On 21 February 1896 the heavyweight fight between Bob Fitzsimmons and Peter Maher was held on a sandbar in the Rio Grande, at the mouth of Eagle Nest Canyon below Langtry. It had taken four years to find anywhere to hold it. Texas had made prizefighting a felony the previous October and Governor Culberson sent most of the Ranger force, some twenty six men under the adjutant general, to see that it did not happen. Mexico had banned it too, and Porfirio Diaz sent cavalry to the border with orders to arrest anyone who crossed for it. The sandbar was not a loophole. It was simply a place neither government could get an officer to in time. Dan Stuart, a Dallas promoter who had been chased out of three states and two territories with this fight, brought the party in by special train from El Paso: a hundred and eighty two paying spectators, the press, and the Rangers travelling with them. Roy Bean supplied the ground, built the ring and a footbridge over the channel, sold beer at a dollar a bottle and contrived a delay in the proceedings so he could sell more. Bat Masterson, a long way from Dodge City, kept order. The Rangers watched from the Texas bluff, where they had no authority to do anything else. Fitzsimmons knocked Maher out in ninety five seconds. It was billed as a world title fight, though the championship did not really change hands until he beat Corbett the following year.
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