Butte semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1886-1890, 1886-12-01
PRIZE FIGHTING,

The latest exhibitions Of pugilism in New
York and San Francisco have stirred up
the press OF both those cities to criticizing
the methods now employed by the latter
day sluggers to line their pockets at the
expense of the pubic. There was q time
when the prize firing raj the arena in
which the best nan won. But that was
when men like Lilly and Mccoy, Yankee
Sullivan, Tom Hyar and others OF their
day met and fought their battles without
giving or receiving quarter. 1t is well that
those days have passed. P~rize-ighting is
a brutal, degrading avocation and it should
be stopped. And really it is discontinued,
for nine-tenths of the so-called prise-fights
Of the present time are simply hippodromes
in which the actors appear before great
crowds. give and take q few blows and then
divide the gate receipts.
This is being done all over the country.
The Burke Dempsey fight in San Francisco
was nothing but q bippodrome, and it is
believed that the Sullivan and Ryan scrap
was but a remove from it. The public,
however, look upon these contests as genu-
inc, pays its money, claps its hands and is
most beautifully humbugged. Sullivan is,
we understand, to appear again in Butte.
He comes, of course, to make money. Some
one will propose to stand up before him q
certain number of rounds. The house will
be filled by credulous men to see the great
exhibition of science and endurance; a few
harmless rounds will be fought. the crowd
will be bilked and go away disguised, and
bruisers visit the city.
The truth is, as the San Francisco Chron-
icle says, that latter-day glove exhibitions
can hardly be called prize-fghts in the old
sense of the word. They are purely money.
making affairs, in which the superiority of
either man is mainly incidental. The re-
suit OF any contest with gloves in which
Sullivan may take part with any man
whose pugilistic qualities are already
known is a foregone conclusion, and so it
has been for three or four years. This be-
ing the case, there are many chances
one that the antagonist selected to
STAND up before the championin order that
may draw a full house submits to the
"knocking out" as inevitable
and with such good grace as he can mus
ter. The suffering on his part, if there be
is short, sharp and decisive. It is far
less than that which many q schoolboy
has endured when he stubbed his big toe.
The beaten man is generally not punished
to any considerable extent, and beyond q
cut lip or a slightly bruised ear or q black
ened eye will be as we'll off physically to.
as he was yesterday. In pocket he
is much better off, for, under the usual ar
rangementsi lin such matches, his own defeat
him q number of thousands of dol
lars richer.
The fact is with the kid gloves, Montana
hard gloves, or the half-stuffed gloves,
prize fighting is becoming more and more
debasing and brutal, instead of advancing
toward the higher esthetic planes OF re-
6nement. 1t is sad to wound the self-con-
ceit of those OF the rising generation who
think it excessively manly to 60 to them
and yell for gore when they themselves
would faint at the sight Of a stuffed glove
of the softest quality and biggest ealibre if
supposed that it were seeking In i'm
pingement upon their own physiognomy.
But sham glove exhibitions, while robbing
the public Of goodly sums OF money, GER
tend to lower the standard of taste
and feeling in the community and to pre-
pare the spectators for the still more in
human and degrading realities Of the ring.