Knuckles and Gloves

by Bohun Lynch

Their seconds sponged them down, gave them water to rinse their mouths with, and they came up again. This time they were quicker to work. Sayers looked at his huge adversary with perfect confidence in himself, and the coolness of long experience and a great capacity. Mere size troubled him not at all. He had fought and beaten big men before. Heenan led and led again and then a third time, but on each occasion Sayers threw back his head, and all three blows fell lightly. Then the big man got closer and sent home one on the mouth which made the English champion reel. But he returned at once to receive a whack on the forehead which knocked him down in his own corner. This, the first knock-down, did not trouble him in the least, though the Americans at the ring-side naturally shouted their delight.

After the half-minute Sayers came up quite fresh, though he had a big lump coming up on his forehead and his mouth was swollen. His footwork was brilliant. He nipped in and out, avoiding the long arms and always, when a blow did land, managed to be on the retreat, so that its force was lessened. But the sun shining in his eyes was a trouble, and he frowned and tried to work Heenan round so that he had his share of it. Heenan, however, grinned, and held his ground. Then Tom Sayers darted in to plant a hard body-blow, but caught a severe right which knocked him down. Once more Sayers tried to get out of the sun, and failing, closed and slipped down.

By this time he was a good deal marked, and there was a severe cut over his eyebrow. Both remained excessively cautious, and all at once the humour of it seized them and they put down their hands and roared with laughter, again—small wonder it is that foreigners used to think us a race of madmen, until—that is—the French began to play the same game. (Only for the most part, the French take boxing very, very seriously.) Suddenly Heenan steadied himself and shot out a straight left which fairly caught the champion and, for the fourth time, knocked him down. A large number of the spectators believed that Sayers was a beaten man. For a large number of them had not seen him fight before, and had no idea how much he could take. More experienced ring-goers watched, patiently suspending judgment. And presently the inexperienced folk were startled. Heenan sent out a smashing blow which Sayers entirely avoided, jumping right back from it, instantly bounding in again and delivering a terrific blow on his man’s eye. It was one of those sliding, upward hits which almost split the American’s cheek before it reached his brow, and it sent Heenan staggering away.

The rest did little to improve his appearance. He was bleeding profusely, swollen and disfigured. Sayers was getting comfortably set. He stopped a hard lead with his forearm, and dashing in, dealt out a harder one; and then another which seemed almost to crush Heenan’s nose and very nearly lifted him off his legs. Five-foot eight and six-foot two. Not bad going.

In the seventh round, Sayers hit Heenan an awful blow which sent the blood spurting from his nose. Heenan grabbed hold of his man to put an end to this punishment, and Sayers got in some damaging body-blows before he fell underneath.

“As well as can be expected,” thought Sayers to himself. Yes: he was doing very nicely, but he was not quite as happy as he looked. How long would it be before Heenan or his seconds spotted the truth. Hadn’t they noticed yet that he was extremely shy of hitting with his right—had been shy for the last two rounds? And in his previous battles it was his right upon which he had depended for victory. One really good right-hander from Sayers was commonly reckoned to be enough for anybody. But he couldn’t use his right now. He had tried and it was useless. That tremendous whack that he had stopped with his forearm had numbed it at the moment, and he had thought nothing of it until he tried to use it in offence. And then he knew that his right was out of action. He thought at the time that the bone was broken. As a matter of fact it was not, but a tendon was, which (for such intensely practical purposes) was just as bad. The arm was also one mass of inter-running bruises and fearfully swollen. So he held it across his chest in its orthodox position, and it was all he could do to keep it there: and he kept his face wooden and innocent and went on fighting with his left. The enemy shouldn’t know before they must.

And round after round the little man came up smiling, relying on his feet for defence and his left for attack. Heenan also grinned. They were a good-humoured couple, as these couples of the Prize-Ring so often were. Once he landed a horribly severe smasher on Heenan which knocked him down, and instead of taking his rest for half a minute, he went prying into Heenan’s corner to watch his seconds wiping away the blood. He might learn something in that way, he thought, which would be more valuable than thirty seconds on an another fellow’s knee. Heenan, however, could take plenty of punishment, too, without complaining.

After this they fought a tremendous round which lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, and at the end were so exhausted that both of them had to be carried to their corners by their respective seconds. It had been foolish, Sayers now realised, not to take the rest he was entitled to. He must not play tricks like that again. He was greatly knocked about. His mouth and nose seemed as though they had been knocked into one, but his trick of throwing back his head as Heenan’s huge fist caught him had done much to preserve his eyes.

Only once did he show a sign of anger. He drew back after a rally to spit out blood, and the American onlookers laughed. That stung him, and he dashed in again and gave Heenan a left which sent him reeling back, and another and another. A fourth hit made Heenan reel where he stood, so that with his right to follow up with Sayers might have knocked him out of time. As it was, he dared not come too close, for he feared being thrown upon his bad arm. But he shot out his left twice more, and one on Heenan’s ribs sounded (so said The Times correspondent) “all over the meadow as if a box had been smashed in.” Blows given with boxing gloves which sound loud and draw involuntary “Oh’s!” from the spectators usually mean nothing at all. But sounding blows with a naked fist, particularly on the body, may mean a good deal.

Now Sayers could no longer raise his arm, and it hung limp at his side. Fortunately for him, Heenan was not an adept in the use of his own right. It was maddening to him to stand there and hit and hit again and to be able to make so little apparent impression on a man so much smaller and with but one arm in action. And Heenan was now a terrible sight. His face looked as though it were gashed with deep wounds, and indeed Sayers’s sharp knuckles had lacerated the skin and the American was bleeding terribly. And then he managed to land a very hard left, which he shot in over Sayers’s awkward left-handed guard, and the champion was knocked down. Then Heenan in the next round picked his man clean off his legs and threw him. And immediately afterwards they were both laughing at each other, neither in derision nor affectation. It was a rare fight, and good fun in its somewhat rough way, and worth laughing over. But one of the American’s eyes was now completely closed. And he was getting hard put to it to see. But he knocked Sayers down once more.