Things start off in slow motion as the men walk out to their appointed starting place. What did they use for mouth guards back then? Because both of them are wearing them. Anyway, the shouting of the crowd sounds very distant and hollow. Then the Swede gives the command to start the fight and everything starts moving in normal time. Cullen punches Elam three times in quick succession. The last one sends him staggering back into the crowd. Men shove him back into the ring where Cullen proceeds to beat the snot out of him for a while. Elam falls to his knees and holds up a hand. Dix orders them back to their corners. Cullen takes a big swig of delicious, rejuvenating booze.

While the fighters take their brief timeout, Doc and his telegraph operator are burning the midnight oil in the train car. "The bank is denying your request for a credit extension," the operator says. Doc slams down some papers, paces a bit and calms himself down. He dictates a reply, basically threatening to ruin the bank by getting all his investors to pull their money out of it. "Samson brought the temple down his head; I will happily do the same."

The fight is back on in the saloon. Elam is taking more punches than he's giving. As far as TV fights go, it's a pretty realistic one, without the gravity-defying leaps and hits that land with the sound of cracking wood instead of the duller slap of flesh against flesh. Cullen throws a punch that lands Elam on his knees. "Knock his nappy nigger ass off!" shouts a man who might be white under his crust of filth and long, matted hair. Others should for Elam to go back to Africa. "Get up," Cullen tells him. "You gonna start fighting or what?" Elam's tattooed lady friend paces outside the brothel, peering across the road toward the saloon without daring to venture any closer. Elam and Cullen grapple and fall to the floor. Mickey pulls Cullen back to his corner and Psalms takes Elam back to his. "You seeing what I'm seeing?" Cullen asks Mickey. "He ain't fighting." Cullen's face is still as pretty as it ever was. Meanwhile, Elam is bloodied, puffy and bruised to hell. Psalms takes his face in one hand and looks him hard in the eyes. He wonders if Elam has a problem with hitting white men. "Look here, son. That man who sired you, he wasn't your father. That white man who raped your mother, that same man beat you all your life, with his foot on your neck." Psalms reminds him he's free now. He makes him look across the way over at Cullen. "That's him, sitting on his soft white ass. I want you to go over there, and I want you to kill him." All fired up now, Elam doesn't wait to be called back into the ring. He walks over and clocks Cullen a good one. Cullen spits up blood. Elam grabs him by the back of the neck and pummels him till he's not so pretty anymore. Some of the freedmen spectators look more worried than happy about this turn of events. Dix tries to pull the fighters apart , but Elam shoves him to the floor and keeps on fighting. He gets several more punches in before they finally go to their separate corners.