The Great White Hopes (12 page)

At first Rickard planned to stage the championship in San Francisco, the leading fight town on the West Coast. However, he had reckoned without the spite of Sunny Jim Coffroth, who was far from cordial as a result of losing in the bidding to stage the bout. Coffroth used all his local influence to get the bout cancelled. In this he was aided, sometimes but not always unwittingly, by a parcel of inept and often corrupt local politicians.

Even the hard-boiled Rickard was amazed by the degree of public larceny on display in California. Consignments of wood intended for the construction of a new stadium were stolen in broad daylight while bribed policemen looked the other way. City councillors demanded handouts or wads of free tickets. Delegations from women’s organisations crowded into the Governor’s office, pleading that the forthcoming fight be cancelled on the grounds of its potential brutality.

The most damaging canard, however, and one that Rickard suspected owed its origins to Coffroth, was that the fight would not be worth seeing, as its result had been determined in advance. Johnson, it was rumoured, had agreed for a consideration to lie down to Jeffries, knowing that if he won the white boxer would then retire again, leaving Johnson free to mop up the remaining white contenders and regain his title with ease.

Before long, the Governor of California, James N. Gillett, was as fed up with the disputes surrounding the bout as Rickard was. There was an ever-increasing antipathy to the thought of a black versus white contest and all the trouble that it might cause. In the end Gillett vetoed the bout, saying in exasperation, ‘We’ve had enough of prize fights and prize fight promoters. They’ve been breaking the law long enough and we’ll have no more of it!’ Rickard was almost as relieved, although he declared having already spent a quarter of a million dollars in trying to bring the championship to California.

Several cities offered to take the place of San Francisco, and Rickard settled on Reno in Nevada, mainly because of its good railway connections. He set up his headquarters in a substantial house in the city, from which tickets were sold and information about the fight was issued. Tom Corbett, brother of the former heavyweight champion James J. Corbett, established his betting parlour in the same building. It was to be almost the last throw of gambling in the city. Up until 1910 it had been legal in the area, but by the end of the year a citizens’ group known as the Progressives managed to get it banned.

The fight seemed to be off when James J. Jeffries suddenly refused to box in Nevada. Patiently Rickard investigated the situation and discovered that the former champion had reneged on a $25,000 gambling debt he had incurred while playing the tables at Reno five years earlier, thinking that he would never have to return to the city.

Rickard took the setback in his stride. He approached the casino involved and negotiated a repayment of fifty cents in the dollar on the debt, to be taken from Jeffries’s earnings from the fight. As the former champion eventually emerged with the sum of $192,000 as his share of the takings, he cannot be said to have done too badly from the deal. Nevertheless, when the startled Jeffries was greeted upon his arrival by a huge crowd at the railway station in Reno, he fled. Later he justified his action by claiming that he was scared of crowds, but it is more likely that he feared one or two armed and disgruntled creditors might be lurking among the mob.

Almost at once, Rickard started fanning the flames of publicity, an area in which he excelled. From the start he had decided to emulate promoter Hugh D. McIntosh at Rushcutters Bay and referee the championship contest himself. However, he told reporters that he had drawn up a shortlist for the post, which included the President of the United States, former champion John L. Sullivan, and the creator of Sherlock Holmes, British author Arthur Conan Doyle. The conservative and low-key President Taft refused to be drawn into the matter, but Sullivan and Doyle, both more gullible, were immensely flattered.

Behind the scenes Rickard managed to dissuade the disappointed ex-champion, but the author seriously considered the matter, especially after he had received a letter from the editor of the
New York Morning Telegraph,
which said, ‘It would indeed rejoice the hearts of men in this country if you were at the ringside when the great Negro fighter meets the white man Jeffries for the world’s championship . . .’ After much thought, the 50-year-old Doyle, the author of several classics of the prize ring, including
Rodney Stone,
declined to be considered, saying, ‘My friends pictured me as winding up a revolver at one ear and a razor at the other.’

By this time, both contestants had started serious training. Jeffries’s camp was sited at Moana Springs, two miles south of Reno, selected because it had the latest in electric wiring, while Johnson trained at Rick’s Resort. Jeffries arrived from California on 23 June in a specially chartered Pullman car. He was being assisted by a gallery of former stars of the ring who were anxious to see the black fighter beaten.

