On the Chin

by Alex McClintock

  There were no judges, and fights were to the finish. This meant they varied considerably in length. There were occasional quick knockouts, and Tom Cribb’s first fight with Tom Molineaux went for about the same time as a modern world title fight, but other bouts went considerably longer.

  The longest boxing match ever recorded took place in 1855 near Ballarat. In classic boxing style, it was a grudge match between an Irishman, James Kelly, and an Englishman, Jonathan Smith. It lasted for exactly six hours and fifteen minutes.

  Boxing probably arrived in Australia in 1788 with the convicts of the First Fleet, but the first recorded bout in the colony of New South Wales took place in 1814. That fight, between convicts John Parton and Charles Sefton, lasted more than two hours—not bad. By the time Smith and Kelly took part in their marathon match-up four decades later, organised fist fighting was an acknowledged, if not entirely respectable, part of colonial life. And, like much else at the time, it was experiencing an unprecedented boom as people, including boxers, from around the world flocked to the Victorian goldfields. (In a bit of semi-related trivia, the other big gold town, Bendigo, was named after a bare-knuckle champion from Nottinghamshire, William Abednego ‘Bendigo’ Thompson.)

  Smith and Kelly were two such pugilistic immigrants. Born in Ireland, Kelly had already fought good competition in Britain and the US before deciding to try his luck in Australia. Smith, by all reports a cheerful sort originally hailing from Norfolk, had won a number of fights in his country of birth, then enlisted in the British army and served in India as well as Van Diemen’s Land, before emigrating to the colonies when the gold rush began.

  Smith witnessed Kelly’s destruction of a local fighter called Hammy on the goldfields, but didn’t rate the Irishman. He obtained financial backing of £300 to issue his own challenge, Kelly and his backers accepted, and both men went into a brief period of training. A flat area near the Fiery Creek diggings was selected as the site of the ‘mill’ and a date was set: December 3, 1855.

  Heavy overnight rain did not deter thousands of spectators from gathering and jamming the roads to the appointed place with carts and buggies on the morning of the fight. In the sticky summer air, miners, prospectors, food vendors and even a few women vied for a space close to the action. Local children sought a better view of the ring in the branches of nearby gum trees.

  With the police nowhere to be seen, Smith and his seconds made their way through the throng to the ring at the civilised hour of 9 a.m., followed soon after by Kelly and his team. The Irishman won the toss of the coin and elected to fight with his back to the sun.

  Members of the crowd remarked that both men appeared to be in excellent condition, though Smith, older than Kelly by eleven years, was the taller and heavier. Bare chested and clad in breeches, the two boxers would not have looked too different from the moustachioed Victorian strongmen you see in cartoons. The two men approached the scratch and began feinting. The spectators had no idea what they were in for.

  Things started briskly enough: Smith landed a glancing left on the neck, and Kelly replied with a left to the mouth. ‘No great mischief,’ noted a reporter from the widely read colonial sports newspaper Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer. Kelly, unimpressed, started talking back: ‘I only want to see your claret, then I’ll make you fight,’ he challenged.

  Alas, it was not to be. Smith was content to use his reach advantage to keep Kelly at arm’s length, and the pair darted endlessly forward and back. The crowd grew restless and began to press forward as the sun rose in the sky, attempting to encourage some action. Finally, after more than two hours, Smith connected with a stinging one-two, Kelly responded with a flurry, and both men fell to the floor. ‘This little bit of fighting was quite a relief to the spectators,’ noted the Bell’s man with droll understatement. Understandably, the close of the round was greeted with loud cheers.

  From here on out, perhaps it is best to offer only Bell’s summary of the most noteworthy rounds.

  Eight: ‘Kelly let go the right but received on his nose from Jonathan, the claret flowing very freely from Kelly’s snuffler.’

  Twelve: ‘Kelly still bleeding from the nasal organ.’

  Fourteen: ‘Kelly excited, and perhaps somewhat annoyed at the obstinacy of his nose, which WOULD bleed.’

