Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3): Containing Lives of the Most Celebrated Pugilists; Full Reports of Their Battles from Contemporary Newspapers, With Authentic Portraits, Personal Anecdotes, and Sketches of the Principal Patrons of the Prize Ring, Forming a Complete History of the Ring from Fig and Broughton, 1719-40, to the Last Championship Battle Between King and Heenan, in December 1863Miles, Henry Downes
History
Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3): Containing Lives of the Most Celebrated Pugilists; Full Reports of Their Battles from Contemporary Newspapers, With Authentic Portraits, Personal Anecdotes, and Sketches of the Principal Patrons of the Prize Ring, Forming a Complete History of the Ring from Fig and Broughton, 1719-40, to the Last Championship Battle Between King and Heenan, in December 1863
Miles, Henry Downes
Boxing
In the beginning of the following month (June, 1808), Gully and Cribb
took a joint benefit at the Fives Court; Gully and Jem Belcher, Cribb
and Tom Belcher, Tom Jones and Tom Blake, Cropley and Dogherty, George
Cribb and Wood, were among the leading exhibitors. Gully repeated his
declaration of retirement from the ring, and public opinion looked upon
the coming fight of Tom Cribb and Gregson as a sort of test as to
Gully’s successor.
In taking leave of so remarkable a man as the subject of the present
memoir, a man who after many years of intercourse with the most eminent
public men of his time, arrived at fortune, fame, and even senatorial
honours, we may be suspected of panegyric from personal knowledge, and a
desire to dilate on a theme so immediately connected with the history of
British pugilism as the merits of its professors, while it yet had the
name and standing which it has, much through the misconduct of its
members, temporarily lost.
Gully, as a pugilist, has well earned a niche in the temple of pancratic
fame; and if his battles were not so numerous as many other professors
have been, they were contested with a decision of science and game,
rarely equalled, perhaps never excelled, and justly entitle him to
honourable mention in the records of boxing. His practice, it was well
known, had been very confined, and his theoretical knowledge of the
science could not have been very extensive, yet his natural courage and
quickness surmounted these difficulties, and, with a fortitude equal to
any man, he entered the ring a most consummate pugilist. Though his
frame was never a model of symmetry, he had many points of the athletic
build. His height was about six feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive