“Twenty-fifth.—The effects of the last fall operated in some degree upon the feelings of Cribb, from its severity; yet the Champion endeavoured to remove this impression by making play, and striving (as in the former round) to put in a hit on Molineaux’s left eye, but the Moor, aware of the intent, warded it off, and in return knocked Cribb down.”
— from Boxiana; or, Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism, from the Days of the Renowned Broughton and Slack, to the Championship of Cribb, Vol. 1 (1813) by Pierce Egan
Cribb was the Englishman, Tom Cribb, the reigning bare knuckles boxing champion. The “Moor” was an African American named named Tom Molineaux. The year was 1810 and the place was Oxfordshire, England. The twenty-fifth, was, astonishingly, the round. The two Toms would go another five rounds for a total of 51 minutes, and circumstances were such that even today it is not certain that Molineaux, who would lose the punishing match, was not cheated of the title of heavyweight champion of the world. What is certain is that he was one of the first, if not the first African-American heavyweight stars in recorded history.
Everything we know about Tom Molineaux before he reached England is mostly anecdotal, as there are few if any primary sources about his life in America. He was born into slavery on the Virginia plantation of Algernon Molineaux in 1784. Tom inherited skill with his fists from his father Zachariah and, as the tale goes, with some training from a veteran bare knuckles boxer, he destroyed his opponent—another enslaved black man named Abe Peyton. The match won Algernon a bet, and Tom won his freedom.
Molineaux then likely traveled north to New York City, fought in some dockside matches styling himself as Champion of America, according to Fred Henning in his book Fights for the Championship Vol.II (1898). Eventually, on a tip that London bouts were where money and fame was to be had, Molineaux got a job as a deckhand on a ship to England. This is where he steps into recorded history, much of his life chronicled in Boxiana by Pierce Egan, an English boxing enthusiast and contemporary of Molineaux.
The 26-year-old pugilist got himself a trainer, another talented boxer and African American named Bill Richmond. Richmond fought matches on the side when he wasn’t running his tavern, the Horse & Dolphin, in Leicester Square.
Nineteenth century bare-knuckles boxing was a brutal sport—the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, upon which modern boxing was founded, was decades away. Going 50 rounds, instead of today’s 12, was not unheard of, and all manner of contact was allowed. You got knocked down, your corner men, or seconds, revived you in half a minute and you went back to fight some more. You fought until one man was unconscious, or dead. Spectators mostly stood, surrounding the pugilists in a circle, shouting, making side bets, urging their guys on.
Molineaux’s first match was in the summer of 1810 against a bigger man from Bristol named Jack Burrows. According to Egan “It was the most game fight, and continued for an hour. MOLINEAUX punished his opponent so severely, that it was impossible to distinguish a single feature in his face. He also gave such specimens of dexterity and science, as to claim considerable attention from the spectators, who viewed him as a pugilist of great promise.” Molineaux fought just one more match, devastating his opponent, “Tough Tom” Blake, before he challenged Cribb.
Nearly 30, the heavyweight champion of England was about to retire from boxing, but nationalist pride, and fear that the black foreigner would scoop up his title spurred Cribb to accept the challenge. He couldn’t let that happen; England couldn’t let that happen. So he found himself on a December day in 1811, some 30 miles outside London at a place called Copthorn Common near East Grimstead, Sussex, facing off with Molineaux.
“Spectators came in rain and wind, wading through roads turned to mud,” wrote historian and biographer Gene Smith in a Fall 2000 article for American Legacy titled “Uncrowned Champion. “Rain poured down. The grass was slippery and uprooted.” Cribb was the odds-on favorite. It was said at the start of the fight that only fools would bet that the black man would last for more than 15 minutes.
And then he did last. The boxers slugged away, “The crowd screaming,” wrote Smith of the bout, “the fighters with faces disfigured and half blind, fists streaming with blood.”
By the 28th round, the odds had shifted among the bettors, and Molineaux knocked Cribb out. The white man could not get up and come to scratch. Thirty seconds passed, and while Cribb lay senseless, his team ran to Molineaux and Richmond accusing the black boxer of hiding metal in his fists. Some would call that a distraction from the fact that Cribb had clearly lost. Molineaux had nothing in his hands, but that gave Cribb just enough extra time to recover his senses and go on to beat, just barely, a demoralized Molineaux. The “national laurels,” as Egan called them, were safe.
In a letter to Cribb, written for Molineaux, who was not literate, and printed in the Times of London, he asked for a rematch. “I cannot omit the opportunity of expressing a confident hope that the circumstances of my being of a different colour to that of the people amongst whom I have sought protection will not in any way operate to my prejudice.” In September of 1811 Molineaux got his rematch, which he would lose, and this time for no other reason than while Cribb kept to a rigorous training schedule, realizing that his opponent was no one to take for granted, Molineaux caroused, a celebrity among the London party crowd, who fawned over him as an “exotic.”
He would never gain the title of world champion, and other than two mentions in the American press about his overseas bouts, he would nearly disappear from the annals of boxing. Molineaux, wracked with tuberculosis, died in Ireland at the age of 34. Still, wrote Egan,“It will not be forgotten, if justice hold the scale, that his colour alone prevented him from becoming the hero of that fight.”
