graft and corruption that has permeated the sport, Wally goes to work for a small newspaper, where he convinces the publisher to sponsor a properly supervised amateur tournament. Wally then invites amateur boxer Bill Crane to participate in the match, but Bill, who is in love with Mary, refuses to fight because of her loathing of the sport. To win Mary over, Wally takes her to dinner and tells her of his boyhood spent in poverty and the hope that boxing offers to boys from the slums, thus securing her permission for Bill to enter the contest. Realizing that Wally's contest will put him out of business, Taggerty tells Bill that Wally has been seeing Mary, prompting the boxer to break up with her. To further sabotage Wally's efforts, Taggerty bribes professional boxer Cliff Stanton to pose as an amateur and enter the tournament, but his plans go awry when Bill, inspired by Mary's vows of love, beats Stanton, thus exposing Taggerty's treachery and winning national acclaim for the Golden Gloves tournament.