TheBoxing Biographies Newsletter Volume2 - No12 23th May , 2008 www.boxingbiographies.com If you wish to receive future newsletters ( which includes the images ) please email the message “NEWS LETTER” [email protected] The newsletter is also available as a word doc on request As always the full versions of these articles are on the website Battling Nelson Tragedy is Mirrored in Face of Britt's Father. From .San Francisco Examiner. September 10. 1905. CRITIC SAYS THIS IS MORE THAN MELODRAMA, AND TELLS HOW ACCURATE DRAMATIZATION WOULD BE LESSON FOR "THE GAME/' BY ASHTON STEVENS. Melodrama would be a hollow word poor old cut and dried melodrama! For this duel between Jimmie Britt and Battling Nelson had a nerve-wrecking shudder for every moment of the fifty -two minutes of actual fighting. It was a sight such as I hope never to see again ; and yet it was the greatest matinee I have ever witnessed. The most colossal audience and the most expensive too, that I have ever known played the horrible mob. When the right fist of Nelson emerged from a tangle of blows in the eighteenth round and came invincibly against the jaw of Britt, and the champion of his lightweight kind fell numb against the ropes and sank to the canvas floor, his lips geysers of blood, his tongue a protruding, sickening blade of red, the mob went mad. Referee Graney had declared "all bets off," and it was more merely a matter of passion. So the crowd opened its throat in unmercenary rapture. The King was dead curse him! and long live the Battling One! A thousand cushions from the hard seats of the Colma arena were thrown into the afternoon air, and picked up and thrown, and thrown again. Nelson the Great! Britt the Beaten! For ten minutes after the determining blow, hell was lidless. Jubilant arms tossed Nelson again and again in the air as college kids are tossed in blankets. He was the gloat of fifteen thousand throats. The prize ring filled for him, and the policemen detailed to clear it fought to retain their clubs. In the corner of the vanquished mourned the seconds, and if the truth must be told for I sat at the ringside in Britt's corner where Britt fell mourned also the referee, who that afternoon at the last moment had accepted the post in the face of what had appeared to be an implacable grudge twixt himself and the Britts. FATHER AND SON. But more touching still in that near corner was Old Man Britt, pillowing the gore- flecked head of his heretofore undefeated first born. He bent his body over his broken son and made of his back a shield against the flying cushions. As well as fake the prize ring has its tragedy, and one sees it with ghastly vividness at the ringside. Quickly permit me to admit that my small change and my large sympathies had been with Jimmie. I had interviewed him for the Sunday Examiner as fistrion and plumber boy. His mind had won me. His neck had appeared to be a bit too long and thin for "the game," yet he had more brains than all of the ringsters I had ever chanced to fall in with. Also he had quickness, muscle and a left arm like a foil. His mentality and fleetness I would have pitted against the brawn of any man of equal weight. And I had seen him defeat Nelson in twenty rounds where yesterday in a contest of the practically unlimited number of forty-five, he went clown in the eighteenth. So I motored out to Colma with the rest of the experts and imposters (like myself), wondering just what sort of a foolish dramatic critic's point of view I should be able to bring to bear on Jimmie Britt's victory. On everything save paper I had my story written before the gong rang. Presently, when I turned and looked two rows behind into the troubled features of Old Man Britt, I felt like a living obituary. During the fiercest rounds, Mr. Britt was the only man that stood in the great open-air auditorium. Others that attempted to keep their feet were hissed and cussed down. But the Old Man stood, and even those directly behind made no murmur. He stood with his black hat in his hand, close against his black coat, like a mourner at a funeral. When big Dean Naughton turned and said, "Nothing but a miracle can save Britt” the foreboding was echoed in the face of the father. When he said, "It's all over now for Jimmy; we have only to wait for the rounds," the Old Man's mouth was working with every blow and his breathing was hopelessness against hopelessness. Before the finale came, the senior Britt had surrendered. To have taken his game youngster out of that padded square he looked as though he would have given one plumbing shop and some flats. But Jimmie knew that he was beaten only after he had been lifted to his corner. It's a pity that such grit has to be sold in the market place for purses and per cent. It's a crime against what we are pleased to call civilization. If the bloody wage of war must come, and come in response to national pride and protection, the Jimmie Britt should be foremost with the fighters. They deserve a dearer heroism than this cheap one of the glove. Almost throughout the battle was a fury, Britt seemed bent on throwing fancy boxing to the winds and piercing his opponent by main strength. Vainly the picturesque "Spider" Kelly and the other Britt seconds cautioned him to caution just as vainly as they urged him to wildness in the fatal eighteenth. He fought his own fight, and the cheers that greeted his defeat were for a stronger but not for a braver man. I am not depreciating the courage of Battling Nelson. No one can but admire the sand and strength and skill of him. There were times when his expressionless face was a crimson jelly under the thud of Britt's sodden gloves; there were times when his Greek body seemed to be stung through and through by the merciless flogging from Britt's left. But invariably Nelson returned for more, and gradually, cumulatively he gave rather than took that more. He had rounds to spare, yet, like Britt, he wanted no boxing. The man that called this a "boxing match" was a merry jester. I will leave it to the experience of Otto Floto, Naughton and Hamilton if a harder, bloodier battle has ever been fought in the vision of paying spectators. Some of these spectators should have been excluded. They were women. A few of them looked like decent women, but the most gave token of being jaded jades in search of some new torment for their sagging nerves. Hoots of mock applause properly met the entrance of each. Man at a prize fight is not a polite animal. In fact, he has no politeness at all and is much more animal than man. I saw yesterday professional men, doctors and lawyers high in practice and clubs, writhing rapturously with every blow. Each was "fighting the fight" by himself. And I saw the eyes of Jack London, who in his novel, "The Game," has translated to the stage a prize fight better than Bernard Shaw in either novel or play I saw the eyes of this great primitive fictionist turn from sympathy with Britt to contempt for the mob that thundered at Britt's fall. Even London has not written the whole "Game;" and no melodramatist has approached it. Oh, these miserable sublimations of fights that you see in the casual melodrama ! They have nothing of the spirit ; nothing of the ring and after all the ring and those immediately about it are about all you could hope to show within the confines of an ordinary stage. If we must have the fighter in drama let him be dramatized accurately. Let him have a "Spider" Kelley in his corner screaming: "That's the candy, Jimmy! Once more where he bleeds ! Draw more of the claret ; I like to see it run ! Go in, you tiger, you, and finish him before he faints on your shoulder !" I admit, ladies, that this sounds brutal, but it is only a scented version of what actually is shouted at the ringside. Then again, if we must have the ring on the stage, give us the real surroundings ; the telegraph instruments clicking against shout; the telephone operators; the worried correspondents from all ends of the earth. And if we must have prize fights on the stage, give us an actor to play the part of a Naughton, so that in one of those deadly climaxes where the tension of the crowd is too great for clamor, when what London calls the "blood-cry" is choked in the throats then I say give us a Naughton on the stage, talking like a phonograph to his telegrapher, the news of to be carried from ocean to ocean, from newspaper to newspaper. "A couple of lefts to the body brought Britt's head forward. As Britt's head came in Nelson showered rights and lefts on the jaw. Nelson tore loose with a hard left on the body. Britt began to crumble Then Nelson unloaded a right on -the head and a -- left on the stomach. It was hard to say which blow ended the fight but Britt sank to the floor and rolled over his tongue protruding-.