Pugilism was the height of fashion in the Britain of 1810, mixing and matching all classes ? and it staged possibly the first international sporting contest
Last weekend's string of championship boxing matches shared by the old port of Liverpool and the neon-winking Strip joint in Nevada and relayed live around the world by television happened just days away from an exact two centuries after the first international sporting event ever staged ? which was on a filthy wet winter's day on a muddy patch on Copthall Common, near East Grinstead, Sussex, on 18 December 1810.
Or is it too fanciful to claim that when the bareknuckle champion of all-England, Bristol's Tom Cribb, squared up on that historic day to Tom Molineaux, a black American freed slave from Georgetown, South Carolina, it launched a brand new category of competition, a completely novel one in which nationhood's pride and prestige was equally as significant as personal esteem and achievement?
A primeval inauguration, I'd say. Well, name me an earlier international sporting contest? The dramatic episode at Copthall Common a week before Christmas 1810 happened all of three-score years before England played Scotland in the first international matches at both football and rugby; it was 67 years before England would play Australia at cricket, or before Wimbledon began its "international all-comers" lawn tennis championships. Dammit, 1810 was a whole 92 years before two football teams representing "foreign" countries played one another (Austria 5, Hungary 0, Vienna, October 1902). So Cribb (GB) v Molineaux (USA) was a world premi�re "first" all right.
Pugilism was the height of fashion in the Britain of 1810. It mixed and matched all classes ? the Prince Regent and his aristo toffs were regular ringside "incognito". Pugilism helped mollify racism: there were some fabled Jewish boxers on the circuit (Daniel Mendoza, "Dutch Sam" Elias and Barney Aaron); and Irish, too ("Sir" Dan McCarthy and Jack Randall, "the nonpareil").
Nor was Molineaux the first black fighter. He had been inspired to come to Britain by hearing of the formidable Bill Richmond, a slave who had been bought 20 years previously in New York by a sympathetic British army general, Earl Percy; and who was now, as an ex-boxer, bodyguard to the Duke of Northumberland and an expert teacher of the "sweet science".
Molineaux had sailed for Liverpool in 1809 having left his Carolina plantation after victory in a "free-the-winner" fight with another slave. Once Richmond saw the 25-year-old Molineaux's strapping build (5ft 9in and 14 stones) he set up a trial match, in which old hand Tom Tough was easily dispatched at Margate in August 1810, and then they challenged the battle-hardened national treasure, Cribb, not only the undisputed champ but wealthy landlord of the Union Arms in London's Panton Street.
The match created unprecedented interest. Waves of anticipation buzzed all around and at every level the Fancy and its underworld was engaged in feverish certainties ? and uncertainties ? about national honour being at stake in the face of Molineaux's apparent talent and strength.
No railways yet, of course: transport was by horseback, carriage, or foot. The crowd's enthusiastic descent on the venue and the fearful weather turned all Copthall Common's paths and lanes into ankle-deep mud. Yet still nearly 20,000 turned up. Last year's vivid biography of Cribb by Jon Hurley describes how the "congregation hummed with expectation and the gabbling of bookies laying odds. The money bet on the contest was vast with the knowing ones laying huge sums on Cribb to destroy the black in less than 15 minutes".
For twice as long as that, however, the throng was silenced as they saw their champion ? approaching 30 now, under-trained and over-confident ? out-thought, out-muscled and out-hit by the younger Molineaux. In the ninth round, Cribb was felled by a cruel axe-like blow to the throat. It seemed all over ? until his second, the ex-champion Joe Ward, harassed referee "Gentleman" Jackson, claiming Richmond was concealing a bullet in each of Molineaux's palms to increase the punching power of his fists.
In the six minutes it took to prove the accusation false, Cribb recovered his senses while Molineaux stood shivering as the wretched English weather bit into his spirit. It turned the match: 50 minutes and 22 rounds later, Molineaux was carried out, heroically defeated.
Cribb far more easily won the return match in September 1811 at Thistleton Gap, Rutland. The great champion lived on, feted by one and all, and died at a ripe old 66 in 1848. Alas, Molineaux was to over-enjoy the Regency's best wines, whiskies and wild, wild women and in no time was reported to be fighting ? and losing ? around the fairgrounds of Ireland's Galway where, still drinking, he died, alone and destitute, in 1818, aged just 33.
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