In the next round he tried to gain time. He was bleeding severely from several deep cuts about his face, and it was increasingly hard to will himself to go on doing his hopeless best. He fought as much as possible on the retreat, trying to keep away. But the Chicken saw a chance of finishing the fight quickly and dashed in, hitting Jem with great force under his blind eye. Then he threw him.
A little later Pearce again got Jem over the ropes in a helpless position and again stepped back, refusing to take advantage of him. In falling sideways it was thought that Jem had broken a rib in hard contact with a ring post. He winced as he came up for the seventeenth round. He was not merely so weak that he could hardly stand, but he was suffering great pain. His pluck was exemplary, he stood up and did his best to box, guarding a blow from time to time and trying to put in a return. But now Pearce had the battle in his hands. He hit Jem as he pleased, as Jem had only a short while ago hit him and ended the round by throwing him.
In the next round Jem came up staggering to the scratch, but once there he found that he could not even lift his left arm at all, and with a bitterness in his heart such as he had dreamed that he would never know, he gave in.
And Pearce, to show how strong he was, could not resist showing off by jumping out of the ring and back again and turning a somersault.
The fight had lasted but thirty-five minutes in all.
CHAPTER V
JEM BELCHER AND TOM CRIBB
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 overpowered the old champion. During that time his life as a publican had by no means improved his already enfeebled physique. And those two years had seen the rise to fame (and that fame steadily growing) of one Tom Cribb, a Gloucestershire man like Pearce and Belcher himself, a heavy, slow, ponderous fellow, who had beaten good men, the best of whom was Bill Richmond, the black, and who had been beaten but once, when quite out of condition, by George Nichols.
Once again Belcher’s jealousy blazed up, and he challenged Cribb. The challenge was accepted. At that stage of Cribb’s career it could in no wise be avoided, but his backers were not at all easy. They knew what Jem Belcher could do, they knew that their own man was dead slow. They were afraid that, despite the old champion’s unathletic life, Tom Cribb would never be able to touch him.
The fight took place on April 8th, 1807, for £200 a side. The place chosen was Moulsey Hurst, on the Thames, almost opposite to Hampton Court, the scene of innumerable prizefights. The battle attracted all the foremost sportsmen of the day, and the gutteral exclamations of the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV., were heard amongst the chatter at the ring-side. John Jackson kept “time.”