Bombardier Wells has a most peculiar record. The chart of his successes and failures is like conventionalised lightning. He began with success and then failed miserably: then up again to the top of the tree and down again to the bottom of the ladder. His career, his temperament, the state of his nerves, have been more widely and more portentously discussed than the weight of Tom Sayers, the muscle of Tom Cribb, or the reach of Peter Jackson.

One school maintains that Wells is a first-rate boxer, another that he is a bad boxer. It all depends upon what you mean by boxing. If boxing is a game as golf is a game, an almost theoretical attack and defence, the rudest expression of which is what we call an “Exhibition”—then Wells is a first-rater. But if boxing is the translation into rude and rough sport of a quite practical defence and offence, whereby one man disables another (but confined within rules which are unlikely to be obeyed in a very serious affair, any more than the Geneva Convention is obeyed in very serious wars)—if, within these rules boxing means the real conflict between two men whose strength and endurance as well as skill are supremely tested—then Wells is, on the whole, a bad boxer.

The explanation of Wells is extremely simple: he is a scientific boxer who does not really like fighting.

When we talk of a “natural fighter” we mean a man who, however good-natured—and good nature has nothing to do with it—enjoys bashing people and is willing to run the risk of being bashed. He may be skilful too, though that is beside the point. Wells has been called a coward—which is frankly absurd. He has never provided any evidence of cowardice. He does, no doubt, “know the meaning of fear”: the bravest men always do. The “man who does not know what fear is” clearly is a very useful man indeed, but he is not so brave as the man who knows all about it, is indeed afraid, but keeps his fear in hand. In this sort of discussion too sharp a line is usually drawn between brave men and cowards: too sharp a line is usually drawn in any discussion about primitive qualities. I don’t suppose that Wells enjoys being hurt any more than I do, but his difficulty lies in the fact, that he gets no enjoyment from hurting—or, let us say rather, winning physical domination over—other people. A boxer to be a good boxer must have the instinct for bashing. This may not be a highly civilised instinct, it may (for all I know) be highly reprehensible, but it is present in successful pugilists, and they can’t get on without it.

Wells was born in 1889, and as a soldier and amateur won the Championship of all India by beating Private Clohessey in 1909. Two years later he won the English Heavy-weight Championship by knocking out Iron Hague at the National Sporting Club in six rounds. Wells was one of the names mentioned as a “White Hope” at the time when England, Australia, and America were being ransacked for a champion to beat Johnson. The match was actually arranged, but it was very wisely stopped by order of the Home Office. There was, as already said, a great deal too much “feeling” associated with the proposed contest which had nothing at all to do with the sport of boxing. It is impossible to say how any fight that never took place would have gone, and retrospective surmise is fairly unprofitable: but so far as we can judge from the two men’s respective records, there seems to be no doubt that Johnson would have won quickly and with the utmost ease.

The two most interesting encounters in Wells’s career were those with Georges Carpentier. The Frenchman’s record will be described in more detail later: it is enough to say for the present that he was the first French boxer of the highest order, the first to make us realise that boxing was not the sole prerogative of the English-speaking races.

The first encounter took place at the Ghent Exhibition, on June 1st, 1913. Wells stands 6 feet 3 inches, and his weight is generally in the neighbourhood of 13 stone. Carpentier is half an inch under six feet, and in those days was probably little more than a middle-weight, if that. On this occasion he fought, if not at home, at least near home: and there was a big crowd present of colliers from Lens, just over the border, amongst whom he had been born and bred.

Natural advantage was with the Bombardier. Three and a half inches is a great “pull” in height, and he had a corresponding superiority in reach. So it was plain to Carpentier and his advisers that he must do his utmost to get close to his man and to keep there. Wells, on the other hand, under-rated his opponent. Like most Englishmen at the time he could not understand how a Frenchman could be a real boxer. It seemed to be against the settled order of nature.

Now Wells was weak in the body, and he knew it. He could see that Carpentier was strong, and soon found him a hard hitter, and as he kept on attacking the body, the Englishman propped him off with long straight lefts. And for a time he kept at a distance, and Carpentier, misjudging the extra reach of his opponent lowered his guard. Then Wells sent in a hard blow at long range and all but beat him. A hard blow, perfectly timed, but not quite hard enough. Carpentier tumbled forward and remained down for nine seconds. But Carpentier really loves fighting for fighting’s sake, or did then. He had been all but knocked out, but he had in a superlative degree the will-to-go-on. And Wells, as had happened before, as happened afterwards too, failed to follow up his advantage with hot but reasoned haste. Having put in a good blow he was always rather prone to stand aside, so to speak, and admire its effects; thus allowing those effects to pass off. So it was now. It is true that he had decidedly the better of the second round, leading off with a splendid strong and long straight left: but he failed to bustle and worry Carpentier, and the Frenchman, as the very seconds went by, recovered. And in the third round Carpentier was himself again. Wells was utterly astonished. He had quite forgotten that the stunning force of a punch on the jaw passes very quickly: and he allowed himself to be flustered and confused, and he showed plainly that he was puzzled. He forgot to box and hit wildly and wide of his mark. And now Carpentier had got back nearly all the strength that had been beaten out of him in the first round. He sent in a vicious right to the jaw which shook Wells. When a blow on the “point” has done damage short of knocking a man down, he generally gives the fact away by an involuntary tapping of his right foot upon the floor. It is like a strong electric shock which, communicated first to the brain, runs instantly through the whole nervous system. So the spectators could see that Wells had been more than “touched.” And then the fourth round began and Wells was careless and in his turn lowered his guard: and Carpentier’s right hand whipped across over the shoulder to the English champion’s jaw, whilst an instant later his left came, bent, with his weight behind it, to the stomach. And—that was all. Wells was counted out, and, as well they might, the colliers from Lens wildly yelled their triumph.