His chief trainer was the tetchy former heavyweight champion James J. Corbett, who had twice lost to Jeffries. Long before that, when he was just starting out, Jeffries had served as Corbett’s sparring partner, but had proved so clumsy that he had been relegated to the task of helping rub Corbett down after his sparring sessions. Proudly, the new senior trainer told reporters that the past was of no account. ‘I volunteered my services to Jeff to help him in his heroic one-man crusade.’

Also in the entourage was Joe Choynski, the greatest heavyweight of his era never to win the title, a victor over Johnson when the black fighter was just starting out. He had also fought a draw with Jeffries; so he could be forgiven for feeling a little resentful at being little more than a glorified sparring partner when the two principals in the fight were sharing more than $200,000, and this attitude carried over into his work about the camp.

Choynski had always had a shrewd eye for a dollar. The dropout son of a Yale-educated newspaper editor, he had been the first fighter to refuse to fight for the customary 80–20 per cent split for winner and loser. To be on the safe side, he always asked for a 50–50 division. He was a fine fighter; Jeffries and Johnson both conceded that he was the hardest hitter they had encountered. Corbett had beaten Choynski but also had a healthy respect for him, even if he did refer to him now and again as ‘a little runt’.

Making up the rest of Jeffries’s training team were the pompous William Muldoon, Civil War veteran and former heavyweight wrestling champion of the world; a notable black fighter called Bob Armstrong; and another one-time wrestling champion, Martin ‘Farmer’ Burns.

With Jeffries in a highly nervous state and surrounded by such a collection of luminaries, it was only to be expected that there would be disputes. Jeffries was always sullen before a fight and his enormous weight-reduction programme had shredded his nerves.

The first conflict occurred when Jeffries would not obey Corbett’s order to rise at five o’clock in the morning to start his road work. The fighter had refused, snarling, ‘Don’t tell me what to do; I’ve got to do the fighting.’ And as time passed, Jeffries was pushed almost to breaking point by William Muldoon’s constant reminders – ‘Remember, Jim, you must win for the white race.’ To make matters worse, in a public sparring session with the 42-year-old Choynski, Jeffries could hardly land a punch on his elusive opponent. The
Baltimore Express
said, ‘the aged Choyniski [sic], lean and fit and hard as nails, appeared in white tights as the first victim. Choyniski has been working long enough to show some real speed and wind and he went after the big bear with a succession of left hooks and chops at the head . . .’

After this opening debacle Jeffries had to be talked out of abandoning the whole project. Corbett persuaded him to stay by promising that the former champion would not be asked to do so much sparring. This attracted the opprobrium of many of the former fighters visiting the camp. Indeed, the straight-talking Stanley Ketchel was banned from the site for commenting loudly on Jeffries’s lack of serious ring work.

The middleweight was not the only one to be denied access to the training camp. Even the great John L. Sullivan was turned away by his former conqueror, Corbett, who had taken exception to a remark in Sullivan’s ghosted column in the
New York Times
in which he referred to his belief that Jeffries could only win if the fix was in. Corbett and Sullivan had a heated argument at the door of the cottage Jeffries occupied on the site, before the older man turned and stalked off in a huff. Tex Rickard and Muldoon had to work quickly to effect a reconciliation between the two old champions the next day. Even so, the
San Francisco Chronicle
got wind of the situation and celebrated it with a banner headline: ‘Corbett in Hot Words, Bars Sullivan from Jeffries’ Camp’. Corbett, disgusted by all the controversy and by Jeffries’s stubborn refusal to spar more, told a friend dismally, ‘He’s worrying. This isn’t the Jeff I used to know.’

All sorts of people were turning up at the camp flourishing press credentials and representing themselves as fight experts. The novelist Jack London, back on a temporary winning streak after the publication of his celebrated boxing short story
A Piece of Steak
in the
Saturday Evening Post,
arrived fresh from being mostly on the losing side in a couple of saloon brawls in Reno. He had been doing Rickard’s job for him by vigorously beating the drum in the
New York Herald
for the ‘Fight of the Century’, declaiming, ‘And so I say again to all you men who love the game, have the price and are within striking distance, come. It is the fight of fights, the crowning fight of the whole ring, and perhaps the last great fight that will ever be held.’

