Photo: “Sport and General.”
Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey.
CHAPTER XIII
LITTLE MEN
From the spectator’s point of view much of the interest of boxing (and almost all of it in amateur boxing), is purely dramatic. You can thoroughly enjoy—at least I can, and there are others—a really good fight apart from any science that may be displayed. For enjoyment of skill alone is in another dimension. Of course, there must always be enough science to enable the boxers to fight cleanly and tidily and without the appearance of two angry windmills. But greatly as science improves the complete interest and enjoyment of a fight, that kind of interest remains separate. For the admiration of skill appeals to your head, the drama, largely to your heart. And the drama in boxing arises from the fact that the encounter is a personal one, that two men are trying to hurt each other, at least physically to overcome each other (which amounts to the same thing) and to prevent the other from hurting, from dominating. There is no other sport in which the sense of personal combat is so manifest.
And it is partly because of this dramatic interest that heavy-weights—big men—have, as a rule, throughout two hundred years, attracted greater attention than the little men, except, of course, when little men have fought with big ones. Roughly, it is like this: if you want to see scientific boxing you choose a fight between feather or bantam-weights, if you want to see a good slogging match (but tempered with science, always) you choose a fight between middle or heavy-weights, preferably the latter. Of course, bantam-weights often do slog—much oftener indeed than do heavy-weights box twenty rounds of unexceptionable excellence. But I suppose there is magnificence in sheer bigness, and we like to see the big men fight. And that is why, for the most part, I have chosen heavy-weight encounters to represent the various periods in the history of the Ring.
It is impossible, or at any rate quite impracticable, to mention every boxer; it is not even practicable to mention more than a few. I should like to have described the fights of many of the lesser men in point of size—far better boxers, most of them, than almost any heavy-weight that ever lived. Names topple out of recent memory at random—Billy Plimmer, Pedlar Palmer, Joe Bowker, Charles Ledoux, Johnny Summers, Taney Lee, Johnny Basham, hosts of them. But there is one name that simply cannot be avoided in any book about any sort of boxing, the name of one of the best feather-weights and one of the fairest fighters that ever lived—Jem Driscoll.
Driscoll, who was formerly Feather-weight Champion of England, having won the Lonsdale Belt outright by three successful contests, had all the natural gifts of the boxer. His weight was 9 stone, or, at all events, generally within easy reach of it; his height 5 feet 6 inches. He was beautifully proportioned, slim, muscular, with the appearance of an all-round athlete. His science was unrivalled, and he was a perfect exponent of what one may still call the English style of boxing; that is, the style based upon the upright position and the conspicuous use of the straight left lead. Driscoll is Irish by extraction and Welsh by birth, and he loved fighting for fighting’s sake from his earliest childhood. He went in for and won various boys’ competitions at Cardiff, and, later, travelled with a booth; his only instructor being experience.
His two contests at the National Sporting Club with Spike Robson, of Newcastle, for the English Feather-weight Belt, are worth a brief note in order to show Driscoll at the height of his power. Robson was three or four years older, but a very tough customer, with any amount of pluck. The first match, which took place on April 18th, 1910, had been keenly anticipated for a long time beforehand, if only because everything in which Driscoll had a hand was worth seeing. You always knew where you were with Driscoll. He always hit clean, and for choice, straight. There was never any clinching to avoid punishment, never any getting on the “blind side” of the referee.
The first three rounds were level. Robson was a good boxer, a keen fighter, but he was neither so quick with his hands or feet as Driscoll. However, it was he who landed the first considerable blow in the fourth round, striking heavily on his opponent’s eye. In the fifth round he did a very foolish thing. There was something about his gay, elegant, upright and good-looking antagonist which irritated him. Driscoll was so indifferent, so imperturbable. He would smash him, he would spoil his face for him. The instant the bell rang for time he would catch Driscoll before he was clear of his corner, before, in fact, he was ready. That was the way to smash him—to give him no time to take up his position in the middle of the ring, with his left foot and arm out, nicely balanced on his toes. He’d show him. And he charged furiously head down across the ring like a terrier after his best enemy. And Jem Driscoll merely waited, until Robson was almost on him and then coolly stepped aside. It was beautifully done—no haste, no exertion, only the exactly right judgment of time. And Spike Robson couldn’t recover himself—he was going much too fast for that—and was brought up by crashing into the stool which the seconds had not yet been able to remove from Driscoll’s corner.