First Published: 1921

Published by:-

Odhams Press Limited, London, 1921 

The Spur Publications Company, 1975

1983

Hardcover 300 pages with dustjacket

Reprinted: November 1983

Publisher: Triplegate Ltd

ISBN: 0946474222

size 22cm x 14.5cm x 2.5cm approx

weight 640g approx.

Book Description:

This famous book covers cockfighting, dogfighting, bullfighting, manfighting, and many other old sports such as bear-baiting, ram, and buffalo fighting, as well as bizarre sports such as matches made between dogs and monkeys.

"This is an attempt to look back at those far-away days when bravery, valour and courage were valued beyond measure. We were proud of our empire and all its traditions. Today many old sports are illegal and, therefore, are lost for ever in history. Our young men hear of them, but can find little or no literature on the sports or the background against which they took place.

Areas covered are:

Cockfighting

Dog--Fighting

Bull-Fighting

Various Fighting Sports

Man Fighting (Pugilism and Boxing)

The whole is illustrated throughout with black and white drawings or photographs. In addition, in this new edition, there are coloured plates by Herbert Atkinson, JW Ludlow, H Alken and Ben Marshall, all renowned for their artistic talents."

FOREWORD

I have just finished reading my good friend Lawrence Fitz-Barnard’s book, Fighting Sports, and thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it, as I am sure thousands of other will do.

No one is more competent to write on fighting sports than my old friend, although in general appearance and bearing he is about at pugnacious as a newly born lamb.

Lawrence fits Barnard was one of the best amateur boxers I have ever seen, and in the days of his youth was in the foremost ranks of middles and heavy–weights, as his record plainly shows. To–day we have no amateurs of the calibre of Edgeworth Johnstone, the man with the sledge hammer fist, G.L Townsend, who subsequently fought Bob Fitzsimmonds, and Horace King. Fitz-Barnard was as good as any of these, with the possible exception of Johnstone, who had enormous advantages in the matter of weight.

I still belong to a little band which believes that Fitz-Barnard was very unlucky to lose more than one championship. In open championships he cut very broad swathe indeed. He carried off the supreme honours in the heavies at the German Gym., which in those days ranked next to the amateur championships, and was sometimes even more difficult to win.

For four years in succession, he won the open competitions, both middles and heavies, at the Orion Gymnasium, beating some wonderfully good men, facts which prove conclusively that he had the right sort of fighting blood in him.

But my friend inherits his intense love of all fighting sports from a long and unsullied line of ancestors, beginning I believe, with William the Conqueror. The subject has always fascinated him, and he has studied it carefully and pursued it zealously ever since he could toddle.

Although I am not an expert in the sport, I found the chapters on cock-fighting tremendously thrilling, and it was not until I had read them that I realised how game, as well as clever, some animals can be.

On this particular sport Lawrence Fitz-Barnard writes as one having close, practical knowledge, and I am not surprised to learn that he is regarded as one of the foremost authorities in the history and literature of cocking, undoubtedly the most ancient of our many English sports.

Altogether the work, as a record of and exposition, must prove an invaluable addition to any library of every sportsman. Essentially it is a book for the boys and young men of our race, because it reveals, in a way that no other book has ever attempted, the wonderful fighting qualities of centuries of men of British blood. I am sure this book can have nothing but the success it deserves.

CONTENTS:

COCK-FIGHTING

• Cock-Fighting

• The Humanity of Cock-Fighting

• The Laws of Cocking

• Colour and Size

• Breeding

• Care of Chicks

• Walks

• Refereeing

• Feeding

• Setting

• Heeling

• Spurs

• Famous Cocks

• Famous Cockers

DOG-FIGHTING

• Chap. One

• ..Two

• .. Three

• .. Four

BULL-FIGHTING

• Ohle Los Toros

• Los Toreros

• Los Toros

DIVERS FIGHTING SPORTS

• Chap. One

• .. Two

• .. Three

MAN-FIGHTING

• Man-Fighting

• Rules – Boxing

• .. Broughtons

• .. London Prize Ring

• .. Marquess of Queensberry

• .. National Sporting Club

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOURED PLATES

At Page 70

ILLUSTRATIONS

A Dark Grey Cock of Gillman Blood

A Ginger–Red Cock of Great Red Quill Strain

A Pyle Cock

An Asil Cock

A Dog-Fight at the Westminster Pit

Bear–Baiting at the Westminster Pit

The Celebrated Bill Gilliver

An Old Type of Fighting Dog

Antonio Fuentes

Guerrita Preparing to Kill

Espatero Killing

Buffalo–Fighting

Elephants Fighting

Camels Fighting at Babeers Durbar in 1528

Ram–Fighting

Jack Broughton and Jack Slack in their Historic Battle

The World’s Greatest Fighter: Jimmy Wilde