The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America by Elliott J. Gorn (review)

122 Shorter Book Reviews clear evidence of the author's views of the American national interest with respect to world oil. At the very end of the book we learn, almost as an afterthought, that Painter faults the American government for its inattention to a fundamentally different approach to energy security based on conservation. But throughout the story he has actually told us, I detected nothing to suggest whether or not the national interest of the United States also might have been better served by, say, more accommodation of the national aspirations of producing countries such as Mexico, greater use of multilateral regimes rather than unilateral actions in evolving solutions to world market problems, or the showing of less favour to the "majors" than to the "independents." Could it be that in both the analytic and political realms the salience of the "corporatist" model is greater where the question of the national interest is less overtly contested? J. N. McDougall Department of Political Service University of Western Ontario Elliott J. Gorn. The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. 316 pp. Illus. In this history of bare-knuckle prize fighting, Elliott J. Gorn claims to side with the lions over the Christians. The book is a gripping advocacy of the perennial attraction-repulsion produced by boxing. The curious reader has no choice but to become part of the antebellum "fancy" who made their way on twelve vessels, twenty-five miles up the Hudson River to watch Tom McCoy fight Christopher Lilly. McCoy, having been knocked to the canvas eighty times in the first 117 rounds, steps out for the 118th, the last he will ever fight, and tells his handlers: ''nurse me and I'll whip him yet.'' McCoy dies, drowning in his own blood. Gorn examines boxing's roots in England, where it co-existed with cockfighting , bull-baiting and ratting-having evolved from a pastime of the gentry to a pastime of the working masses, dominated by the underworld. Pre-Civil War American bare-knuckle prize fighting became gloved "sparring" as the sport encountered contemporary mores and the legal system. The heroes are all male. The bare-knuckle era is for men only. Gorn seeks to "rescue from oblivion" men who were extraordinarily wellknown in their day. Since most ring participants disappeared after only a few fights, his characters are names familiar to students of early boxing. They have, nonetheless, been too long ignored by serious social historians. Among those he treats with a sociological sensitivity are Tom Molineaux, America's first black heavyweight champion, "Yankee" Sullivan, who died at the hands of California vigilantes, and John Morrissey, immigrant street-fighter turned Congressman. Shorter Book Reviews 123 John L. Sullivan (1858-1918), well-known for his oft-stated and oft-proven challenge that he could "beat any son-of-a-bitch alive," has t~ghtfully been described as America's most important nineteenth-century sport hero. Ernest Thomas Seton (eventually the founder of the Boy Scouts of America) once said that he had never met a boy who wouldn't rather be John L. Sullivan than Leo Tolstoy. Th9ugh he deserved every bit of his folk image, Sullivan was the key in the transition from bare-knuckle to gloved boxing. He won the World Heavyweight Title in an illegal bare-knuckle fight with Paddy Ryan in 1882, after which he spent the prize money staying out of jail. He quickly learned that the way to riches was to tour, offering prize money to any man who could last four rounds with him in "gloved" combat. In one twenty-six state tour, he made 195 appearances in 285 days, earning $100,000. In 1889, in what turned out to be the last bare-knuckle championship contest, he beat Jake Kilrain in seventy-five rounds. At the end of the fight, Sullivan ran across the ring and challenged Kilrain's manager to fight him on the spot. Sullivan lost his title to "Gentleman" Jim Corbett, under lights, in 1890. The first World Championship with gloves was descdbed as the victory of "youth, skill and science ... over age, dissipation and brute strength.'' It was more...