The Gordon Sisters Boxing (1901) - Short Film/Documentary

The scene is a theatre stage with a painted panorama of French garden, with a central alley between lawns, with a couple of marble steps and balcony in front, and a line of trees in the background. Two young women step in front of this scenario, one in black, and the other in white knee-length skirts and sleeveless shirts. Both are curly blondes, keeping their hair in place by means of ribbons. They have 8-ounce boxing gloves (228 grams) well tied to their wrists. They box each other in fast, intuitive action, with not much protection. Most punches end on the opponent's leather clad fists, but several reach their bare arms, and they exchange at least 20 punches to head and chest, at close quarter and with considerable power, showing that both sisters had reasonable training in boxing, and were not afraid of taking punches themselves. The girl in black seems to dominate most of the 1m30s round, though near the end the girl in white does a courageous comeback # not enough to win, if points were awarded. The fight, or the film copy from which the tape was extracted, ends suddenly, after a solid head punch by the black skirted girl # but it's not enough to down her similarly strong opponent.