"And a BOXER that knows the true value of BLUNT..."

-Pierce Egan, Boxiana

Bill was "a boxer of note," though never became a "ranked pugilist," which would, by modern standards, indicate he was not a professional fighter. Bill was apprenticed to a Coachmaker at the age of 15 in 1772. His natural affinity with animals, which would lead him to be one of the lead handlers of show ponies and fighting dogs, first brought him into the "light" of "The Fancy."

The Fancy, which would later become "the sporting set," from which we derive our term "sport," was an informal fraternity of poor, working class and wealthy men of the old nobility, who engaged in the manly pursuits of drinking, brawling, whoring, prize-fighting, gambling, poetry and song, in a cross-class effort to resist the emasculating effects of the utilitarian, puritanism of the emerging merchant, civil-servant and banking classes who were gaining the reigns of the nation. In other words, these men were rejecting liberalism as its very seed was planted in the fertile soil of Civilization's rotten core. Just as America has biker gangs, masculinity cults, like those proposed by author Jack Donovan, and such reactionary past times as MMA, rap and horror movies, Georgian and Regency England had The Fancy, which in America became The Sporting Set, in which pastimes such as billiards, cockfighting and dogfighting were central, making an animal handler like Gibbons a key player.

Bill would go on to win a number of "mills" which were challenge fights where two men would put up their own bets. Only the top fighters fought in prize-fights where the wealthier men of The Fancy made huge bets and crowds of gamblers converged on the scene. Bill did serve as a second or bottle holder in some of these major affairs, and would go on to live more than twice as long as many of the fighters of the day.

One day, at age 17, while walking with his beloved bull dog through Wardour Street, in Soho, Gibbons and his dog came face to face with a drover and his dog. The drover's dog "started his Fancy upon BILL's dog," and the men were soon backing their animals as they tore at each other in the street.

The culture at this time was not so different from our current American ethic of videoing violence. At the time the equivalent would be for some member of The Fancy to take out his watch, time the fight, and sanctify it as "a manly set-to," by way of recording the encounter as an affair of honor.

Bill and the drover got into an argument over the match between their two dogs, stripped to the waist, and had their own fight at one end of the street as the dogs continued their fight at the other end of the street. The fight was regarded as a brutal affair that continued without any formal niceties for nearly an hour. The convention was too give a man a chance to rise and resume the fight after he had been felled. Eventually, the drover did not rise. Onlookers immediately declared Bill the victor, and, as he turned to check on his bull dog, he was thrilled to find that his little friend had also been victorious.

Such was the entry into The Fancy of Bill Gibbons, one of the facilitators of London's brutal brand of underground masculine culture for a half century to come.