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A Brief History of Pugilism
Pugilism
began in England early in the 18th century and lasted
until around the time of the last bare fist championship
fight between the American champion John L. Sullivan who
beat Jake Kilrain in 75 rounds near New Orleans in 1889.
James
Figg
, is acknowledged as the
first champion of the English prize ring.
In 1720 he opened a school of arms in London on the
Oxford Road (now Oxford Street) known as Figg's
Amphitheatre
Upon
Figg
's death in 1734 George
Taylor
took
over the management of the amphitheatre.
Taylor called himself ‘champion’; an
impertinence when everyone knew that Jack Broughton
, had never been beaten
by anybody and the list of his victims included George
Taylor. Broughton
began to find his supportive role more and more
frustrating and was keen for his independence.
By now he was a popular man with a growing circle
of influential friends and his ideas for an amphitheatre
devoted wholly to fisticuffs fell on receptive ears,
particularly as he promised much better facilities for
spectators than Taylor's emporium offered.
Broughton's amphitheatre opened on Taylor's
doorstep on 13th March 1743.
Everyone, except for George Taylor, was happy with
Broughton's new theatre, with its boxes and gallery for
those seeking space and comfort and its pit for those who
crowded round the raised stage.
After a series of fights which clashed with and
undercut (maximum price of 1s 6d) Taylor succumbed,
closing his own theatre and took his fighters to join
Broughton.
Jack
Broughton
decided
he needed a set of rules to assist in the smooth running
of the contests in his amphitheatre (in the same way as
the Jockey Club saw itself regulating Newmarket racing
only) and although 'Jack Broughton's Rules' (see Appendix
1) as they became known were not formulated as national
rules for pugilism they were destined to govern
prize-fighting for almost a century.
This
new sport became popular and fights for money stakes (or
prize-fights) drew big crowds, although they were against
the law.
Men were carefully trained to meet in the roped-off
‘ring’, usually marked out in a field.
Fights went to a finish, that is, until one of the
pair was unable to continue.
A
round ended when one of the boxers fell to the ground,
whether after many minutes, or after only a few seconds.
When a round ended, the seconds took their men to
their corners and attended them during an interval of half
a minute. After this pause, the boxers again came ‘to the scratch’
and set to. If
either failed to stand up after thirty seconds the fight
was over, the loser being said to be ‘knocked out of
time’ or ‘not up to scratch’.
Some prize-fights lasted for hours; others ended in
a few minutes.
The
leading fighters were presented with ornate championship
belts, silver cups and services of plate, by an admiring
public. Eulogised and feted by the literati and worshipped
by the mob during their lifetime, in death they were
commemorated with splendid tombs.
At
the height of the craze for pugilism, the popular
Blackwood's Magazine had remarked, albeit tongue in cheek,
that the man who has not read Boxiana
is
ignorant of the power of the English language'. Moreover,
prize‑fighting as a popular spectacle was
responsible for the introduction into our native tongue
not just of slang words like 'claret', meaning blood, but
of many metaphors still in common use. 'The phrase 'throw
your hat into the ring', 'come up to scratch' and 'throw
in the sponge', are all echoes of archaic prize‑ring
practice.
In
1838 a new set of rules were introduced to replace Jack
Broughton
's Rules and these were
known as the Rules of the London Prize Ring or The New
Rules
.
The
New Rules
of 1838 were an attempt to
bring a greater order and acceptability to the sport.
The
way in which challenges for fights, details of forthcoming
fights and reports of recent contests were broadcast by
the sporting press with a newspaper entitled Bell's Life
in London (the forerunner of today's Sporting Life
) appearing to be the number one sporting newspaper.
The
newspaper Bell's Life in London not only reported the
fights but also provided the publicity which fed and
fostered interest in the ring throughout the country but
it also during the peak years provided some of those
organisational elements which helped pugilism to survive.
The editor became the regular holder of the stake
money for pugilism and other sports and at times held as
much as £15,000 and he or one of his journalistic
colleagues also became the most reliable stand-by as
referee.
When
gloves were adopted for contests (after earlier being used
in training), hooking, swinging and upper-cutting were
brought into play. Faster
and more varied footwork came into use with the springy
surface of the modern ring.
Later
in the 19th century the prize ring lost the fashionable
supporters who had encouraged it in the time of the
Napoleonic wars and it fell on bad days. Yet even in 1860 the fight at Farnborough between the English
champion, Tom Sayers
and John C. Heenan
of America
, was watched by a large crowd and fully reported in English and
American newspapers.
As boxing became less brutal, mainly because of
the rules drawn up in 1867 by the 8th Marquess of
Queensbury
which
insisted on such things as padded gloves being worn and
other changes to ensure fair play it eventually came to be
permitted by law.
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