STL All Sports

A fighter could continue this procedure without having to suffer a blow for any period of time. In the last of the bare-knuckle fights for the heavyweight title, between John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain in 1889, Kilrain was down almost as long as he was up, and he "coasted" many rounds without being struck a single punch by simply falling down, which ended the round, as specified in London Prize Ring Rules.

In boxing-"the refinement of pugilism"-a round must go three minutes. If a fighter is taking a terrific beating, he has a choice of continuing to take it or going down. If he goes down he must be up within 10 seconds, or be counted out as loser. A few hundred ringmen have gone to their graves because of the beatings they had to take from gloved fists during the three minutes that make up a round of boxing today.

Thousands of boxers have been hauled to hospitals after their fights with gloves. Tens of thousands more have needed medical help. Billy Papke, after mixing with Stanley Ketchel for the middleweight title during an exhibition of the "art of self defense," was so battered his sister did not recognize him and refused Papke entrance to his home. Jack Dempsey, using gloves, wrecked the face of Jess Willard in three rounds. Gene Tunney, with gloves, so hammered the face of Dempsey during their Philadelphia fight in 1926 that it was weeks before the former champion regained natural appearance.

In contrast, it is difficult for anyone to name a dozen, a half dozen, or even a few instances of death resulting from those "brutal" bare-knuckle contests under London Prize Ring Rules. Men took beatings, but never anything comparable with what others have taken in "boxing bouts," where gloves do little more than protect the fists of the striking fighter and where the rules require a man to withstand a blizzard of punches, lest he go down and be counted out.

John L. Sullivan was at his peak when the bare-knuckle days were about done and when Marquis of Queensberry Rules, which called for gloves and three-minute rounds, were becoming the vogue. It is not of record that Sullivan, with bare knuckles, ever seriously damaged foemen except the flabby, outmatched Kilrain, who was able to carry on for about 75 rounds, under a broiling sun. But when Sullivan put on gloves and proceeded into action against the "all comers" of his era and foes had to absorb three minutes of a Sullivan attack, John L. almost pulverized the vast bulk of them.

There are no records of a fighter who lost an eye during a battle under London Prize Ring Rules, which permitted gouging. But Harry Greb, Kid Norfolk and many others lost the sight of an eye by being gouged with a gloved thumb in one of those "art of self defense" performances, where gouging is barred.

It is the most grotesque chapter of many that have been written since the world was young and pugilism was new. For, when truth peeps out, it becomes apparent that while legislators ended bare-knuckle fighting and approved gloved warfare, they really were ruling out a reasonably safe and sane method of ring warfare, in which devastation was limited, and traded it for a "refined glove sport," which, in almost any given year, causes more deaths and more human wreckage than occurred during the whole history of bare-knuckle fighting. In making modern rules, the legislators remembered only what they had read of bare-knuckle pugilism of ancient times and not the bare-knuckle sport that was bettered by regulations fathered by the immortal Jack Broughton and many others.