Ignoring Johnson’s roster of victories over white opponents, many refused to believe that the black fighter was capable of defeating such a paragon as Jeffries. In the
Chicago Tribune,
Alfred Henry Lewis was curtly and cruelly dismissive of the whole race: ‘As essentially African, Johnson feels no deeper than the moment, sees no farther than his nose, and is incapable of anticipation. That same cheerful indifference to coming events has marked others of his race even while they were standing in the very shadow of the gallows.’

At the training camp, missing all the obvious signs, London reported that Jeffries was ‘kittenish and frisky in a huge way, full of “joshes” and bubbling with grim laughter’. Best-selling novelist Rex Beach, basking in the success of his Alaskan gold-rush novel
The Spoilers
, was at hand to make the confusing statement, anatomically speaking, that he considered Jeffries unbeatable because his rib cage was so pronounced that no fighter could penetrate it to strike at the white fighter’s vital organs.

However, Jeffries’s entourage were soon quarrelling fiercely and openly among themselves and with anyone who dared to criticise their training methods. When former middleweight champion Billy Papke foolishly told Farmer Burns that Jeffries was not looking good, the dispute developed into an open slanging match. Papke did not back off, although it might have been better for the middleweight if he had. Instead he took a couple of swings at the 47-year-old Burns. The old grappler smashed the other man to the ground in a wrestling hold and made him concede defeat in front of more than 400 spectators at the training session.

Next a dispute flared up between the old opponents James J. Corbett and Joe Choynski. Whether they were in disagreement as to the training regime being imposed by Corbett or whether they were just reliving their old scraps is not clear, but the increasingly sullen and reclusive Jeffries had to be called from the shelter of his cottage to make the adversaries simmer down and shake hands. A press photograph of the event was published, with the inscription, ‘Jeffries the Peacemaker’.

In a forlorn attempt to lighten the situation two entertainers were recruited in the shapes of minstrel Eddie Leonard and comedian Walter Kelly. The two rather bewildered men settled in the camp, but there was no discernible improvement in the overall morale.

The patient Rickard was having a few problems with Johnson as well. The champion, who had arrived on 26 June, had taken to driving at high speeds outside his training camp in his yellow roadster. When cautioned by the police for dangerous driving, he had proved obstreperous. The promoter was called in to persuade Johnson to lock his car away until after the fight. Then the champion sacked manager George Little after losing a poker hand to him, claiming, probably with justification, that he had been cheated. Eventually, Little was grudgingly restored to the fold, only to fall out with the champion once more when Etta Duryea told Johnson that the manager had made advances towards her and had even presented her with a diamond ring. This time the manager and fighter parted permanently, and Sig Hart took on the mantle of sole handler, although everyone knew that Johnson was very much his own man and always had been.

When Hugh D. McIntosh arrived at Rick’s Resort, he thought that the champion looked oddly lethargic in his preparations against his main sparring partner, former challenger Al Kaufmann. The tall white fighter had fought only two unconvincing no-decision bouts with Philadelphia Jack O’Brien since losing to Johnson in San Francisco the year before, and was glad of the work, even if Johnson did patronise him mercilessly.

When the Australian voiced his fears, Johnson confided in him that he was only taking things easy in order to lengthen the betting odds against him. He advised his Australian promoter to back him with as much as he could afford. Reassured, McIntosh backed the champion for almost $20,000 at odds of ten to seven against.

Up until the last moment the vast majority of the white public could not envisage defeat. Among many similar forecasts, one contemporary magazine,
Current Literature,
departed from its customary review of books to mention the forthcoming fight and to express the view that Jeffries was bound to win as the brain of a white man was far superior to that of a black. The
Omaha Daily News
was one of hundreds of publications to concur, stressing the importance of the bout and predicting that Jeffries would defeat Johnson ‘. . . and restore to the Caucasians the crown of elemental greatness as measured by strength of brow, power of heart and lung, and withal, that cunning of keenness that denotes mental as well as physical superiority’.