Round 1.—Nicholls justified the report of his superior personal requisites. He stood nearly two inches over Neale, and his weight, thirteen stone four pounds, was well and evenly distributed. He was indeed the model of an athlete. Neale, whose weight was twelve stone four pounds, looked hard, brown, and muscular, and well capable of a long day’s work. Great caution on both sides. The men stepped round and round each other, making feints, for full five minutes—the seconds of Nicholls advising him to use caution and let his man “come to him,” which Neale did not seem inclined to do. At last Nicholls sent out his right at Neale’s throat. It was short, for Neale jumped away. More tedious sparring and manœuvring, until both men seemed weary of holding up their hands, the young one most so. Neale, seeing a favourable opening, sprang forward, delivering a straight right-hander on his adversary’s collar-bone. It was intended doubtless for the side of his head, but fell lower from the superior height of his opponent. It was a terrific blow, and sounded like the crack of a pistol-shot, leaving a broad red mark, that soon after swelled, as a token of its force. A rally followed, in which Neale planted a heavy body blow with the right, and his left on Nicholls’s mouth, who returned on Neale’s head. Neale finished the round prettily by getting hold of his huge adversary and throwing him neatly from the hip. Immense applause from the Londoners.
2 to 12.—All similar in character. Neale drew his man and punished him for coming in, Neale now and then getting down to end the round.
13.—Nicholls, finding himself out-manœuvred, rushed in ding-dong. Neale met him coolly, and actually sent him off his legs. (“It’s all U P,” cried Ned Stockman. “Who’ll take two to one?”)
14 to 17.—In every round Neale made his right and left tell with effect, getting away or stopping the return, until poor Nicholls was a pitiful spectacle. In the sixteenth and seventeenth rounds Neale sent Nicholls down with a straight left-hander. Cries of “Take him away.”
18, and last.—Nicholls tried to get in at his man, but was literally hit out right and left. Neale closed and threw his man heavily. Jem Ward stepped forward and said his man should fight no more, and Neale, stepping up to the umpires and referee, was told he was the conqueror.
Remarks.—This one-sided affair hardly calls for comment. It merely adds one more instance to the innumerable proofs that mere strength and courage are more than balanced by the skill, readiness, and precision of the practised master of the science of defence.
Roche, a publican of Exeter, whose provincial reputation as a wrestler was higher than his boxing capabilities, was matched by his overweening friends against Neale. The preliminaries duly arranged; the stakes, £100 a-side, made good; and the day fixed for the 2nd December, 1828; the men met on the North Chapel Cricket Ground, Sussex, forty-four miles from London by road. Neale trained at Milford, in Surrey, and there, it afterwards came out, he was “interviewed,” as modern reporters would style it, by an envoy from Roche’s party, who offered to secure to him £500 to lose the fight, and a further sum of two hundred if he would give in under fifty minutes. All this Neale communicated to his backers; and so well was the secret kept that a double defeat awaited the “Knights of the x,” in the disgrace of their champion and the depletion of their pockets. Had the countermine been discovered, the defeated Devonian declared, “all the King’s horses” should not have drawn him into the ring. In order yet further to keep up the “fool’s paradise” into which these bucolic knaves delivered themselves, the emissary presented Neale with a new suit of clothes and £18 “earnest money,” keeping £2 for commission; and on the very morning of the battle he added £8 out of £10 entrusted to him for the same nefarious purpose. The “cross coves,” assured that all was right, freely backed their man, and were not aware of the mine until it burst beneath their feet, scattering to the wind their hopes and calculations. Roche, who had come up to London, finished his training at the renowned Johnny Gilpin’s house, the “Bell,” at Edmonton, then a charming rural retreat, with its flower and tea gardens; now a well-accustomed modern ginshop, resplendent in gilding, gas, and plate glass, and belted in with brick, mortar, and shops.
Roche, who reached Godalming overnight, set out a little before twelve in a barouche; while Neale, in a four-horse drag, started from Milford, and soon overtook him on the road. Tom Spring, the “Portsmouth Dragsman,” Harry Holt, and other friends, were on the roof of Neale’s coach, and were first on the ground. Roche soon after alighted, under the care of Ben Burn and young Dutch Sam, who were engaged as his seconds. His colours were a light blue, Neale’s a dark blue bird’s-eye. The toss for corners was won by Harry Holt for Neale, who was also waited on by Tom Spring. As the men stood up, the contrast was striking. Roche, who stood nearly six feet, weighed, it was reported, fourteen stone. His advantages in weight and length, however, were fully counterbalanced by his apparent age and staleness. His superfluous meat hung in collops over the belt of his drawers, and he was altogether soft and flabby. The Streatham man, au contraire, looked bright, sinewy, fresh, and active, though he had trained rather lighter than on some former occasions, weighing twelve stone two pounds. The umpires and referee having been chosen, the men stood up, at ten minutes to one, for
THE FIGHT.
Round 1.—As Roche held up his arms and moved half round to face the movements of Neale, he betrayed the yokel in every move. The Streatham hero eyed him with satisfaction, and walked round him with his hands well up. Roche flourished his long arms awkwardly, with no particular object but defence, and as soon as Neale saw an opening in he dashed, delivered with his left a half-arm hit on Roche’s eye, following it by such a tremendous bodier with the right that down went the mighty wrestler on the broad of his back, amid the shouts of the Londoners, the long faces of the provincials, and the consternation of the “ready-made luck” division, who were utterly dumbfounded at such a commencement. As Roche was picked up and taken to his corner he looked towards Neale with a mixture of surprise and reproach, as if to say, “Is this the way I am to be served?”