Sucker Punched

Modern Age • Spring 2018 Sucker Punched Jacob Siegel The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring By Paul Beston (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) he second greatest show on earth in bell fans were left with little more than T 2017 was the carnival brawl between a hangover. That the year’s biggest fight the young Irishman Conor McGregor, a star produced no moments that resonated after in the growing sport of mixed martial arts, the lights went out evokes a central theme and the aging American middleweight box- in Paul Beston’s excellent new book, The ing champion Floyd “Money” Mayweather, Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights a convicted wife-beater, multi-hundred- Ruled the Ring. The era of boxing as the arena millionaire, and the greatest defensive fighter for national dramas and a metaphor for the in at least three generations. McGregor had American experience is over. never fought a professional boxing match Beston, managing editor at City Journal, and faced an opponent with a record of developed a youthful obsession with boxers forty-nine wins and no losses. That the fight that “must have had something to do with occurred at all was a tribute to the feckless- their solitariness.” The pull of those “demi- ness of the Las Vegas boxing commission gods,” as he calls the pugilists who ruled the and the fighters’ chance to earn half a billion sport, “must have had to do as well with the dollars in revenue from a clash between two danger they courted and the loneliness of it.” larger-than-life figures. Beston also came to experience the distinctly I’m the kind of sucker who paid to watch participatory aspects of fighting by sparring this spectacle. Under the influence of a few with his brothers in their parents’ basement. drinks and in the din of the bar crowd, I even The Boxing Kings shows off an expert knowl- bought into the conceit that it was competi- edge of the sport’s history fitting for someone tive. The truth is, Mayweather carried the who can still recall by memory boxing’s act into the later rounds to make it look like Dewey decimal number, as well as a talent for a real fight. The biggest sports event of the archival storytelling. (Full disclosure: I played year was a farce. host to a speaking event for Beston at St. Fran- The fight was a financial windfall for the cis College in Brooklyn in October 2017.) two men in the ring and the promotional The story begins in the 1880s, on the cusp machines behind them, but after the final of the American Century, with the elegantly 84 modernagejournal.com Reviews mustached John L. Sullivan. Born in Boston’s Johnson’s remarkable, defiant life has left South End to Irish immigrant parents, Sul- a complicated legacy. Beston’s treatment, in a livan was the last of the bare-knuckle champs chapter titled “Pariah,” establishes a pattern fighting under the old “London Prize Ring he repeats throughout the book. Whenever Rules,” which once governed the sport. The he runs into simplistic tropes of popular modern era of gloves and timed rounds was history, he adds nuance and ambiguity by established by the “Marquess of Queensberry introducing inconvenient facts and an opti- Rules” of 1889. By imposing standard rules mism about America’s ability to transcend and excluding tactics like eye-gouging and racism that many readers today would call hair-pulling, the Queensberry Rules helped conservative but that has much in common transform boxing into a legitimate sport. with midcentury liberalism. Britain had been the traditional home of It took years of goading the white title boxing, and Sullivan was the first American holders before Johnson got his chance to wear the heavyweight belt—as well as against the Canadian Tommy Burns. Burns enjoy a foretaste of boxing’s future. Catering finally accepted the bout, according to to the appetite for spectacle that would come Beston, because “the money had been too to define American culture, he was a thor- good for [him] to pass up.” Johnson defeated oughly modern specimen. Beston argues that Burns in 1908, the same year that Congress Sullivan was among America’s first national finally banned the mailing of postcards fea- stars: “Unlike his pugilistic predecessors,” turing photos of lynchings. Johnson’s victory he writes, “Sullivan broke through to the seemed to herald a broader change in racial swelling middle classes, many of whom had attitudes. previously opposed boxing as barbaric. He Contrary to legend, however, beating Burns was able to do this not only through his did not make Johnson the first black champ. spectacular fighting style but also through That distinction goes to the light heavy- his willingness to market the title and weight