First World Championship Heavyweight Prize Fight Monument

The fight on May 10, 1870 drew about a thousand people who rode out from New Orleans before dawn, in a state that had tried to ban bare-knuckle bouts. The sugar house behind the ring belonged to William Butler Kenner. Calling it the first world heavyweight championship is a claim not everyone accepts: some Irish American boxing circles, hostile to Britain, disregarded Jem Mace's title, and accounts differ on the exact purse and crowd. The monument near the levee marks only the approximate spot, so the real ring is anyone's guess.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Destrehan Plantation — 7.3 mi
  A River Road house begun in 1787 where, in January 1811, a tribunal of five slaveholders tried people who had risen on the German Coast, and where an exhibit now tells the revolt.
• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 10 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 11 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.
• Congo Square — 11 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.

More markers nearby

• Cannes Brûlées — steps away
• La Providence — 1.7 mi
• LaFreniere Plantation — 2.6 mi
• Wedell - Williams Airport Site — 4.2 mi