Knuckles and Gloves

The Prize-Ring served its turn and passed; and modern boxing, roughly, fills the gap. At present we do not see why modern boxing should not go on indefinitely. For all that peop...

Sports and games may be classified as natural and artificial. Running, jumping, and swimming, for example, are natural sports, though, to be sure, much artifice is required to a...

The Jews in this country have taken very kindly to boxing, both as spectators and as principals, throughout the annals of the Ring, both in the days of bare knuckles and in late...

With those whose charity begins--and ends--at the farthest possible point from home, with those who, to be more particular, born of British blood, cannot speak of the British Li...

The fight between Tom Sayers, Champion of England, and Heenan, the giant American, was about the last conspicuous affair with bare knuckles fit for place in any history of the P...

James J. Jefferies was an enormous fellow who for many years held the World’s Championship. He stood 6 feet 1½ inches, and his weight was generally in the neighbourhood of fifte...

From the spectator’s point of view much of the interest of boxing (and almost all of it in amateur boxing), is purely dramatic. You can thoroughly enjoy--at least I can, and the...

The year 1824 was the climax of the best period of the Prize-Ring. There were good fights in later years, as we shall see, first-rate champions, high skill, noble endurance: but...

If the last decade of the nineteenth century saw the growth of glove-fighting to a high level of scientific achievement, the first decade of the twentieth saw the decline of its...

If an unnecessary fuss has been made about those affairs of other boxers which have nothing whatever to do with boxing, there is some excuse in Carpentier’s case, if only becaus...

If the love of Fair Play is not born in us, and has therefore to be taught, we do have ingrained in us a very real admiration for a good loser. Nothing, as we know only too well...

Bombardier Wells has a most peculiar record. The chart of his successes and failures is like conventionalised lightning. He began with success and then failed miserably: then up...

Before continuing the history of Tom Cribb and finally disposing of the unlucky Belcher, it is necessary to turn aside and examine the brief pugilistic career of John Gulley, wh...

The last three years of the nineteenth century were rich in great encounters, or so, at any rate, it seems to us now. The transition period, when bare-knuckle fighting had degen...

At the time of writing this chapter, Joe Beckett is the Heavy-weight Champion of England, and has been ever since the contest described below when, on February 27th, 1919, he fi...

Robert Fitzsimmons was in all respects the opposite number of Jem Corbett. He was in the great tradition of fighting blacksmiths. A rough, simple soul, who was perfectly content...

It is appropriate to begin the second part of this book, which deals with Boxing in its modern sense, with an account of a fight described by all who saw it as the best ever see...

After this battle with Deaf Burke, Bendigo was given a champion’s belt by Jem Ward, and for a year he remained undisputed Champion of England. In March of 1840, however, whilst...

Carpentier served in the French Flying Corps during the war, but though four years or more were taken from the best of his boxing life, he did not forget how to box. During the...

In the days of bare knuckles there was only one champion, and though there were one or two exceptions--Tom Sayers is the most notable--little men, or men little by comparison, w...

On the retirement of Tom Spring the championship fell to Jem Ward, who held it for many years. He was followed by Deaf Burke, whose fight with Simon Byrne is the subject of this...

Unequal fights always engage both our sympathy and our interest, and Tom Sayers was hardly ever matched with a man of anything at all near his own height and weight. William Per...

Johnson’s victory over Burns in 1908 created, if we are to be judged by our newspapers, both in England and America, a sort of absurd terror. A black man was champion, and no wh...

It is character and knowledge of character, which, together with strength and skill, makes boxing champions to-day. And we are inclined to think that the psychological element i...

In one respect the most remarkable fight in the whole history of the Prize-Ring was an unimportant affair, so far as title or money goes, between Jack Lane, commonly known as “H...

In order to dispose of Tommy Burns so far as this book is concerned, it is necessary to break the chronological order of contests and jump twelve years. Between his defeat by Jo...

After his defeat by Dempsey, Carpentier did not fight again until he met George Cook, the Australian, at the Albert Hall, on January 12th, 1922. In the World’s Championship cont...

The first Boxing Champion of England of whom any record has been handed down to us was Figg. _Fistiana or The Oracle of the Ring_ gives his date as 1719. Strictly, however, his...

After Jem Belcher’s signal defeat at the huge hands of Pearce, the “Game Chicken,” two years passed by before the temptation once again to risk the chances of the ring overpower...

Perhaps one of the best known of William Hazlitt’s essays is that called _The Fight_, though it is the coach drive towards Hungerford and some very intimate and exact discussion...

We come now to another of the outstanding figures of the Prize-Ring, the famous Tom Spring. This man’s real name was Winter--“sharp as Winter, kind as Spring”--as Borrow has it....

Jack Randall, the Irishman, whom George Borrow describes as the King of the Light-weights, was a few pounds over the ten stone which is the generally recognised light-weight lim...

It is not generally known that a Mr. William Thompson was once Champion of England. Sometimes a nickname will stick to a man much harder than the name of his father, and so it w...

Tom Sayers was the last of the great champions of England under the old dispensation. And, as champions go, he was a little man, standing 5 feet 8 inches and usually weighing ab...

As already said, John Gulley retired from the ring after his second fight with Bob Gregson, and Tom Cribb, having himself beaten Gregson a few months later--that is, on October...