BOXING. 



99 



and the right as a mace. Then the right hand 

 la-came the shield and the left the weapon of 

 offense. In the time of Heenan and Sayers, 

 the English fighters depended mainly upon 

 the right ; but Heenan showed them the supe- 

 riority of the left. For years it was said that 

 only a "yokel'' hit with his right fist, or 

 struck a swinging blow. John L. Sullivan, 

 the mightiest pugilist of the age, who brought 

 the business of pugilism from the gutter to a 

 profession almost as well-paying as base-ball- 

 playing or riding running horses, revolution- 

 ized all that, developed the blow on the point 

 of the jaw, and with swinging, round-arm 

 blows of his terrible right, incased though it 

 was in a boxing-glove, mowed down opponents 

 who trusted to their knowledge and practice 

 of boxing to defeat him. Possibly some of 

 Sullivan's triumphs are explained by the facts 

 that he came out at a time when pugilism was 

 at a low ebb and good big men were scarce, 

 and that he met his opponents under Marquis 

 of Queensberry rules instead of under the rules 

 of the London Prize-Ring, which would have 

 suited many of them far better. Sullivan's 

 battle with Charles Mitchell, under the London 

 rules, in France, in March, 1888, resulted in a 

 draw after a protracted encounter. A man, 

 Sullivan's inferior in weight by forty pounds, 

 facing him in a bare-knuckle tight for hours, 

 has done much to change the popular idea of 

 scientific boxing. A few years ago it was all 

 right-hand swinging blows, and decisive bat- 

 tles in very short time ; now it is more cau- 

 tion, more careful hitting, and mostly with the 

 left hand, the right being saved, as before 

 Sullivan's advent, for the coup de grace. Sul- 

 livan took boxing to one extreme, to win or 

 lose in short order by one decisive hit on a 

 tender spot, the point of the jaw. Mitchell 

 has turned back the tide by his long, waiting 

 tactics; while another man. Jack Dempsey, 

 the wonderful middle-weight, has been a sort 

 of balance-wheel. 



Even before the idea had been broached 

 of using the legs in a prize-fight, or the 

 rules allowed it, there was some knowledge 

 of the most vulnerable spots for blows. The 

 pit of the stomach, called "the mark," was 

 one of these, and a severe blow on this spot 

 was very telling. Other points of attack were 

 the butt of the ear or on the jugular vein ; the 

 temples, the eyes, the throat, just over the 

 heart, and on the short ribs. The extreme 

 sensitiveness of the point of the jaw and the 

 chin was left for John L. Sullivan to demon- 

 strate. The " big fellow," as his admirers 

 delighted to call him, while sitting in a sur- 

 geon's chair having the arm that he broke 

 over Patsy Cardiff's head reset, told the writer 

 of this article that lie discovered his famous 

 " knock-out " blow partly by accident and 

 partly from reading the works of a famous 

 English novelist. Sullivan said he knocked 

 men out of time in the beginning of his career 

 by delivering a swinging right-hand blow on 



the neck on the jugular vein. But he soon 

 found the full-arm swinging blow as danger- 

 ous to his own hand and forearm as to his 

 opponent's circulation, so he changed the full- 

 arm swing to a half-arm one, and tried to de- 

 liver the blow on the jaw-bone instead of on 

 the neck, as it was equally effective and less 

 likely to be fatal. However little future box- 

 ers may value Sullivan's round-arm delivery, 

 they can not fail to give him credit for cen- 

 tralizing his fire and for pointing out a su- 

 premely vulnerable spot. 



Preliminary Points. Gentlemen want to learn, 

 not the tricks of the ring, but the simple 

 points of scientific pugilism. The first thing 

 in boxing is to learn to double the fist cor- 

 rectly, "make up a bunch of fives," as it is 

 called in ring-parlance. Not one man in a 

 thousand can do this, not because there is 

 anything difficult about it, but because so few 

 will make the attempt naturally. A novice 

 is sure to protrude the middle, or second fin- 

 ger, thinking he is making a very formidable 

 weapon of his hand, when in reality he is only 

 increasing his chances for that curse of boxing 

 broken hand-bones. At best, ninety-nine 

 amateurs in a hundred double up the fist 

 squarely, that is, with the first and second 

 fingers closed tightly and the third and fourth 

 loosely folded. This makes another ugly-look- 

 ing but very ineffective weapon, sure to be 

 injured at the first good blow. To double the 

 fist correctly, open out all the fingers and the 

 thumb to the widest stretch, then close natu- 

 rally. The backs of the big knuckles, the only 

 ones that should ever strike on an opponent, 

 will be found to have formed an arch when 

 the hand is tightly closed. In fighting or box- 

 ing the hands should be held loosely, half open, 

 all the muscles and those of the forearms re- 

 laxed, till the moment of delivery, when the 

 fist should be most tightly closed. No one 

 can practice throwing a base-ball without learn- 

 ing how thoroughly interdependent the mus- 

 cles are. The wisdom of resting the hands by 

 giving them perfect freedom while not actually 

 delivering a blow has been illustrated by many 

 great boxers. Those masters, Jem Mace and 

 Joe Coburn, always manoeuvred in the ring 

 with hands as open as if they were about to 

 wrestle, not to strike with the fists. Indeed, the 

 wonderful Gypsy's commonest trick in a ring 

 was hitching up his waist-band, wiping his 

 hands on his fighting-breeches, or rubbing 

 them together. Dominick McCaffrey, in his 

 easy forty-minute victory over Golden, in their 

 skin-tight glove contest, was doing with his 

 hands a great deal of the time the practice 

 that a school-girl does with her fingers in 

 order to be able to stretch an octave. Jem 

 Carney, in the light-weight championship bat- 

 tle with Jack McAuliffe, used the same method 

 of keeping his hands fit for their work. For 

 boxing-practice with ordinary gloves the hands 

 do not need the hardening the pugilists give 

 theirs before a matched battle; but no blow 



