he Queensberry championships. There were but few
competitors, including a fair number of gentlemen; and the style of
boxing aimed at was the "science" bequeathed from the old prize-ring by
Ned Donnelly, a pupil of Nat Langham. Langham had once defeated Sayers,
and thereby taught him the tactics by which he defeated Heenan. There
was as yet no special technique of glove fighting: the traditions and
influence of the old ring were unquestioned and supreme; and they
distinctly made for brains, skill, quickness, and mobility, as against
brute violence, not at all on moral grounds, but because experience had
proved that giants did not succeed in the ring under the old rules, and
that crafty middle-weights did.

This did not last long. The spectators did not want to see skill
defeating violence: they wanted to see violence drawing blood and
pounding its way to a savage and exciting victory in the shortest
possible time (the old prizefight usually dragged on for hours, and was
ended by exhaustion rather than by victory). So did most of the judges.
And the public and the judges naturally had their wish; for the
competitors, as I have already explained, soon discovered that the only
way to make sure of a favorable verdict was to "knock out" their
adversary. All pretence of sparring "for points": that is, for marks on
an examination paper filled up by the judges, and representing nothing
but impracticable academic pedantry in its last ditch, was dropped; and
the competitions became frank fights, with abundance of blood drawn, and
"knock-outs" always imminent. Needless to add, the glove fight soon
began to pay. The select and thinly attended spars on the turf at Lillie
Bridge gave way to crowded exhibitions on the hard boards of St. James's
Hall. These were organized by the Boxing Association; and to them the
provinces, notably Birmingham, sent up a new race of boxers whose sole
aim was to knock their opponent insensible by a right-hand blow on the
jaw, knowing well that no Birmingham man could depend on a verdict
before a London audience for any less undeniable achievement.

The final step was taken by an American pugilist. He threw off the last
shred of the old hypocrisy of the gloved hand by challenging the whole
world to produce a man who could stand before him for a specified time
without being knocked out. His brief but glorious career completely
re-established pugilism by giving a world-wide advertisement to the fact
that t