The Brutal Prize Fight at the Neeley Building
A crowd of 300 spectators, including many from Seattle, gathered in Auburn to watch a lopsided boxing match that ended in a bloody knockout.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
F. M. Smith, of Auburn, knocked out Bob Hodge, of Black Diamond, in five rounds at the Neeley building in Auburn last evening before a crowd of 300 persons, many of whom were from Seattle. Hodge put up a game fight, but was outclassed. Smith was the favorite from the start. In the fifth round, Smith came up confident and Hodge still plucky. Smith went at Hodge and knocked him down until the crowd called for him to show Hodge mercy. Hodge would not have it that way and cried back: 'Let him go on; what's the trouble with you?' Smith knocked him down four times and on the last he was counted out.
“Hodge would not have it that way and cried back: 'Let him go on; what's the trouble with you?'”
This accounts for a world where prize fighting was often illegal or semi-clandestine, forcing crowds to travel to nearby towns like Auburn for the spectacle. The 'Neeley building' was a site of community entertainment in 1893; today, such combat sports are highly regulated, state-sanctioned events in multi-million dollar arenas.
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