- The fight is held at a rugby field, with white spectators seated on benches and Africans standing underneath the bleachers, peeking through the legs of the seated white people. This book is stuffed with inequality.
- The referee, a dwarf, calls the giant Jackhammer Smit and tiny Hoppie into the ring.
- Peekay goes to sit with the only woman at the fight, a gigantic woman named Big Hettie, who is having a good old time trash-talking and draining a bottle of brandy. Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.
- The fight begins, and Hoppie is obviously the better boxer, but he's no match for Jackhammer's strength. He works on punching Jackhammer's left eye, hoping to swell it shut before starting on the right one, so that he'll have a blind opponent.
- Jackhammer knocks out Hoppie with an uppercut, but since he won't go back to the neutral corner the referee can't start the count. By the time he does so, Hoppie has come to and answers with another uppercut to Jackhammer's eye.
- The boxers are getting tired, and in the eleventh round Smit cheats and head butts Hoppie, which is totally illegal.
- The ref gives the fight to Hoppie on the foul, but he refuses to win on a technicality and decides to keep fighting.
- Hoppie sends Jackhammer to the mat in the twelfth round, but it's just as the bell is ringing so he has time to recover.
- Jackhammer is pretty much blinded by his swollen eyes by the fourteenth round, but he gets Hoppie into a clinch and, when the ref separates them, gets in a sucker punch that knocks Hoppie to the floor. He gets up onto one knee, and Jackhammer thinks he's got him. He comes toward Hoppie, who surprises him with an uppercut all the way from the floor, knocking out the giant.
- Big Hettie is totally wasted by this point, and starts speaking English instead of Afrikaans, because her Irish father told her that it's the best language for a drinking man. She cuts in line to collect her winnings from Gert, and Peekay wins ten shillings off of his bet. Woo-hoo!
- Hoppie tells Peekay to always fight first with his head, then with his heart, and Peekay is thrilled to learn that small can beat big if he has a plan.
- Peekay is exhausted and falls asleep amid the celebration.