The spectators were not allowed to smoke, because it could ruin the filming.
The man sitting ringside looking straight into the camera with a rather shy smile on his face and wearing a derby hat is famed western lawman and gunfighter William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson.
In 1899 Biograph set up a huge battery of hot lights on Coney Island to record the Jeffries-Sharkey fight. The film would be the first to use electricity instead of sunlight. While the Biograph camera was grinding away in the front row, the Vitagraph camera was grinding away 20 rows back. When the Biograph boys discovered the Vitagraph camera, they sent a crew of Pinkerton detectives to seize the machine and film. The fight fans surrounding the Vitagraph camera, unaware of the causes of the attack, manfully protected their neighbor, producing more action outside the ring than in it. Eventually Vitagraph's Albert E. Smith recorded the whole fight, smuggled the film out of the arena, and developed it that night in the Vitagraph lab. The next morning Smith discovered that the pirated film had itself been pirated out of the lab by some late-night delegates from the Edison company. Although Biograph went to the trouble and expense of lighting the fight, Vitagraph and Edison (both eventually released prints of it) were the only ones to make any money on it.
The Jeffries-Sharkey title fight took place on November 3, 1899, and is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxing contests in history.
According to the Sharkey biography, 'I Fought Them All', Biograph suspended 200 arc lights from the ceiling at Coney Island in order to film the fight, and the temperature in the ring reached 100 degrees.
Both men had oxygen tanks in their corners but, according to Sharkey, both men refused to take it.
The fight has passed into boxing legend.