The Great White Hopes (29 page)

After Colin Bell, with the political situation changing in Europe, fewer expatriate White Hopes landed on the shores of the USA. Trench warfare in France was killing tens of thousands of soldiers. In 1915 the Allies abandoned Gallipoli to the Turks, leaving Australia with a permanent distrust of Britain and a growing sense of disillusionment about the future of the Empire. In the same year, Ernest Shackleton’s attempt to cross the Antarctic literally lost most of its momentum when his vessel the
Endurance
became trapped in pack ice. It drifted slowly with the ice and then, in November, disintegrated, spewing twenty-eight men over its sides. In the field of science the first direct transatlantic radio-telephone call was transmitted from Canada to France.

And the White Hopes plodded on. A big Irishman, Jim Coffey, the Roscommon Giant, made an impression for a time, but he had already emigrated to New York before he turned professional. He worked for a time as a motorman, driving a trolley car for eighteen dollars a week, but was then lured from his trade as a garage mechanic by the shrewd manager Billy Gibson, and rattled off a series of knockout victories, including one over Gunboat Smith, until two defeats at the hands of Frank Moran destroyed the Irishman’s hopes of a tilt at Jack Johnson’s title.

Coffey’s first encounter with Moran was almost cancelled. The American was still smarting from his unpaid Paris encounter with Jack Johnson, when the purse had been impounded by the courts. For some reason, minutes before the scheduled start of his bout with Coffey, Moran still had not received his payment. Obdurately, the former seaman sat it out until the promoter hastily assembled the cash in notes from the box-office takings. Boxing legend has it that Moran then had the money stuffed into a bucket and carried to the ringside, where he could keep an eye on it while an obliging friend sat on the bucket until he had concluded his demolition job on the Irishman.

However, Coffey by now was getting $6,000 a bout. This news reached the ears of one of his brothers, a Dublin policeman, who promptly announced his intention of joining his brother as a pugilist in the USA. ‘I could always lick that kid,’ he told the
Beloit Daily News
of 3 June 1915. ‘If he can get six thousand iron men for licking some sucker over there, it’s up to me to go over and get some of that coin.’

Shortly after his announcement, the
Lusitania
was sunk just south of Queenstown in Ireland with great loss of life by the German submarine
U-20.
The action precipitated the entry of the USA into the war but disconcerted Coffey’s brother. Abruptly the policeman changed his mind about travelling. ‘I’ll tackle no submarine,’ he told the same newspaper with a shudder. ‘Jim can clean up all he likes undisturbed by me!’

In the USA Jim Coffey’s training sessions attracted some attention in the newspapers. Before a number of his contests the 6ft-3in Irishman would repair to the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Seminary, near Ossining in New York State, and get into shape by joining in the daily tasks of the priests, rising before dawn for a day spent ploughing the fields.

For all his size and strength, Coffey, like most of his peers among the White Hopes, was reluctant to tangle with the diminutive but waspish managers and promoters who inhabited the New York fight scene. On one occasion Coffey and fellow Hope Jess Willard tried to gatecrash one of feisty Jimmy Johnston’s promotions. They wanted to see the latest heavyweight prospect, Al Reich, the Adonis, in action against Gunboat Smith. Coffey and Willard, with a combined weight of nearly 30 stone, tried to force their way through the turnstiles without paying. However, when the courageous gatekeeper told the two boxers that former bantamweight Johnston was on his way down to deal with them, Coffey and Willard paid for their seats as meekly as lambs.

When Coffey was knocked out by Jack Dillon, a fighter 3½ stone lighter than the Irishman and known as ‘Jack the Giant Killer’, he began to be written off as a White Hope. The
Washington Post
of 18 February 1916 declared judiciously of the Irishman, ‘He’s weak below the waist. That’s his trouble. His legs are bad. His legs go first and he can’t stand up to fight.’

In 1917, in the throes of an unsuccessful comeback, Coffey found himself also in contention with the law. On 11 October, he appeared in a New York courtroom to defend a $50,000 breach-of-promise lawsuit brought against him by Miss Mamie Hughes, who claimed that she had consented to continue her relations with the boxer only on the understanding that he would marry her.

