The Gentleman Takes a Bow

One hundred and ten years ago today in Carson City, Nevada, an era ended in boxing history - Ruby Robert Fitzsimmons became the heavyweight champion of the world by knocking out Gentleman Jim Corbett with his infamous solar plexus punch. Corbett had held the title since 1892, when he'd done what had then seemed next to impossible, defeating the great John L. Sullivan.

Fitzsimmons was an unlikely heavyweight contender and foe for Corbett. Nearly six feet tall and still a natural middleweight, Fitz had already won the middleweight crown six years beforehand by beating the Nonpareil, Irish Jack Dempsey (no relation to the Manassa Mauler). Ruby Robert was born in Cornwall and moved to New Zealand as a child, where he apprenticed as a blacksmith, a fact to which many attributed his frightening punching power (myself I just imagine him built on the Tommy Hearns model and need no evidence of smithery to be swayed).

Fitz lost years of his career trying to lure Corbett into the ring, but the Gentleman, having won the title, was not so gentlemanly about defending it, spending much of the five years between the Sullivan and Fitzsimmons fights appearing in plays and vaudeville shows. When The Fighting Blacksmith was finally given his shot at Corbett, his Cornish temper was boiling over - the two came to blows at a Philadelphia hotel just months before the bout took place.

Corbett carried the early portion of the fight with his superior boxing skills, reddening Fitz's face with his jackhammer jab, his most effective weapon. In the sixth, the Gentleman caught the challenger flush with a left hook that sent him to the canvas - Fitz made it to his feet just at the count of nine, a fact that was to be much disputed in the fight's aftermath.

As is so often seen in the ring, the tide turned after a knockdown, as in the seventh Corbett wearied from his furies of the previous round and Fitz began to press the action. He softened up the Gentleman for the next six rounds, and then in the fourteenth, landed a knockout blow that would become his trademark. Here's how ole Bert Sugar describes it in his book, "100 Years of Boxing":

"The punch itself came after Corbett pulled back from a Fitzsimmons feint to his head, intending, or so he later said, 'to pull my head back a bit and have my right ready to shoot over the blow that would end it all.' Instead, just as Corbett was pulling back from Fitz's right, the challenger changed his direction in mid-punch and, shifting his feet and direction with lightning speed, put all of his weight behind a left-hand smash to the midsection somewhere under the ribs where they curled away from the breastbone. That was the area later to be known as the 'solar plexus,' an area which bareknucklers as far back as Broughton had known as 'the mark.'"

Fitzsimmons would attempt only one defense of his title, losing it in 1899 to the great Jim Jeffries, who would wear the heavyweight crown into the new century as America's boxing hero (click here to read about that fight). In 1903, Fitz won the world light heavyweight title from George Gardiner in San Francisco to become the first man to win titles in three weight classes, and the only man in history other than Roy Jones to be middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight champion. I must say, great as he was, I'm not sure Jones belongs in such fabled company.

(Amazingly, there is video of the Fitzsimmons/Corbett fight - I recommend watching the below clip with the sound down on your computer, unless you really like house music and late-period ZZ Top.)