This encounter, pricking as it did the bubble of an age-old tradition, yet had very little effect on the admirers of the Bombardier. Or rather it was, perhaps, that they refused to believe that the Champion of England (however little that title may mean) could be really beaten by any one across the Channel. They regarded the final knock-out as an accident. After all, Wells had all but won at the very outset, and for some inscrutable reason he had given the fight away, first by lack of energy and then from sheer carelessness. This would surely have taught him a lesson?

There followed after the affair at Ghent three contests in which Wells proved eminently successful. He knocked out Packey Mahoney in thirteen rounds at the National Sporting Club, after receiving early in the fight two very hard right-handers in the body which made him visibly squirm. That was one of Wells’s chief defects—he showed when he was hurt. But it was interesting to be shown that, because it was not supposed that he could stand two such blows on the body. Yet he recovered from them gradually and did not, this time, forget his boxing.

The next fight was a very unequal affair with Pat O’Keefe, Middle-weight Champion of England, and subsequently winner outright of the Lonsdale Belt. O’Keefe was a fine, fair boxer, but he was giving a couple of stone, and Wells’s head was right over him. He boxed with the utmost pluck and gave the heavy-weight a lot of trouble before finally he was quite worn out and sent down beaten in the fifteenth round.

Then Wells knocked out Gunner Moir quite easily in five rounds, thus turning the tables, for Moir had knocked out the Bombardier more by good luck than by sound judgment two years before.

And then at last on December 5th, 1913, six months after his defeat at Ghent, the return match with Carpentier was arranged and took place at the National Sporting Club.

Of course, if you regard sport only from a competitive standpoint, this affair will seem to you a sheer disaster. It was England against France, and France decisively won. It is only human nature, I suppose, which sticks the national labels so prominently on to an event of this kind, but it seems unnecessary and rather a pity. There was really no England and no France in the matter, but two boxers called respectively Carpentier and Wells, who met in a roped ring to hit each other with padded fists for the ludicrously excessive stakes of £300 a side and a purse of £3000. And now that we are more used to the idea of Frenchmen boxing than we were in those days, the international habit of thought has largely, and fortunately, dropped into the background of our minds.

It is worth mentioning that members at the National Sporting Club that night paid for their guests’ seats five, ten, and as many as fifteen guineas. One onlooker, just before the men entered the ring for the big contest of the evening, left the hall.

“I’ll be back presently,” he said to a friend, “when they’ve settled down. I don’t want to see all the preliminaries and hand-shaking.” So he left his fifteen-guinea seat and went into another part of the club. On his return he found that it was all over. Rather an expensive drink, in fact.

The contest had lasted precisely seventy-three seconds.

It was a dismal affair, and brief as the test was there was no possible doubt but that Carpentier was Wells’s master. Both the men were extremely well-trained. Wells was in excellent health and could make no excuse on that score. At the very outset the Frenchman went straight for his man and planted a good left at his body before he knew the round had begun. Then he came in close and vigorously attacked him with a succession of short half-arm blows. He danced away for a moment and was at Wells again. The Englishman was entirely flabbergasted. His presence of mind was all gone. He sank his left in a futile attempt to guard his body, but Carpentier’s right was past it in a flash, whilst his left followed instantly to Wells’s nose. Wells tucked away his stomach and took a step back. Carpentier reached the body again, nevertheless; and as they went apart for a moment it was seen that Wells was stupefied—more by the very speed of the onslaught, spectators said, than by punishment. Which is as may be. Carpentier hit to hurt, and it is exceedingly unlikely that he failed. But it was again the science of boxing which deserted Wells. He seemed to be paralysed. He did nothing: no long left came out to keep the Frenchman away. He wouldn’t be kept away. A great lot of nonsense has been talked about his actual hypnotic power or that of his ebullient manager, M. Descamps. But the reason why Carpentier won victories in those days and has won others and greater ones since, is simply that he is an extremely good boxer with any amount of fighting spirit—the love of fighting, the sheer intention to win. That form of will-power does communicate itself to an opponent in the ring and with disastrous results, if he be a man of less vitality.

Then Carpentier moved forward again and swung left followed by right hard upon Wells’s jaw. Then left and right at the body. Both blows landed on the mark—and it was all over. Wells reeled for an instant and then sank forward. At the call of Four he rolled over on to his back. He tried to draw up his knees, but he was completely knocked out, paralysed, and done. And—for those who like the national labels—the Champion of England lay beaten at the feet of the Champion of France, without having struck a single blow.