“The Fisticuffs' Series” – Snippets from Boxing History
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“The Fisticuffs’ Series” – Snippets from Boxing History Early Boxing, ‘The Colour Line’ & When Black Lives Didn’t Matter When the ‘Boston Strong Boy’, John L. Sullivan (1858 - 1918), fought Patrick ‘Paddy’ Ryan (1851 - 1900), in Mississippi City in 1882, under the London Prize Ring Rules of 1-minute rounds with a 50-second break, the attraction was such that not only did the famous New York Minister, Henry Ward Beecher publicly attend, but also Oscar Wilde made a detour. Even the outlaw, Jesse James, who was ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ in seven states with a $10,000 bounty on his head, came out of hiding to ride over four hundred miles from Missouri, passing Arkansas and down through Mississippi in order to witness the momentous occasion of the legendary John L. Sullivan claiming the World Heavyweight Championship in Round 9. As huge as the interest was for that fight, however, John L. Sullivan had long- since declared that he would draw the ‘colour line’, thereby excluding any African-American boxers he’d ‘allegedly’ fought coming up through the ranks from challenging him for the World Heavyweight Championship. Sullivan’s successors, James J. Corbett (1866 - 1933), aka ‘Gentleman Jim’ and James J. Jeffries (1875 - 1953), aka ‘The Boilermaker’, later emulated Sullivan, closed ranks and steadfastly refused to fight any holder of the Coloured Heavyweight World Title. Until, that is, a diminutive Canadian fighter, Tommy Burns (1881 - 1955), proved, once again, that every man does have his price when he eventually agreed to take up Australian, Hugh ‘Huge Deal’ McIntosh’s offer of a $30,000 purse to defend his World Heavyweight Championship against the ‘Galveston Giant’, Jack Johnson (1878 - 1946), at Rushcutter’s Bay, near Sydney, on Boxing Day, 1908. Despite Burns’ braggadocio predictions about beating Johnson easily, he was, in fact, humiliated by the ever-smiling, golden-toothed, frequently mocking challenger, with the local constabulary stepping into the ring during the fourteenth round to save Burns from any further humiliation and punishment. ‘The Ethiopian’, as Jack London referred to Texas-born Jack Johnson, became the first, legitimate, Black World Heavyweight Champion - despite being racially abused by Burns and his cornermen throughout the bout. 1 An avid reader, endlessly curious and a scholar of history who admired Napoleon, Johnson was sartorial, suave and sophisticated – a true renaissance man who chose to live his life as he wanted in an age when America was shaped by Jim Crow laws, the Mason-Dixon line, racially -driven street beatings for minor misdemeanours and lynch mobs. And yet, ironically, during his own controversial seven-year reign as World Heavyweight Champion, Jack Johnson himself drew the colour line, not against any ‘Great White Hope’, whom he would fight regularly for huge purses, but against top class, African-American contenders, such as Sam McVey (1884 - 1921), Joe Jeanette (1879 – 1958), Sam Langford (1886 - 1956) and Harry Wills (1889 - 1958). Johnson’s reasoning for not allowing them to fight for his World Heavyweight Championship was that he felt nobody would pay to watch two Black fighters battle it out, and, therefore, put simply, there was ‘no money in it’. Boxing aficionados know, however, that the four exiled and excluded ‘kings’ were all more than capable of holding their own in a boxing ring, much better than any White Hope that Johnson decided to fight for the ‘big bucks’. Johnson defended his title against the long-since retired Jim Jeffries, who left his alfalfa ranch in Burbank, California, returned to training and lost over 100 pounds in preparing for one of the most anticipated fights in Boxing history. The purse was worth an incredible $100,000 and the bout was dubbed the ‘Battle of the Century’. The two combatants came together in Reno, Nevada on July 4, 1910 so that White America’s invincible hero would once again rightfully reinstate pugilistic supremacy on behalf of his own race on Independence Day. The fight took place in front of a packed, partisan crowd, where newspaper reporters wrote that the only people present ‘rooting for’ Jack Johnson were his cornermen and his white wife. The national excitement was such that its promoter, Tex Rickard (1870 - 1929) , offered the role of referee to both the President of the United States, William Howard Taft, and Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, before receiving polite refusals and deciding to perform the role himself. 