Bohun Lynch

“ The spectators, even in that age of quickly cut and dried opinions, still had a certain degree of confidence in this strange man, for whilst he was actually fighting, though round by round he got the worst of it, there was the same old vigour in his movements, the same readiness to seize an opportunity. The man of poor spirit in the ring is not so much one who cannot stand punishment as one who fails in aggression. Almost he hopes to be knocked out; he can stand up and defend himself, but on his very life he cannot force himself to take chances and attack his opponent. ”

“ This was due not so much to the hardness of the older man’s hitting as to the softness of Jefferies’s skin: for the champion could generally beat his opponents so easily that severe training seemed to him not worth the candle. Fitzsimmons was unmarked, but the damage was partly to his body and visible only in vague red blotches such as gloved fists make, and partly in store for him. And yet by boxing he had the better of the sixth round, and his hope rose. He was not a man of vivid imagination, just a healthily hopeful fellow, with plenty of self-confidence. ”

“ He forgot to box and hit wildly and wide of his mark. And now Carpentier had got back nearly all the strength that had been beaten out of him in the first round. He sent in a vicious right to the jaw which shook Wells. When a blow on the “point” has done damage short of knocking a man down, he generally gives the fact away by an involuntary tapping of his right foot upon the floor. It is like a strong electric shock which, communicated first to the brain, runs instantly through the whole nervous system. So the spectators could see that Wells had been more than “touched.” ”

“ The effort of wrestling with a man of his own ponderous weight made his breath come short, and when next they faced each other across their extended fists the first dullness of fatigue already weighed on the old champion. He was a slow man, and had been used to win his fights by the slow and steady method of wearing down his antagonists. Slack was harder and stronger than he had supposed, but of course he would beat him—this ungainly slogger who didn’t know enough to avoid the simplest blow. ”

“ We may regard Jem as the first perfect exponent of that splendid blow, the straight and simple left lead. And after the usual caution when the men first met it was with a lightning left, but fiercely hard, that he drew first blood, cutting Pearce’s eye severely. It was like old times—it was always the same way: Joe Berks was strong and so was Fearby, but they could not stop him, Jem Belcher. That left had gone in easily enough. He knew how to hit, did Jem. Strength wasn’t everything. ”

“ After this Gregson was all but blinded, and staggered about the ring half dazed, he could not reach Gulley, who hit him thrice in quick succession as it pleased him, and knocked him down.
In the seventeenth round Gregson lost his temper and his head. That is fatal. It is, of course, all nonsense to suppose that an angry man cannot put up a good fight. He can; a touch of cold rage lends power to a man: thinking clearly he hits to hurt. But wild, tempestuous rage is another matter altogether. The man becomes blind, inasmuch as what he sees conveys no message to his brain. ”

“ The genuine champion, who will be content with a small c, is not made by newspapers. By his own merits he emerges from the ruck and he makes his own way. But he can make his way, probably, much quicker with the aid of newspapers, managers, who sometimes exploit him, and other sound business methods: and not his way only, but his fortune. Carpentier is a transcendent example. He is a magnificent boxer, who was bound to have made a name for himself by boxing and boxing alone. And we do not grudge him the fortune which boxing and boxing alone would not have brought to him. ”

“ It is the hangers-on, the parasites, the vermin of sport, outside the ring, the field, the racecourse, who never risked nor meant to risk a broken nose or a thick ear, who are out for money and for money alone, by fair means for choice (as being on the whole the better policy) , but by foul means readily enough rather than not at all—these are the men who bring every institution upon which they batten into bad repute. ”

“ Though still a young man Belcher had all the sensations of a returning veteran. Indeed it takes a young man to feel that kind of position strongly. Despite the jealousy which had prompted the challenge, there was a romantic atmosphere about all the circumstances of this battle. The half-blind hero, thin, weedy, delicate, fighting the new and sturdier champion; skill and a wonderful spirit pitted against solid bone and muscle. By the 27 time the fight had begun, Jem Belcher felt the romance of it more keenly than his unjust resentment. ”

“ If Johnson’s demeanour had always been insolent, it is unnecessary to look for another word to describe the conduct of Tommy Burns. For all I know, at heart Burns may have been a modest man, though I don’t think so. But to hear him talk you would think that no other boxer had ever existed. There are two ways of getting a hearing and of making people think well of you: one is to talk as though the person spoken to was the most important and interesting and delightful man or woman alive, to talk with such conviction in that way that the person in question believes himself to be just that. ”

“ In the twenty-seventh round Turner hurled himself at his opponent and hit him so hard as to drive him right away, though without causing his downfall. Randall was now refreshed by a pull at the brandy-flask, but Turner was yet able to stop his best blows and to give good ones in return. But the tide of the battle had set definitely against him. Randall ended one round by knocking him down with a tremendous body-blow and the next by a throw.
When Turner came quite jauntily from his second’s knee for the thirty-first round, the crowd began to call out: “Take him away: he’s too game.” ”

