By the twenty-third round, however, it was seen that Gregson’s strength was ebbing, whilst Gulley somehow gave the impression of maintaining the same condition as he had shown after the first ten rounds. That is to say, he appeared to be weak, but again and again gathered himself up for some prodigious effort by sheer will-power. Up to the twenty-fifth round it was, as the saying goes, anybody’s fight. Both men were badly damaged: the strength of both was fast ebbing. You might say that if either had known exactly how bad the other felt he could have won then and there. In all personal combats it is each man’s business to hide his feelings from his opponent. He must be hurt without showing that he is hurt, and however much hurt he must persist in wanting to win. 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.
This was regarded at the time as one of the severest battles ever seen in the Prize-Ring. It was a good sporting encounter throughout, with good will and even magnanimity on either side. Gulley had greatly improved in the science of boxing since his encounter with the Chicken, and he needed all that science in order to balance Gregson’s extra height, weight, and reach.
For his part Gregson and his backers believed that he could yet beat Gulley, and he accordingly challenged him to fight for £200 a side. The day fixed was May 10th, 1808, and the scene of action on the borders of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. The magistrates, however, made difficulties, as they occasionally did even in those days, and the Dunstable volunteers were called out to “keep the peace” and to deal with “the proposed riotous assembly.” Eventually the principals, seconds, backers, and huge “riotously assembled” crowd moved off to Sir John Seabright’s Park in the friendlier county of Hertford. And there the fight took place in a huge ring, forty feet square.
Men on horseback and on foot, in barouches, coaches, carriages, donkey-carts, men walking, men running, went across country for several miles out of the jurisdiction of the enemies of pugilism. Much rain had fallen during the day, with the consequence that the fighters had some difficulty in keeping their feet. Gregson, in anticipation of this, had spiked shoes, but Captain Barclay, as referee, justly regarded these as dangerous and unfair, and ruled that the men should fight without shoes, which accordingly they did.
The men circled about each other in the dog-like fashion in which the majority of fights opened, and Gulley retreated towards his own corner. His seconds, Bill Gibbons and Joe Ward, fearing lest Gregson with his great weight should fall upon their man whilst his back was against one of the stakes, put their hands over the top of it to prevent serious injury. But Gulley knew what he was about; feinting with his left he brought his right over with a great swing of his shoulders and caught his man fairly upon the temple and knocked him down. So excited were the onlookers at the second great trial between these men that they were quite silent, and not one cheer was raised. Only the light shuffling of stockinged feet was heard, hard breathing, and the spank of Gulley’s prodigious blow. The second round ended in the same way, though Gregson had first put in a resounding thump upon his opponent’s chest, which was, however, unlikely to have damaged him much. They were still very cautious, and for five minutes sparred for an opening, neither taking any grave risk. Then, with all his might, Gregson let fly with his left. Gulley took the blow on his arm, but felt the effects of it for long afterwards. It is probable that such a blow set up an inflammation of the muscles which, aided perhaps by rheumatism, would render it useless for several months.
The next three rounds ended by Gulley going down: in the sixth Gregson fell upon him so that he gasped long for breath. He had previously committed a foul by seizing Gulley’s thighs. The seventh round was Gulley’s, for with blow on blow he drove his opponent through the ropes. He knocked Gregson down again and it was evident that he not only knew more boxing, but by agility and strength made up for the disparity in their weights. The tenth round found Gregson’s head pulped with savage blows and his left eye nearly closed. Egan tells us that Gregson was now “fighting rather after the Lancashire method, without any pretensions to science.”
Gregson showed plenty of ordinary pluck, for though he was knocked down again and again and severely punished, he stood up like a man. But the extraordinary pluck or will-power exerted in adverse circumstances deserted him sooner in this encounter than it had in the previous one. He had been very badly hammered then; and the moral effect of that thrashing told upon him now.
In the twelfth round Gulley landed a smashing hit from which Gregson was in the act of falling when his antagonist hit him again. There were cries of “Foul,” but the blow was a fair one. Such an incident happens not infrequently. It happened in January, 1922, at the end of the fight between Carpentier and Cook.
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. For a moment or two it is, perhaps, impossible to hurt him, for his passion consumes his other senses. But sooner or later some stunning blow will cool its victim’s fiery temper: there will be a brief moment of realisation, and—it will be too late. The wild, unthinking attack will have been checked, but the power to guard against reprisal will be numbed.