2 Johnson emerged victorious in the 15th Round, knocking down the greatest of all ‘Great White Hopes’ three times before ‘Gentleman’ Jim Corbett, Jeffries’ trainer, stepped into the ring to stop proceedings. Jack Johnson had won and yet, in doing so, had also sealed his own fate as race riots ensued in every city across America, the scale of which hadn’t been seen since the American Civil War (1861 – 1865). Johnson was later found guilty by an all-white jury of being in defiance of The Mann Act (aka The White-Slave Traffic Act, 1910), and was charged with taking white women across state lines for immoral purposes. He went into exile as a fugitive, spent seven years on the run in-and-around Europe and elsewhere, lost his title in a ‘possibly’ thrown fight against Jess Willard (1887 – 1968), in Havana in 1915, and eventually gave himself up to the FBI and served out ten months of his one-year gaol sentence at Fort Leavenworth. Sadly for Johnson, even after release, he was denied a legitimate shot at his old world title status, this time by Willard’s slayer, the ferocious ‘Manassa Mauler’, Jack Dempsey (1895 - 1983), who, like his white predecessors, drew the colour line and openly refused to fight any African-American challenger. In fact, it wasn’t until 1937, twenty-two years after Jack Johnson had last held the title, that the placid and perfect public performing, Joe Louis (1914 - 1981), took the World Heavyweight Championship from James J. Braddock (1905 - 1974), America’s very own ‘Cinderella Man’. In effect, Louis was to chalk, as Johnson was to cheese. In this modern age, I cannot recall there being any obvious instances of the colour line being drawn in Boxing, although Muhammad Ali’s supporters might claim that his five-year jail sentence and lifetime ban (later revoked) would never have been so harsh had he been a ‘white’ fighter and not a Black Muslim. That aside, there have been very few flashpoints, but one I can recall took place at Wembley Arena, London, September 27, 1980, when the reigning WBC/WBA Middleweight Champion, Alan Minter (1951 - 2020) fuelled his title defence against Marvelous Marvin Hagler by declaring that he was not going to lose to a Black fighter. Hagler’s subsequent three round demolition of Minter prompted the worst alcohol-fuelled, mini-riot witnessed at a 3 British Boxing event, as beer cans were hurled and heavy glasses launched into the ring, with Hagler being smothered by his cornermen for his own protection and then swiftly smuggled away like a fugitive surrounded by his terrified entourage and the venue’s somewhat bewildered British Bobbies. A pre-fight brawl between Mark Kaylor and Errol Christie (1963 - 2017), prior to their British Middleweight title eliminator at Wembley Arena on September 27, 1985, acted as a precursor to their fistic ‘dust up’ in the ring. Kaylor won that scintillating fight inside the squared circle by KO in Round 8. Both had dropped the other early on. Although it was a genuine needle match between two outstanding, emerging boxers who, at that time in their lives, appeared to hate each other, the event itself was viewed by the British Establishment as being potentially volatile. It emerged that Christie had received death threats from Kaylor’s followers – many of whom were, like Kaylor himself, life-long supporters of West Ham United but, unlike Kaylor, some were supposedly linked to a nationalist party and were advocates of extreme, right-wing political views. The backdrop of the fight had also been tarnished by a number of inner-city riots in London, Birmingham and Liverpool the previous summer, resulting in the brutal murder of a policeman and some members of an ethnic minority, albeit in different cities. In addition, Christie was the ‘outsider’ in London. Born in Coventry and featuring regularly on ITV’s Fight Night in the Midlands, Christie had been honed, trained and prepared for professional combat in the legendary Kronk Gym, Detroit. Kaylor, on the other hand, was an ex-Olympian (Moscow 1980), London-based, and had appeared regularly on BBC’s mid- week Sportsnight programme. Kaylor had a huge following in the London area, and was also the darling of his local football-following fraternity being, as he was to them, a ‘West Ham lad made good’. I have to say, though, that the contest struck me then, as it still strikes me now, as being little more than a ‘grudge fight’ between two serious middleweight contenders, rather than having any underlying racial motivations. In fact, the alcohol ban at the arena that night, added to a greater police presence and some extra security measures – including the fight’s promoter ‘allegedly’ hiring ‘hooligans’ from West Ham ‘Inter City 4 Firm’ (ICF) in order to ‘keep an eye on things from the inside’ - was enough to quell the crowd’s enthusiasm for any major outbreaks of rowdy behaviour. In fact, the vast majority of enthusiastic spectators appeared to be totally engrossed in what quickly became a very even, hard fought, exciting fight which ended abruptly with Kaylor’s KO sealing victory against the gallant Christie in Round 8. Both shook hands afterwards with all animosities and differences quickly forgotten.