  Fifteen: ‘Both men considerably contused, and came up puffing…when the reader is informed that nearly an hour was occupied in sparring, feinting, stepping back etc., he will perceive how inadequate is our ability to express the sustained interest of the spectators.’

  The crowd, whose morning’s entertainment had quite unexpectedly turned into an all-day outing, started getting stuck into beer and sandwiches. Others cut their losses and headed back into town to spend what remained of the day with family and friends.

  The bottles of stout being peddled may have contributed to the general hissing and yelling of abuse at the fighters, who at this stage were busy looking at each other spitefully and posing with their arms crossed.

  ‘Try a little one for me,’ yelled one wag.

  ‘He had better try two,’ someone shouted back.

  Finally, in round seventeen, Kelly stopped in the middle of the ring and spat out, ‘Are you going to fight? It will never come off if you don’t.’ Smith obliged him, throwing a left that fell short of the mark. Kelly countered with a blow to the neck, and that was enough for Smith. He gave up and the pair shook hands.

  Kelly’s seconds jumped into the ring and secured the colours from the post. Bell’s, rather kindly, praised Smith’s coolness, and described Kelly as a ‘very fine young man’ who would fare well against the best fighters of his weight back home in Britain. The crowd, struck dumb by such an unexpected and anti-climactic conclusion after enduring so much, simply drifted away.

  I heard the bell ring to begin the second round, clear and deep. If I wanted to match Kelly and Smith, I would only need to box for 373 more minutes. Thankfully, I did not.

  The minute off, Paul’s words and the deep breathing had done me good. My opponent, too, looked restored. Perhaps he had also realised that the disaster scenario—getting badly hurt or embarrassed—was unlikely. Total panic had subsided, giving way to mere garden-variety terror.

  We circled each other again. His stance was wide, his hands low. I saw pride and determination in his big brown eyes, and imagined what his coach would have said in the corner: ‘Throw punches in bunches, put him on the ropes.’

  I willed myself to be the aggressor. Instinctively, I threw a jab, pulled back slightly to let his counter fall short, then threw another, harder jab. In-out-in: a technique I’d practised endlessly on the heavy bag. Both punches connected. The crowd might not have roared, but there was definite barracking going on. My consciousness floated outside my body, impressed at its success: wow, this stuff really works.

  It had pissed my opponent off, though. He lunged at me, swinging from the sides and underneath, scraping my face, knocking my gloves. Again, I heard the blows more than I felt them, dull thuds deep in the ear.

  ‘Come on, red,’ yelled a stranger in the crowd.

  Standing my ground, I snapped a jab just as he rushed in. My fist was closed tight and the punch connected hard in the middle of his face, his forward momentum doubling the force of impact. I felt his nose under the thin, lumpy padding of the glove. Looking down my outstretched arm at his stunned face, I saw his brown eyes watering, full of reproach.

  ‘What about the body, red?’ yelled a male voice in the crowd. He was to be disappointed: body shots were not yet part of my repertoire.

  Alex Aaty charged yet again, and again I hit him with my left. This time I felt the impact up my forearm. His head snapped back far enough to give him a view of the ring lights. Unbowed, he reset and hit out with a herky-jerky jab, right-cross, left-hook combination. I ate the second two punches and reset in the middle of the ring.

  Was he getting easier to hit? It seemed like it. As I fumbled with the headgear, I realised
the lower half of his face was covered in blood. The bright fluid fanned out from his nose like a river delta running into the ocean of his mouth.

  He must have noticed the same thing, because he started to paw at his nose with his gloved hands, ineffectually flicking the blood off his face and onto the canvas. The referee again called ‘Stop,’ pointed me to a neutral corner and cleaned the blue gloves with a tissue. My opponent’s face he left as it was, a bloody mask. I looked over at Paul, but couldn’t make out what he was mouthing to me.

  I was so disoriented I didn’t understand the connection between my punches and the blood, or between the blood and the referee pausing the fight to wipe my opponent down. I just wanted to be out of the ring, breathing normally, without someone trying to take my head off.

  ‘Box,’ said the referee.

