Thanks, nice image. 1890's cameras could take images clear enough that people could get a fair appreciation of the fighters. Unfortunately, the film tends to degrade over time, especially if a lot of copies were knocked off or if a particular passage was repeated in performances. And sometimes the films that circulate now are copes onto smaller-size film, or are not shown on silent-film appropriate equipment, so that an edge of the visual frame is lost.
Klompton uploaded some in good quality. This content is protected This is decent too This content is protected
Seems Corbett was more of more of a breakthrough for leg movement and bending at the waist .. hall the time he seems to wide angle stiff arm punch and pulls his head straight back .. a bit painful to watch .. like a model about 50% there ..
Great fight. Corbett’s punches look heavier than one would expect. Bob maintains distance with Corbett at all times, which is impressive given Corbett’s ring generalship. I wonder if the full thing exists in this quality.
I doubt full fight exist at all, let alone in this quality. That said, there is definitely more than that in good quality and I'd love to see more complete version.
Yes there is more. If I'm not mistaken, a guy called Compton has the whole match. This guy wrote a book on Harry Greb.
The apron of the ring was emblazoned with “Copyrighted The Veriscope Company,” both to publicize the producer behind the film of the fight and to protect its copyright. The latter proved to be impossible, but the exhibition of the pictures of the fight proved to be very successful and some have characterized this as the first “pay per view” of a boxing match. Veriscope was a large format camera system developed by a former Edison engineer, Enoch Rector, specifically to capture the spectacle of big-time boxing matches. It used a 63 mm film gauge, which allowed a widescreen ratio of 1.65:1 for the projected image. The lens employed provided an exceptional depth of focus, so that figures remained clearly defined wherever they were in the ring. Three Veriscope cameras were mounted side by side in a small wooden structure on one side of the ring. Each had a magazine capacity sufficient for six minutes of filming, so all were in continuous use through the 14 rounds of the fight. The rest periods were captured as well as the pre-fight ceremonies, when special guests like John L. Sullivan and his manager, Billy Madden, were introduced and Corbett and Fitzsimmons posed before disrobing and donning their gloves. The cameras did not move during the fight. The intention was that the entire width of the ring would be captured and projected on large screens by touring Veriscope units in suitable venues, such as opera houses, academies of music, and high-class vaudeville theaters. The spectator in one of these showings would be watching life-sized figures on screen just as though he was sitting at ringside. Music and sound effects were added to enhance the sense of realism and it was common for spectators to comment and cheer just as though they were watching a real fight. The intention to cover the entire width of the ring was disappointed to a degree. The day before the fight, the cameramen realized that the 24-foot-wide ring was about two feet too wide for the field of the Veriscope camera from where it was placed. Rector’s partner in the production, Dan A. Stuart, had the width of the ring shortened to 22 feet. When the referee, George Siler, discovered this subterfuge, he had Stuart restore the ring to its full width. That is why only the legs and trunk of Corbett are seen as he crawls to the ropes in a futile attempt to pull himself upright, after being floored by the famous “solar plexus” punch of Fitzsimmons. The exhibition of the fight film proved to be exceptionally prohibitable, with around $100,000 in net profits being obtained over a nearly two-year run, or over $3,130,000 in today’s money. At first, the unique nature of the Veriscope film meant that only Veriscope projectors could be used to present it. This provided The Veriscope Company with more protection from interference than its copyright did. At first there were attempts to make counterfeits of the film, most laughably by Sigmund Lubin, who engaged a couple of freight hands from the Pennsylvania Railroad to impersonate Corbett and Fitzsimmons, one of them wearing a pompadour wig as Corbett, the other a hairnet as Fitzsimmons. The purported George Sisler sported a large handlebar mustache pasted on. Veriscope brought suit against Lubin, but popular derision for the Lubin fake ultimately made further legal action unnecessary. In the meantime, however, unscrupulous exhibitors were having illicit copies made of the Veriscope prints in standard film gauges. The copies were much inferior to the Veriscope originals, but the result badly undercut the market for Veriscope exhibition. Ultimately, the public’s curiosity was saited and both the Veriscope prints and their illicit copies were withdrawn and discarded. In those days, film prints were typically destroyed and recycled for their silver content after commercial exhibition was no longer viable. Only fragments of the Veriscope prints exist today. A seller on ebay is offering a 1,000 foot reel, its condition unknown, and among the various versions uploaded to YouTube is one that is 19 minutes long. The few minutes available from the Library of Congress posted above have by far the best image quality that I have seen, but this is only a shadow of how the Veriscope prints appeared when they were originally exhibited. Nearly 125 years have passed then, and what remains of them are dirty, faded, and partially decomposed. As a record, such ghosts only suggest the skills that were developed for fist fighting during a time when bouts took place over an extended number of rounds under the sun, with fists little protected by thinly padded gloves and wrestling used to control and wear down an opponent. I know that marvels can be obtained through digital restoration these days, and certainly I would love to see an attempt made with this film of the Cobett-Fitzsimmons fight. As it is, one must watch what remains of it with a good deal of sympathetic understanding for both the conditions under which the match was fought and the inroads of time upon the images of it.
