Joe Gans vs. Benny Peterson (1st meeting)
Joe Gans beat Benny Peterson by KO in round 17 of 20
- Date: 1895-05-20
- Location: Riverside Athletic Club, Brooklyn, Maryland, USA
BALTIMORE FIGHTERS WIN.
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Joseph Gans Defeats Benny Peterson--Horn and Elliott Victors.
Three fights and three Baltimore winners marked the Riverside Athletic Club's opening at Brooklyn, Anne Arondel county, across the Patapsco, last night. The club's pavilion at Acton's Park had seats provided for 1,200 persons, but several hundreds had to stand. Every set-to of the three was the equal of many fights which have attracted the lovers of sparring many miles to see.
The star bout was between Joseph Gans, colored 122-pound champion of the South, and Benny Peterson, the Philadelphia 122-pound champion. It was to have gone twenty rounds, but Gans put the Philadelphian out in the seventeenth round.
Peterson tried to rush Gans from the start. He had the strength and a shade the better of the weight and reach, but he lacked the science. Gans fought what is call in ring parlance a heady fight. In plain English, he used judgement.
He nearly closed Peterson's right eye the first round in mix. Peterson fanned the air in the first five rounds and was jabbed considerably. Three consecutive face blows made him groggy in the sixth round and in the seventh he was so badly punished that he talked to his seconds about stopping. By their persuasion he continued and got in a short left swing on Gans's jaw in the eighth.
Peterson was too weak to follow his advantage and Gans recovered from the shock and finished the round in his own favor. Benny worked in the ninth and his friends began to revive their hopes, but Gans was steadily and surely winning and early in the seventeenth round Peterson went down and out. He fought gamely, but appeared to be a quitter before his fighting ability was exhausted.
--The Sun, 1895-05-21.