Leonard-Cushing Fight (1894)

Directed by

William Kennedy Dickson

Genre

documentary film, silent film, boxing film

Country

United States

Runtime

6 min

Rating

5.4 of 10 from 27 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A very old black-and-white silent film shows a staged boxing match with two men in a specially built ring at Edison's studio. Only a short fragment of the original footage exists today.

historicalfragmentedsilentrawsparseephemeralgrainytime-capsulephysical

What happens

The Leonard–Cushing Fight is an 1894 American short black-and-white silent film produced by William K.L. Dickson, starring Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing. Leonard and Cushing participated in a six-round boxing match under special conditions that allowed for it to be filmed and displayed on a Kinetoscope. The film was shot on an uncertain date between May 24 and June 14, 1894, in a specially configured ring at Edison's Black Maria film studio in West Orange, New Jersey, New Jersey. Premiering on August 4, 1894, in Manhattan, the film is considered the first sports film ever released. As of 2023, no full print of the film is known to have survived, making it partially lost. A 23-second fragment is available at the Library of Congress. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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