Probably with some relief, in 1918 Coffey broke off from his fighting career and Miss Hughes by enlisting in the US Navy. Upon his return from the service he had only a couple more fights before retiring from the ring.

By 1913, about the only major manager who had not found his own personal White Hope was that man of a few thousand words, Dumb Dan Morgan, commonly acknowledged to be the most garrulous of all the managers of his time. Morgan was doing fine with the lighter weights, but he felt it as a slight that, unlike Johnston, Gibson and all his colleagues and rivals, he did not have the boasting rights to a simpleton giant.

Eventually one came along. One morning as Morgan was sitting with his feet on the table perusing a sports sheet and pencilling in his bets for that afternoon, a fighter whose given name was Barney Lebrowitz turned up begging for an audience. For six or seven years Lebrowitz had been boxing out of Philadelphia under the ring name of Barney Williams without attracting much public interest. He was a dogged and skilful, if totally unspectacular, boxer who had been making very little money and hoped to do better on the East Coast.

Morgan could see at once that his caller was more of a light heavyweight than a behemoth, but at least Lebrowitz was bigger than some of the flyweights the manager had been handling lately.

Shrewdly Morgan asked his visitor to describe his boxing style. He hoped that Lebrowitz was going to tell him that he was a banger with a jaw of granite. Instead the truthful fighter confessed that his usual style was to circle his opponent cautiously and then shuffle forward to tie him up in frequent clinches.

It was not the answer Morgan had been hoping for, but at least Lebrowitz’s honesty gave rise to the hope that he was also naive and would not be too insistent in any future dealings on receiving a detailed breakdown of any fight purses Morgan might secure for him. In order to test his potential White Hope’s ability and lack of common sense, Morgan agreed to take on the fighter on a trial basis.

First there had to be changes. The
nom de ring
‘Barney Williams’ had to go in case it reminded people that under this name, in 1912, the fighter had taken part in twenty contests without winning one inside the distance. Morgan informed his man that from then on he would be known as Battling Levinsky. The first name would give the crowds the impression that he was a slugging attacker, instead of a soft-punching, back-pedalling cutie. Levinsky was selected to appeal to the ethnic sensibilities of ticket buyers, as at that time only Irish and Jewish fighters were drawing really good metropolitan crowds.

Morgan threw Battling Levinsky in at the deep end. Callously he accepted a last-minute substitute fight for his heavyweight against Porky Flynn, on 30 July 1913. Flynn had been in with almost everyone and acquitted himself well against the best. His nickname came not from any excess of weight but because he was inordinately fond of pork scratchings. Surprisingly, Levinsky had not heard of him and accepted Morgan’s duplicitous assurance that he would be going in with a no-hoper.

The manager did, however, provide his new heavyweight with a fight plan. Morgan informed Levinsky that when the bell rang to start the first round, Flynn usually remained facing his own corner post, rippling his back muscles in order to intimidate his opponent, before turning to start fighting. Morgan instructed Levinsky at the bell to cross the ring swiftly but stealthily and to be standing within punching range of his opponent as the heavyweight turned.

Levinsky obeyed orders to the last detail. When Flynn had completed his muscle-flexing act and whirled round to race to the centre of the ring and open fire, Levinsky was already standing facing him. The Philadelphia man promptly let fly with his best shot. If the Battler had been a puncher, the whistling left hook that he sent over might have disposed of the rugged Flynn in record time. As it was, the punch staggered the big man and closed one of his eyes.

At ringside, Dumb Dan sighed contentedly. ‘Run!’ he shouted to his new charge. Levinsky needed no such encouragement. He went on the retreat and boxed the stunned Flynn silly for the rest of the night. At the end of the ten-round, no-decision bout, Levinsky was given the unanimous decisions of the sports writers and Morgan had himself a White Hope.

In Levinsky the manager discovered that he had a workaholic, prepared to fight as often as Morgan could book him into a stadium. In 1914, the Battler had thirty-five contests, while in the following year he entered the ring on twenty-eight occasions. These were just Levinsky’s recorded bouts. With substitute appearances and the odd moonlighting fight the total could well have been much higher.