Joe Gans, who won his belt in 1902. himself and to forge on the public mind an But Johnson’s win made a far larger impact, identification of one with the other.” partly because he fought in the more popular If Sullivan’s celebrity prefigured the heavyweight division, but also because he was future, the fighter was also a product of his an irrepressible figure who flouted laws and time. Boxing, Beston shows, was one of the social prejudices, ignoring the admonitions of rituals through which Americans of old stock the black elite as he sped around in flashy cars and immigrant origin competed in defining with white women as companions. what it meant to be a man. In Sullivan’s fight- No sooner had Johnson won the title ing days, that meant being a white man. “I than “calls went up for a white fighter to will not fight a negro. I never have and never take it back.” Among those searching for a shall,” he publicly declared in 1892. Great White Hope was Jack London, who Sullivan’s racial attitudes cast a shadow implored the former champion Jim Jeffries: over his achievements. His victories, like “Jeff, it’s up to you. The White Man must be those of other white athletes of his era, were rescued.” Two years later, in what was billed in a sense rigged by denying certain men the as “The Fight of the Century,” Johnson beat chance to compete. It would be almost two Jeffries handily. In the kind of telling and decades after Sullivan retired before, in 1908, complicating detail that distinguishes The “boxing would face its ultimate existential Boxing Kings, Beston finds that while the crisis: a black heavyweight champion.” The referee did not raise Johnson’s arm, as is “existential crisis” was Jack Johnson. customary in victory, the retired champion modernagejournal.com 85 Modern Age • Spring 2018 John L. Sullivan “was among the first to pion was perceived. Two years after losing congratulate him.” to the German Max Schmeling in 1936, This moment of comity was short, how- Louis faced him again in ’38 on the eve of ever. The night of Johnson’s victory, July World War II. “When both fighters were in 4, 1910, saw race riots in dozens of cities the ring,” Beston writes, “someone yelled out across the country. Stories abound of retri- near ringside, ‘Kill that Nazi, Joe! Kill him!’ ” bution during the riots, with random blacks The rematch lasted just over two minutes attacked in the street and buildings full of before the American knocked Schmeling black residents set on fire. In all, as many as down for a third time and Schmeling’s cor- twenty-six people were killed in the violence ner threw in the towel. Years before VE Day, that followed the fight. Louis gave Americans a dramatic victory Johnson is remembered today as the vic- against Germany. tim of a racially motivated prosecution under The postwar years are often considered the Mann Act. The law, which was supposed a golden age for American boxing. This to ban “white slavery”—that is, forced pros- was partly a tribute to the brilliance of the titution—was effectively used to criminalize lower weight classes, which then included Johnson’s consensual relations with white Sugar Ray Robinson, widely held to be the women. Rather than face charges, Johnson greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time. chose exile in Europe, a course that would be But there were standouts among the heavy- followed by later black artists, from Chester weights as well. There was Rocky Marciano Himes to James Baldwin. of Brockton, Massachusetts, whose 49-0 Johnson was an individualist who rejected record Mayweather broke with his win over the idea that he should abide any limitations McGregor. There was New York’s Floyd Pat- on his freedom for the sake of his race. But terson, who conducted an improbable trilogy his libertinism and recklessness, qualities he of fights with the Swede Ingemar Johansson. shared with many fighters of all races, made But it was Cassius Clay, who took the belt Johnson a target of scorn for much of Amer- from Sonny Liston, whose career marked a ica’s black elite. “It is unfortunate that a man new episode in the metanarrative of boxing. with money should use it in a way to injure In chapters on “the Greatest,” Beston his own people,” Booker T. Washington said tracks Cassius Clay’s rise to boxing legend of the first black heavyweight champion. He and his evolution into Muhammad Ali. It added, “I wish to say emphatically that his begins with Clay winning a gold medal at actions do not meet my personal approval, the 1960 Rome Olympics and establishing and I am sure that they do not meet with the a talent for self-promotion and marketing approval of the colored race.” even greater than John L.

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