Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/30

Rh cruel advantage, is sure to be shouted down as cowardly and disgraceful.

The chief reason why boxing has fallen into disrepute is the English practice of prize-fighting with bare hands, and under improper rules.

The American champion, Sullivan, has done more than attempt to defeat all pugilists who came before him: he has made a manly and most creditable effort to establish the practice not only of sparring, but of fighting, with large gloves; and secondly, he has made the round blow "scientific." He also has insisted, whenever he could, that contests should be ruled by three-minute rounds of fair boxing.

The adoption of gloves for all contests will do more to preserve the practice of boxing than any other conceivable means. It will give pugilism new life, not only as a professional boxer's art, but as a general exercise. The brutalities of a fight with bare hands, the crushed nasal bones, maimed lips, and other disfigurements, which call for the utter abolition of boxing in the