The Battler barred no one. He survived no-decision contests with such White Hopes as Fireman Jim Flynn, Jim Coffey, Tony Ross, Gunboat Smith, Tom Cowler, and many others. Morgan capitalised on the boxer’s known willingness to fight by issuing all sorts of completely untrue press releases about Levinsky’s crowded schedule. One flyer, for example, claimed that the heavyweight had engaged in three fights on one day on 1 January 1915, in Brooklyn in the morning, Manhattan in the afternoon and Connecticut in the evening. Equally lacking in foundation was the story featured in many newspapers that Levinsky had been whisked out in the first act of a show he had been attending with his wife to box as a substitute a few blocks away, had lasted the distance and had rejoined Mrs Levinsky before the final curtain.

Nevertheless, the Battler’s genuine schedule was impressive enough. For most of his career no one could put Levinsky away, but unfortunately his boxing style was so negative that he never got a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship.

Even here Dumb Dan Morgan was able to swing matters his fighter’s way. The World Light Heavyweight Championship had rather fallen into abeyance with the retirement of Philadelphia Jack O’Brien. One day the manager of a fighter called Jack Dillon, who had knocked the gigantic Jim Coffey out of contention as a White Hope, was bemoaning the fact that his fighter was too light to secure lucrative bouts in the heavyweight class and that he needed a gimmick to attract promoters. Naturally, Dumb Dan took this as a professional challenge. He hired a couple of typists for a day and got them to write to every major sports writer in the country, announcing that Jack Dillon was now the light-heavyweight champion of the world. ‘You just announced it,’ he said matter-offactly afterwards. ‘That was all there was to it.’

The ploy worked. Dillon became universally recognised as the new light-heavyweight champion. This boosted his standing and as a result he was able to secure lucrative bouts with Gunboat Smith and Fireman Jim Flynn, among others. This sudden success for Dillon and his manager began to rankle with Dumb Dan. After all, it had been his idea to claim the light-heavyweight championship for Dillon. It was time that Levinsky, his own fighter, got onto the gravy train.

Some years later, in 1916, Dumb Dan challenged Dillon to defend his title against Battling Levinsky. Dillon agreed without giving the matter a lot of thought. After all, he and Levinsky had already met in at least five no-decision contests and one draw without harming one another. In fact they had also fought a no-decision bout as far back as 1911, when Levinsky was still fighting out of Philadelphia as Barney Williams. So the two men met again, this time for the championship. Levinsky won and was able to claim the lightheavyweight title as his own.

His new championship came as something of a sop to Levinsky. He still went in with the major heavyweight White Hopes, though the newspaper decisions were beginning to go against him as he aged. But he placidly continued to be true to his style of circling, retreating and tying up all comers and thus avoiding major damage. Altogether he fought from 1906 until 1929, taking part in over 300 contests.

12

THE POTTAWATOMIE GIANT

S
lowly, almost by default, a White Hope emerged to make a serious challenge to Jack Johnson. His name was Jess Willard and he was a giant of a man. He had been born in St Clere, Kansas, in 1881, the youngest of four brothers. His father, a Civil War veteran, had died at the age of 37 from the long-term effects of wounds sustained in battle. Willard had grown up on his stepfather’s ranch, but his ambition to become a cowboy had to be abandoned when he grew to an enormous size.

Instead he had earned a living for a time by breaking in and trading horses, often obtaining his wild mounts from the local Pottawatomie Native Americans and selling them on to ranchers. For a time he became a teamster, transporting goods in wagons. When times were hard the big man had settled down to a general labouring job among horses in a stable. On 28 March 1908, Jess Willard got married and started thinking about better ways of earning a living. This led him to a gymnasium and a boxing career.

He had shown no natural aptitude for the sport, and when he had first tried out as a boxer in Oklahoma City in 1910, he was completely outsmarted by a welterweight, who had spotted Willard a hundred pounds and still driven the big man in confusion from the gym. Later, after he had taken a hard punch in a fight against Joe Cox, Willard suddenly stopped fighting, pushed the referee in front of his opponent and stood behind the official, quitting on the spot, claiming that he had been warned by gangsters that it would be unsafe for him to continue. As in his previous contest Cox had been knocked out in two rounds by Fireman Jim Flynn and was to be stopped by Luther McCarty in six in his next bout, Willard’s actions were regarded with contempt in fight circles.