  Despite my confusion, I was emboldened by the punches I had landed, and felt it might be time to broaden my horizons. I threw my only non-jab of the night, a right hand that sailed slowly past Alex Aaty’s head at a distance of about a foot. Oh well; worth a try.

  Though not disturbed by the breeze from my right cross, my foe was starting to develop the pained expression of a person who needs to sneeze and can’t find their handkerchief. He was blinking and wrinkling his nose even when I wasn’t hitting him, and the way he held his gloves made it clear he was trying not to touch his face.

  The referee grabbed him by the forearm and led him to his own corner. I walked back towards Paul, who furiously motioned for me to turn around and wait in a neutral corner. I made an ‘Oh shit, sorry’ face and jogged back.

  I was looking at Paul when the doctor, dressed for a camping trip in black cargo pants and a polar fleece vest, ran up the steps and shone a small torch up Alex Aaty’s nose. He must not have liked what he saw. After a short conversation with the fighter and his coach, he said something to the ref, who waved his hands in my opponent’s face. There was scattered applause, and the referee motioned for me to rejoin Paul.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I gasped.

  ‘You won, mate,’ smiled Paul. ‘The referee stopped it.’

  It was not simply the addition of gloves that transformed the old-fashioned sport of James Kelly and Jonathan Smith into the glamorous modern one we see today in celebrated venues like Caesar’s Palace, Madison Square Garden and South Sydney Juniors.

  A number of other important changes, including three-minute rounds, one-minute rest periods, the ten count over a fallen fighter and the outlawing of wrestling, were introduced in 1867 by the famous Marquess of Queensberry Rules. The rules themselves were drawn up by Welsh sportsman John Graham Chambers, but took the title of the Scottish nobleman and fight fan, John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, who endorsed them. (Douglas is otherwise best known as the brute who pursued Oscar Wilde through the courts over the author’s homosexual relationship with his son, which led to Wilde’s bankruptcy and imprisonment.)

  Created in part to restore some respectability to prize fighting, which had fallen out of favour with the Victorian upper classes, the Queensberry Rules co-existed with the London Prize Ring rules for a period of some decades. America was slow to sign on, and the last heavyweight championship fight under the old bare-knuckle rules took place in 1889.

  It’s often noted, and it’s worth noting again, that the introduction of gloves had the perverse effect of making boxing more dangerous. The frailty of the human hand imposed a limit on how hard and how often bare-knuckle boxers could strike each other in the head. Clean knockouts, ring deaths and punch drunkenness were relatively rare before the introduction of gloves, which removed those physical constraints. That’s not to say they were unheard of: bare-knuckle fights were unfathomably long and brutal, medical care was less advanced and attitudes less compassionate. Quite a few boxers died of their injuries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  Still, most of the changes to professional boxing enacted over the last century have been designed to protect boxers from the unintended consequences of the Queensberry Rules. These have included mandatory standing eight counts after knockdowns, the neutral corner rule, and a gradual decrease in the length of fights: fifteen-round title fights were introduced in the 1920s and shortened to the modern twelve rounds during the 1980s.

  Whatever the rules, the job of enforcing them falls to the referee. With their bow ties and gloves, referees might appear like antiquated comic figures, but their role is crucial. More than anything else, it’s their presence that separates a boxing match from a street fight, and the results of poor refereeing can be catastrophic. Perhaps that explains why boxing refs have always been more prominent than officials in other sports.

  Some of today’s top referees are surrounded by cults of personality that rival those of the fighters they supervise. In part this is because a small number of elite referees are in very high demand and are often seen on TV, but it’s also down to concerted self-promotion.

  Mills Lane, the diminutive, gravel-voiced referee who disqualified Mike Tyson in the infamous Bite Fight, may have started this trend by developing the pre-fight catchphrase ‘Let’s get it on’. Lane, a former marine, went on to achieve a sort of fame in his own right, voicing himself as the referee in the MTV claymation series Celebrity Deathmatch and starring in a courtroom reality TV show, Judge Mills Lane (yes, he started each case with ‘Let’s get it on’).

