Sayers, Heenan and the Big Bare Fist Fight

The Greatest of Bare Knuckle Fights – Tom Sayers v the Benicia Boy

Sep 25, 2009 Iain Manson

In January 1860, John Carmel Heenan, the Benicia Boy, crossed the Atlantic to fight Tom Sayers of England. The prize ring was about to stage its first world championship.

London’s Highgate Cemetery is home to the tomb of nineteenth-century prize fighter Tom Sayers. In front lies the stone image of the mastiff Lion, chief mourner at his funeral in November 1865. A hundred thousand people came to say farewell to the man who, five years earlier, had met America’s John Carmel Heenan, the Benicia Boy, in a bare fist fight that would live for ever.

Bare Knuckle Fights in Disrepute

At 4.15 on the morning of Tuesday 17th April 1860, two enormous trains pulled out of London Bridge Station on their way to the greatest fight the prize ring had seen. Journalists, politicians, soldiers and innkeepers were among the twelve hundred people on board .

What made this so extraordinary was that the prize ring in England had been in disrepute for forty years – it was even illegal. But no one cared. When American champion John Carmel Heenan threw out the challenge to his transatlantic counterpart Tom Sayers, it suddenly blazed again with all its former glory, as two nations were transfixed by the unfolding drama.

On both sides of the ocean, excitement was intense. “No pugilistic contest ever decided,” said The Manchester Guardian, “has excited so great an interest,” while the New York Clipper asserted that “the excitement regarding the news eclipsed anything we ever saw in the newspaper world”.

Sayers, Heenan and the Great Prize Fight

Born into poverty in 1826, by 1857 Tom Sayers was ready to challenge for the national title. Five feet eight inches tall and weighing 150 pounds, he took it by defeating Bill Perry, the Tipton Slasher, who stood four inches taller and outweighed him by some 50 pounds.

John Carmel Heenan, born eight years later into less straitened circumstances, had become US prize ring champion despite suffering an unlucky defeat in his one formal bare fist fight in 1858. When his victorious opponent decided to retire from the ring, Heenan, known to all as the Benicia Boy, became champion by default.

Everyone regarded the Sayers–Heenan prize fight as a world championship bout.

Farnborough: History is Made

It was six forty when the two trains arrived at the village of Farnborough in the county of Hampshire, some thirty miles south-west of London. After a brief but boisterous cross-country hike to the chosen site, the ring was swiftly set up, and the two men stripped for action. Heenan towered over Sayers, but the greater size of an opponent had never bothered England’s champion before, and his supporters were confident.

But the Benicia Boy was on top from the start. The Times of London described how, in one of the early rounds “striking Sayers on the nose with a blow that was heard all over the meadow, he felled him like an ox.” In the sixth round, however, Sayers began to make a fight of it, and the same newspaper described his first really telling blow, “a terrific smash full in the eye, splitting up the cheek, and sending his antagonist reeling like a drunken man back into his corner.”

By the seventh round, Heenan’s right eye was completely closed, but Sayers was in still worse condition: his right arm was so damaged as to be useless. But bare knuckle fights went on as long as both men could stand, and he fought on with the skill and courage for which he was famous, staking everything on closing his opponent’s other eye. It was his only chance.

Tom Sayers on the Ropes

The fighting was tremendous. Soon the face of the Benicia Boy was unrecognizable, and it was apparent to all that the Englishman was near the end of his tether. Something had to give.

In the 37th round, something did. Having managed to get Sayers’s neck over the top rope – bare knuckle fights were a mix of boxing and wrestling – Heenan leant on it with all his force. Sayers’s face turned black, and it would have been all over if someone had not cut the ropes. Chaos followed, with the referee being forced from his position (always outside the bare-knuckle ring) and the fight going on without either ring or referee.

The discomfited official finally managed to regain control, and called a draw. The men had been fighting for more than two hours.

Fury of the Benicia Boy

Weeks of wrangling followed, as Heenan complained bitterly that he had been robbed of victory, while Sayers supporters insisted that the ropes had been cut simply to save their man’s life. In the end, both contestants had to be content with a draw, and both were awarded a championship belt.

Neither man would ever fly so high again, nor would bare knuckle fights long survive their encounter. Sayers died of consumption at the age of thirty-nine, as did Heenan eight years later, matched as evenly in death as they had been in life.

Iain Manson tells the story of the Sayers–Heenan fight in The Lion and the Eagle (ISBN 978-1-899807-67-3), published by SportsBooks in 2008.

The copyright of the article Sayers, Heenan and the Big Bare Fist Fight in UK/Irish History is owned by Iain Manson. Permission to republish Sayers, Heenan and the Big Bare Fist Fight in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

The Tomb of Tom Sayers in Highgate Cemetery	John Carmel Heenan, the Benicia Boy	Sayers and Heenan at Farnborough: History is Made
The Lion and the Eagle: the Sayers–Heenan Story