A few of the big potential matchups of Jem Maces career never came off. Jem Mace vs Tom Sayers Jem Mace vs John Heenan How would these have gone?
Harold Furniss: Most biographers of Sayers have amused themselves, if not the public, by speculating upon what would have happened had Sayers met certain other celebrities either before or after his time. Such speculations are idle and unprofitable. When people ask me what chance Sayers would have stood against Bendigo or Jem Mace, I simply say that, as a matter of cat, Tom never had to fight any man of the class of either of these, but I should have backed him in any company to hold his own with credit. Probably most of my readers have heard the tale of Mace's challenge to Sayers, but it will bear repeating. One day, when Tom was in his cups at a little alehouse off the Fulham road, kept by once famous ten-mile runner, "Jenny" Jones, his eye happened to light on a picture representing Heenan, Sayers, and Mace. Taking up his stick, Tom staggered to the picture, and touching the likeness of the Benicia Boy, said, "He's a good man." Then, touching his own portrait, "And he's a good man; but this," he continued, indicating Mace, "is a bloomin' duffer." And forthwith he drove the point of his stick through the face of the portrait. Mace, who was present, naturally left annoyed and challenged Sayers there and then to fight him for any sum he liked. But Tom pleaded that he had retired, and that the mutilation was a joke. "Not," said Mace, when telling me the story, "that it would have been any credit for me to have beaten him, for he was then but a shattered wreck." A fight between Sayers and Mace, each at his best, would no doubt have been a grand sight, unless Jem happened to be in one of his superstitious moods. Having seen both of them fight at their best, I will only say that, whilst in my opinion Mace was unquestionably the finer artist, Sayers was the finer fighter.
No he definitely existed. He was a great fighter but for my money Tom King was a bit better and Mace had the better of him in both their fights loosing once by a fluke knockout.
Hardly great, but Heenan was better than most people think by just looking at his "record" or reading a couple of articles.
