Boxing as a Sport

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Boxing as a Sport is an article published in the Daily Mail on 16 november 1911, including a part of an interview with Arthur Conan Doyle.


Boxing as a Sport

Daily Mail (16 november 1911, p. 5)

A Defence by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who as a sports-man has often "donned the gloves" and as a novelist has written one of the best living stories on boxing ("Rodney Stone"), yesterday expressed the opinion that it is impossible to eradicate the love for boxing as a sport in this country.

Such decisions as that given at Birmingham in the Moran-Driscoll case, he told a representative of the Pall Mall Gazette, would only be to drive boxing underground: "You can drive it underground, but you cannot stop it. Instead of having contests in the presence of the public, the Press, and the police, you will have it underground. You can have it in the back parlour of a public-house, but you are going to have it somehow. It is better, surely, to have it in the daylight, where, if there has been any brutality, there will at once be a shriek of 'Foul' or 'Shame.'

"It is certain you will not stop it. That is absolutely impossible. I confess I do not understand where the line is going to be drawn between boxing and a veiled prize-fight." It was only our individuality and love of sport which gave us a chance of bringing out our manhood, but if one sport was to be cut down in this way it would do us a great deal of national harm.