Just Fight One More Round!

It happened over 120 years ago. On September 7, 1892, James J. Corbett won the first heavyweight championship prize-fight in which the contestants used boxing gloves rather than their bare fists. Corbett won the match against John L. Sullivan with a knockout in the twenty-first round. That’s right, the 21st round! (Amazingly, three years earlier Corbett had to go 27 rounds, boxing with bare knuckles, to defeat fellow Hall of Famer, Joe Choynski).

Besides Corbett’s boxing prowess, Corbett had a way with words. When asked how he’d been so successful as a boxer, he replied,

Fight one more round!

When your feet are so tired that you have to shuffle back to the center of the ring, fight one more round.

When your arms are so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round.

When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired you wish your opponent would crack you one on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round—remembering that the man who always fights ‘one more round’ is never whipped.