After a little Jefferies halted and tried to force his man up against the ropes, but Fitzsimmons nipped easily away and held his own comfortably. But he was not happy. He could not hurt his opponent, and before this he had been used to make himself felt in seven rounds. In the next round Jefferies was again slow and reluctant at the outset, but after a little sparring he put in a couple of lefts without serious return, and later finished the round with a spanking straight left which sent Fitzsimmons staggering half across the ring.
The ninth round settled the matter. Fitzsimmons led off and attacked ferociously, but was sent back again with just such a left as had troubled him in the previous set-to. He left his body open, and Jefferies swung all his great strength and all his mighty weight into a body-blow which caught the veteran over the heart. He gasped audibly and time was called. But that was the winning blow. The fight was knocked out of Fitzsimmons. He was still almost dazed when he came up for the tenth round. Again Jefferies used that best and safest of all blows, the straight left, and Fitzsimmons was shaken to his heels. He could not defend himself: he could only stand and take what he was given. The next blow sent him to the ground, and he only rose, very groggy, at the seventh second. And now, though it made no ultimate difference, Jefferies lost his head. Fitzsimmons had been beaten by the blow over his heart, the effect of which would last much longer and take far more out of him than three or four on the jaw which failed to knock him out. But Jefferies could not have known that for certain at this moment: and seeing his man weak and tottering he swung wildly at him. If he himself had not been so extraordinarily strong, or if the elder man had not been already broken, he might well have lost the fight by that wildness. It has happened scores of times. As it was, an inferior blow from Jefferies knocked Fitzsimmons down again, but only for five seconds. Done as the old champion was, the blow must have been a comparatively poor one, or he could not have risen in the time, though, as had happened earlier in the fight, his pride would not allow him to take full advantage of the “count.” Even then, in his excitement, Jefferies failed to finish his man, and the round ended.
Then the eleventh round began, and Fitzsimmons showed the stuff that he was made of. He always had the reputation of being strong, and hard, and phenomenally plucky: but he had been badly hurt by that blow in the ninth round and the cumulative effect of several others. Yet he did not mean to be beaten without a great struggle. Immediately time was called he dashed across the ring and attacked Jefferies with all his might. It was not of the slightest use, for Jefferies was quite ready for him and the veteran was too weak now to do any damage, but it was a good effort. Jefferies waited for him to expose his body and then sent two more hard right-handers to his heart; then several blows at the head, ending with a left half-arm blow which dazed Fitzsimmons, so that he stood, or rather tottered, helpless, with his arms down, in the middle of the ring. Jefferies looked at him for a moment to make quite sure that he was as bad as he seemed, then swung left, followed by right, to the point of the jaw. Fitzsimmons fell forward, down and out.
In spite of his age and his defeat at Jefferies’s hands, Fitzsimmons challenged the champion to a second battle three years later; and on July 25th, 1902, they met again at San Francisco. It was not much of a fight, and the whole business was viewed with great disfavour in England. It was regarded as an outrageous commercial transaction: and indeed it was little more. Fitzsimmons, in fact, consented to be thrashed for so much down—consented, rather, to risk the very strong probability; for no one suggested that the fight was not a perfectly square one. Fitzsimmons was now only 11 stone 6 lb., whilst Jefferies weighed 15 stone 5 lb., quite an absurd difference when we remember also the disparity of their ages. Once more there was no sort of doubt but that the Cornishman was the better boxer. He had forgotten nothing: Jefferies had learned very little. The first two rounds were slightly in Fitzsimmons’s favour, but after that the big man’s huge natural advantages made the end inevitable. At the end of the second round Fitzsimmons was bleeding severely from the nose, and it usually takes a very heavy blow indeed to draw much blood from the nose of an old hand. But Jefferies’s cheek and eye were also cut and bleeding, for Fitzsimmons had not treated him gently. In the fourth round Jefferies crouched low and glowered at his man, bent on hurting him. He guarded the beautiful long straight lefts that Fitzsimmons sent whizzing in and attacked the slighter man’s body. The next round was very fast, whilst the men were fighting; but there was a good deal of clinching too, in which Fitzsimmons, however much he tried to save himself, got the worst of it, because the overwhelming weight of his adversary was thrown forward on to him. Superficially Jefferies looked much the worst of the two, for Fitzsimmons’s sharp blows had cut his face in several places and he was bleeding profusely. This was due not so much to the hardness of the older man’s hitting as to the softness of Jefferies’s skin: for the champion could