  Other refs took note. Glabrous former official Joe Cortez parlayed his (now trademarked) catchphrase ‘I’m fair but I’m firm’ into several movie roles and regular TV gigs, while the expressive Kenny Bayless (catchphrase: ‘What I say you must obey’) is available for public speaking engagements and workshops on a variety of themes, including ‘Developing the Champion in YOU’ and ‘The 4 Corners of Success’. But everyone’s current favourite has to be Steve Willis, a lazy-eyed New Yorker whose expressive features made him an unlikely viral sensation in 2018.

  Willis clearly enjoys his work. But being a professional boxing referee—the third man in the ring who bears the ultimate responsibility for protecting fighters—is not an easy job. If the referee believes that one fighter is hurting the other so badly that permanent damage might result, it is his job to stop the fight. It’s a difficult and thankless calculus: stop a fight too early and you might short-change a fighter who could have recovered and won; stop it too late and they could be seriously hurt. Boxers, inculcated with the idea that they should go out on their shield, will often protest stoppages even when they’re being belted mercilessly. Fight crowds love to see highlight-reel knockouts and tend to hate early stoppages (though when things become one-sided you’ll often hear humanitarians, or gamblers who bet on the other guy, yelling ‘Stop it, ref’).

  Thankfully, with increased knowledge about the effects of head trauma, boxing referees are now quicker to step in and end fights than in the past. Watching old fights, you’re often struck by the sickening amount of punishment referees were willing to let fighters endure, and I suspect it’s this evolution of attitude more than any particular rule change that has reduced the number of ring deaths in developed countries since the mid-twentieth century.

  In amateur boxing, meanwhile, the role of the referee is to stringently enforce the rules. They use theatrical gestures to warn boxers when they’ve committed a foul and have the option, generally not available to professional referees, of applying a standing eight count to a fighter who has taken a big shot to the head but not gone down. At the level of leagues club fights between first timers, the idea isn’t to avoid unnecessary damage, as in the professionals, but to avoid any damage at all.

  It took me a minute to process the fact that the bout had finished. Somehow, after what had seemed like forever, it had ended so quickly. Maybe I was just disoriented from all the stress hormones. Paul smiled and rubbed my face and shoulders with a towel while I tried to regain the power of speech.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The blood, his nose, the referee.’

  I looked over
to the blue corner. Alex Aaty lashed out at the turnbuckle with his fist. It was a petulant gesture, but his heart didn’t look to be in it. It was for form’s sake. Finally I understood. I had won, but we were both glad it was over.

  The referee grabbed my forearm and dragged me to centre ring. We stood there in silence for five seconds, the ref holding my arm with his right hand and Alex Aaty’s with his left, as if we were a pair of children about to cross a road.

  Paul Toweel’s voice came over the loudspeaker. ‘And the winner, Alex McClintock, the red corner, give him a round of appl…’

  The referee raised my hand. A wave of relief swept through my body. Relaxed for the first time in seven weeks, I thought my knees might give way. I smiled a full-strength smile.

  Somebody had brought a pair of trophies into the ring and laid them at the referee’s feet. The ceremony complete, he let go of my arm and picked them them up off the canvas, offering me the winner’s prerogative: first choice between a brass-coloured plastic figurine on a wooden backboard and a gold-coloured plastic figurine on a faux Carrara marble plinth. I went for the first option, which I judged to be slightly classier.

  ‘And a hand for Alex Aaty.’

  More clapping. We turned to each other, shook hands and embraced. His wraps were wet, his shoulders sticky and warm to the touch. He mumbled something reluctant and unintelligible by way of congratulations. Though he was clearly trying, he could not contain the pathetic mix of disappointment, relief and shame for feeling relieved that played out on his face. I felt sorry for him. It could have been me. I was glad it wasn’t.

  I crossed the ring and shook hands with his coach, a young guy with a Prince Valiant haircut who offered me a wink, a warm smile and a heartfelt ‘Good fight, mate’. In my own corner, Alex Aaty and Paul had their heads bowed together, with my coach earnestly dispensing advice. As I approached, he clapped him on the back and said, ‘Good fight Alex, you can hold your head high.’