“ Jem Driscoll.
And Jefferies tried again and again to batter his way through Johnson’s guard and failed. He feinted and hit, but he was too slow; and each time his glove went out with all his power behind it, the black ducked or side-stepped, getting away from danger with an agility which was astonishing in so big a man. And Jefferies knew now that he could not beat him. He was desperate, and made mad-bull rushes without avail. In the tenth round one eye was so swollen that he could not see from it, and Johnson hit him again and again. A man less strong would have been knocked out long before. ”

“ In an affair of life and death, sportsmanship is not involved. We try very hard indeed to make out that it is or that it ought to be, but a man who obeys the rules of—say—the Amateur Boxing Association when he is attacked in a dark lane by a ruffian with half a brick, will have no tribute to his wisdom in any obituary notice written by me.
Sport to-day is beautifully fair. Not so, invariably, are professional athletics. ”

“ He was himself tired, and, though his seconds whispering to him took his immediate victory for granted, they were just a little anxious. The seventh round found Corbett dashing in to complete his work. Right and left again and again he smashed into Fitzsimmons’s face, bruising and battering, almost pulping it so that hardly a feature was distinguishable. But the effort tired him, and he failed to land a blow on the vulnerable jaw. With a man so reckless of defence as Fitzsimmons, it was, as already explained, easy enough to land a blow—just a blow and another. ”

“ But in this sixth round, before he could act successfully on that good advice, Corbett came in close and sent a whizzing upper-cut to the Cornishman’s jaw which sent his right foot tapping involuntarily in the way that always happens with a jaw-blow just not hard enough or accurate enough to knock a man down. Just after that Corbett landed again and Fitzsimmons fell, remaining down for nine seconds. Corbett’s heart must have glowed. True, the nearly beaten man rose and managed to fend off his opponent’s triumphant attack for the rest of the round. ”

“ Not as a preparation for the hardships of warfare, not necessarily as a means of self-defence, but in view of a fine ideal of physical fitness, the strain and pain of violent athletics should be perpetuated. 202 And this, apart from the fun of the thing (which after all matters most) is the excuse and reason for amateur boxing. So let boxing be regarded as a sport, and let us leave it at that.
Old prejudices live with extraordinary vigour: and boxing—the very fact of it—the peaceful and positively harmless encounter of two men with well-padded gloves stirs the deepest rancour still. ”

“ There is no other sport in which the sense of personal combat is so manifest.
And it is partly because of this dramatic interest that heavy-weights—big men—have, as a rule, throughout two hundred years, attracted greater attention than the little men, except, of course, when little men have fought with big ones. Roughly, it is like this: if you want to see scientific boxing you choose a fight between feather or bantam-weights, if you want to see a good slogging match (but tempered with science, always) you choose a fight between middle or heavy-weights, preferably the latter. ”

“ There comes a time in a hard fight, with gloves or without them, when one man or other wants less to win than to be done with the whole agonising, wearying business on any terms. And that man is beaten. So it was now with Gregson. Hurt and fatigued, he lost heart at last. His will had been stubborn, but not so stubborn as John Gulley’s. They fought on till the thirty-sixth round, till both were almost at a standstill. Then Gulley made the last supreme effort and knocked Bob Gregson down, so that he could not rise to the call of time. Gulley himself came staggering to the scratch. ”

“ But it is not really so astonishing when we remember that the plucky little Hoxton bricklayer stood to the youth of his era as the gamest representative of almost the only form of sport the larger public knew or cared about. In days when golf, lawn-tennis, cricket, football, and the rest not only multiply our sporting stars almost indefinitely, but attract crowds numbered by scores of thousands to applaud them, we do not seem to pitch upon the boxer as our especially typical representative of national sporting skill. ”

“ Perrins was boxing desperately, striving with his great superiority in reach to close Johnson’s remaining eye. He knew very well that many a fight had been won like that, an otherwise unhurt man being forced to throw up the sponge because he was totally blinded by the swelling of his eyes. In the forty-first round Johnson either slipped down or deliberately fell without a blow and Perrins and his backers claimed the victory. If Johnson did actually play this very dirty trick to gain time and have a rest, he deserved to lose. ”

“ To hard-headed and insensitive people it is a matter of perpetual astonishment that sheer bounce and bombast should cow an opponent in the ring; but, as an odd and unhappy fact, it frequently does so. But it took hard blows to beat Jem Corbett. He knew what to expect from Sullivan. He knew that he would try to rush in and beat down his guard and half kill him before the fight had fairly started. And Sullivan did try this. But Corbett was a good boxer and he had character, and he ducked and stepped aside, or stepped back, not attempting to hit, only making sure that he was not hit. ”

“ Even a xii Dempsey, earning several thousand pounds a minute, may be dimly conscious that he is building better than he knows. Professionals in any game who attain a height of skill which gives them a practically unlimited market for what they have to sell, can scarcely be blamed by stockbrokers who gamble on a falling market, or by profiteers who battened on the war. Even the modern professional boxer cannot do permanent harm to the true atmosphere of the great game in which he shines briefly like a passing meteor. ”