generally beat his opponents so easily that severe training seemed to him not worth the candle. Fitzsimmons was unmarked, but the damage was partly to his body and visible only in vague red blotches such as gloved fists make, and partly in store for him. And yet by boxing he had the better of the sixth round, and his hope rose. He was not a man of vivid imagination, just a healthily hopeful fellow, with plenty of self-confidence. Jefferies had beaten him once, and only a round or two before he had been winning—winning on points, at any rate. He had forgotten that fight now. He only knew that he was his adversary’s master in the art of boxing, and surely good boxing, skill, ringcraft, experience would win now? Did he think about it like that? Not at all. There was no time for thinking, only for an instinctive effort to do his best, to put in one of his very best and hardest blows on the point of the jaw—not the exact point, but an inch or so on either side of the exact point. That was where the impact of his glove must come, that part of his glove behind which lay the protruding knuckle of his second finger—the striking point of the anatomical piston. He must land that blow with terrific force, and the sharp upper end of the jaw would be levered up to the bundle of nerves at the place where the skull is thinnest, the semi-circular canals behind the ear would be temporarily deranged, the sense of equilibrium would go, there would be, speaking roughly and somewhat incorrectly, a slight and quickly passing concussion of the brain. The victim would fall, the old champion would be a champion once again.... Desperately Fitzsimmons tried to land that blow. But the sixth round ended and nothing happened. In the next round Jefferies came crouching, but rushing, across the ring, and Fitzsimmons caught him with a hard left on the mouth; and a little later, Jefferies, with blood to get rid of, stopped to spit (or to “expectorate,” as the sporting papers, with their inimitable refinement, put it). It was, I suppose, a legitimate opportunity, though a fastidiously chivalrous boxer would not have used it: in any case, Fitzsimmons did, and attacked his man with all his might. He sent in three hard blows, meant for the jaw, which again got Jefferies on the mouth, doing no decisive damage, and before time was called again Jefferies had got home upon the heart with one of his devastating rights, just as he had done in the previous encounter. They began the eighth round with fairly equal exchanges, and then fell into a clinch. They broke away, and as he stepped back Fitzsimmons began to talk. Now, there is no doubt that he had hurt Jefferies; certainly he had hurt him more than in the match at Coney Island. It is not to be said that he would have won if he had been more careful—who can say? The probabilities are against it. But he began to talk to Jefferies, and he paused to do so. It is most surely true that you cannot do two things at once when one of them is fighting. I don’t know what Fitzsimmons said, but we may be pretty sure that his words were words of scorn. “Mouth-fighting,” as it is called, is a more foolish than reprehensible practice. To stand and invent rude epithets for your antagonist, to shower invective upon him, to deride his method of boxing, or to impugn his sportsmanship is so very far beside the point—especially the point of the jaw, which is the real bone of contention. And in order to talk Fitzsimmons necessarily laid aside his strict vigilance. And Jefferies, who wasn’t always slow, took a most legitimate advantage and swung his left at long range at his opponent’s stomach. It was, on the whole, a lucky blow, for it caught Fitzsimmons just beneath the breast-bone at that point which we call the “mark.” And the Cornishman, for once, was taken unawares: the blow made him gasp, and it made him tuck in his stomach instinctively, with the result of bringing his head forward and down. Jefferies’s huge left swung back and forward, again, catching him full on the jaw. And once again Fitzsimmons knees gave, his face went ashen gray, his body sank forward ... seven, eight, nine—Out!
Bob Fitzsimmons and James J. Corbett.
(A Caricature.)
After this defeat Fitzsimmons fought about ten other battles, though four of them hardly count, as they took place in those states of the American Union where only short contests are allowed, and failing a knock-out no decision must be given by the referee. Such contests seem to us quite pointless. If men are giving an exhibition of scientific boxing, as for charity or as on one occasion or another they often do in this and other countries, why should it not be called an exhibition, even if the sparring partners are heavily paid for that purpose? For, of course, the tendency in No-Decision contests is for the men to “go easy” and not to try to knock each other out. And if men are boxing their best so far as science goes and yet not giving their physical best to the affair, the whole event is apt to be meaningless. Besides, science and physique are intermingled. A man is not boxing his best who doesn’t try to finish his opponent as speedily as possible, who doesn’t try, that is, to assert his superiority of combined force and skill.
Fitzsimmons won battles again, and lost them again. And he went on fighting till 1914—not very long before his death, at the age of fifty-four or so.