Tom Sayers vs John Heenan, the first world title fight.

What was the status of the Cribb-Molineaux fights. Cribb was without doubt the "champion" and it was also a matter of great patriotric pride that he fend off the challenge of the American Molineaux. I don't know if anyone had thought of the term "world" championship yet, though.

 

The problem is the Americans themselves didn't consider Molineaux to be anything. As far as I know his name wasn't even mentioned in American Fistiana, that contained a list of all known American fights and fighters.
The offers by Heenan how to deside the champinship were laughable, to say the least.

 

In 1751, Jack Slack, then the English champion, defeated the Frenchman, Jean Petit. This was the first international championship bout.

Tom Molineaux was black and an ex-slave. Heenan was white. It is no surprise that the racist Americans got behind Heenan and not Molineaux.

Off the records and fight reports, Molineaux was probably a more formidable contender than Heenan. He came close to beating a real heavyweight in Cribb, while Heenan was fighting a man who was skilled, but only 5' 6" and 150 or so pounds.

 

Sorry, but there are few historians who are proficient in bareknuckle epoch, so I'm not taking this "increasing number" seriously. I can say this from the chronology of IBHoF inductions alone, and some important names still missing among the inductees. I was checking some English champs records at CBZ recently, and there were plenty of errors, nobody seemed to care to cross-check them even against most obvious source - Pugilistica, even less so against primary sources.

 

you are correct, there needs to be a complete redo of the bareknuckle era, with boxiana, pugilistia and the journals, bell's life, american fistiana and what newspaper reports there are to reconstruct what happened.

for instance in america, there is vast gaps from molineaux to hyer/sullivan/morrissey. the slim references I have mention that boxing was more regional, but were any of those regional fighters any good? did any of them travel? by the 1860's the sport was centered in the midwest, and several names appear as fighting for the american championship that no one seems to know anything about. I bet there is information on those guys, but no one's taken the time to look.

 

Boxiana had nothing on American pugilism, which didn't really start by the time the first two volumes were completed, and had only occasional rare bouts by the time the 2nd volume of New Series was published. Pugilistica has chapters on Jem Mace and Tom King, but overall the English authors didn't feel anything but disdain for American "boxing", and anyone who read about the state of the sport in the US about the middle of 19th century ought to understand the reason behind it. Spirit of the Times began reporting boxing in the US by mid-1830's, NY newspapers (Clipper, Herald, Tribune, Sun, Times) began covering it more or less consistently in late 1840's or 1850's.

 

But what I was trying to say, names like Henry Miles, Vincent and Frank Dowling, Ned Smith, George Kent, G. Daniels, have done no less for pugilism and deserve induction no less or more than people like Egan, Fleischer, Fox, Liebling, Odd, and others. But you never even hear about them.

 

This fight allways makes me smile Heenan was a novice who had a couple of prize fights and a few wins over local men ,Sayers was a light middle weight,yet all the hoo -ha it has attracted makes it sound like Ali -Frazier.I suppose it was the international angle.

 

This is ture. Men like Dutch Sam, Daniel Mendoza, and Jim Mace offer a good story to tell. One day someone will come out with an all bare knuckle boxing book.

 

Someone will come out with what book? Bareknuckle boxing books are not that hard to find, it's just that most historians don't care to study that epoch, other than well-known big fights, those Crib-Molineaux two fights and Sayers-Heenan, maybe a couple other fights, at this their knowledge ends. Speaking of Sayers-Heenan, anyone who learns about it solely from American coverage (from Wilkes' report) will miss out much of the "fun", as the American journalist was lacking experience to describe the specifics, such as Sayers' clever defensive skills, where he "rolled" with punches to greatly decrease the impact so that it did not do any significant damage most of the time. Ned Smith, who was the chief reporter for Bell's life for many years and probably had attended more prize fights than any other person in history, was aware of such things, so his report is much better in this regard.

 

I have Fights For The Championship ,compiled from "Bell's Life In London"
"Boxiana",printed about 1898.It starts with Figg, it seems an authorative book ,but then I'm no expert .