if the last decade of the nineteenth century saw the growth of glove-fighting to a high level of scientific achievement, the first decade of the twentieth saw the decline of its management to the uttermost pit of low commercial enterprise. not that the promotion of any professional athletic contest has ever been entirely free from the besmirching influences of money: it has not. rascality apart, there have always been hucksters who shouted their merchandise of weight and muscle and skill in raucous and unseemly tones. but when real if degraded cunning is brought to the job, the issues are obscured, and unsophisticated sportsmen, behind the times in business methods, are apt to be deceived.
fighters, you may say, are born, whilst champions are made—in fleet street and the complementary thoroughfares of new york and san francisco. a particular boxer is discussed in some newspaper every day for a considerable period. he is advertised, in fact. you get accustomed to the fellow’s name in exactly the same way as you get accustomed to the name of some coffee or toffee, tailor or tinker. you begin to regard him, quite unconsciously, as an inevitable concomitant of everyday life. and when the paper tells you that he is a champion, you, having a general interest in boxing but knowing very little about it, accept him as a champion.
this boxer happens to be a good boxer, wins many fights, and you take it as a matter-of-course. the newspaper pats itself as you might say, loudly on the back for having made a good shot. the boxer happens to be a bad boxer and is beaten every time, and you and the newspaper denounce and deride him—you, 148 because what you thought was your opinion is shown to be wrong, the newspaper which (in collaboration with the boxer’s manager, business-manager, publicity-manager, and general manager) invented the poor fellow: because it is unable to flatter itself.
the genuine champion, who will be content with a small c, is not made by newspapers. by his own merits he emerges from the ruck and he makes his own way. but he can make his way, probably, much quicker with the aid of newspapers, managers, who sometimes exploit him, and other sound business methods: and not his way only, but his fortune. carpentier is a transcendent example. he is a magnificent boxer, who was bound to have made a name for himself by boxing and boxing alone. and we do not grudge him the fortune which boxing and boxing alone would not have brought to him. but we do grudge the vast sums made by spurious champions (or their managers), and the sums much more vast and rolling and altogether disgusting made by the promoters of what are, virtually, spurious contests.
now the most notorious boxer of the first ten years of the present century, a really good fighter, of unorthodox methods and exemplary fortitude, was tommy burns. his real name was noah brusso, he was said to be a french canadian by birth, and he had won the world’s heavy-weight championship by beating marvin hart in 1906. he was born in 1881, stood 5 feet 7 inches, and weighed 12 stone 7 lb. he was very broad for his height, and always somewhat inclined to fatness.
in 1907 burns came to england, and in that and the following year summarily knocked out the best men that england could find to meet him. our best in this country at that time were very poor indeed. gunner moir, quite a third-rate boxer in point of skill, was champion of england. there was the wildest excitement about his match with burns, because moir’s prowess had been trumpeted far beyond its merits. burns knocked him out in ten rounds. it was a disgraceful affair, because there can be no doubt that the canadian could easily have beaten him much sooner. on that occasion it certainly seemed as though he were 149 boxing to please, or rather not to disappoint the spectators. the public like to have “value for money.” and, of course, there are always cinematograph rights. what will the much larger public, outside the actual place of battle, say if the film consists, as it has done before now, of five minutes’ display of american pressmen, seconds, and other boxers who have nothing to do with the matter in hand, and half a minute’s fighting with three visible blows? the public will be disgusted, and they won’t go to see that picture, and the film-rights will be negligible. i am unable to remember whether moving pictures were taken of the encounter between tommy burns and gunner moir, but if they were that would be a sufficient, if not a good, reason for the unnecessarily protracted bout, as it certainly has been the reason in other contests.
burns, then, was heavy-weight champion of the world, and was, in the course of nature, liable to be challenged to fight for his title. and there had come into prominence a huge negro, jack johnson, who was anxious to fight burns. in england we had hitherto heard very little of johnson. he was three years older than the white champion, stood 6 feet and one-half inch, and weighed 15 stone. he appears to have started his career in 1899, and from that year down to december, 1908, when he finally succeeded in getting a match with burns, he had fought sixty-five contests, half of which he won by means of a knock-out. excepting peter jackson, he was about as good a black boxer as had ever been known. he was very strong, very quick, a hard hitter, and extraordinarily skilful in defence. he was by no means unintelligent, and, not without good reason, was regarded generally with the greatest possible dislike. with money in his pocket and physical triumph over white men in his heart, he displayed all the gross and overbearing insolence which makes what we call the buck nigger insufferable. he was one of the comparatively few men of african blood who, in a half-perceiving way, desire to make the white man pay for the undoubted ill-treatment of his forbears.
whether tommy burns really wanted to avoid johnson or 150 not it is difficult to say. certainly, it seemed as though he did. or, on the other hand, the long procrastination may have been deliberate, with the end in view of rousing public excitement, to its uttermost pitch of intensity: and thus, perhaps, of acquiring more pelf. burns succeeded, at all events, in rousing the public impatience and irritation which immediately precedes boredom. and it would be a dull business to trace the whole story of johnson’s efforts to get into a ring with him. it is enough to say that he finally succeeded, a match was made, and the two men entered the ring at rushcutter’s bay, sydney, new south wales, on december 26th, 1908.
as so often happens in a black and white affair, feeling ran very high, and it was feared by responsible people that black, in the person of jack johnson, would not on this occasion get a fair chance. but as the event proved, the fight was perfectly fair—in that sense, and we may be sure that johnson was well cared for and guarded. interference by the police was by way of being expected, and it was arranged before the contest that if the police did stop the fight in its course, the referee would give a decision on the merits of the encounter up to the moment of interference.
if johnson’s demeanour had always been insolent, it is unnecessary to look for another word to describe the conduct of tommy burns. for all i know, at heart burns may have been a modest man, though i don’t think so. but to hear him talk you would think that no other boxer had ever existed. there are two ways of getting a hearing and of making people think well of you: one is to talk as though the person spoken to was the most important and interesting and delightful man or woman alive, to talk with such conviction in that way that the person in question believes himself to be just that. the other way is to shout aloud that you are the most important person (and all the other things) alive, and upon my soul, if you shout loud enough you will find believers. naturally or deliberately, burns did this, and quite a large number of people believed in him. and it must always be remembered that they had something to believe 151 in. burns was a decidedly good boxer. his manner in the ring was unorthodox. he had no settled attitude or position to take up at the beginning or return to between rallies. he kept his hands and his feet in the positions which suited the demands of the moment. his style was loose and easy, and he could hit hard. also he went in for glaring balefully at his opponents, stamping on the floor to inspire terror, and worst, “mouth-fighting,” pouring vituperation upon his man and telling him exactly what he was going to do to him. all this sort of thing makes modern professional boxing a sorry business, though no peculiarly bad instances have occurred lately. indeed, boxers have begun to understand that it does not pay.
the men entered the ring on the appointed day, and johnson’s natural advantages were at once evident. he was taller, heavier, and stronger than burns. they were both well trained, but burns always scorned the conventional abstinences and smoked cigars right up to and including the day of a fight. he never looked really hard all over. and now directly the fight started johnson began by going straight for his opponent and knocking him down. burns rose in eight seconds, obviously shaken. he crouched with his right hand forward and his left back, and attacked the black man’s body. johnson kept away from him and sent his right across to burns’s chin, rather too high to bring him down again, but enough to make him stagger. then burns sent home a blow on the jaw, but not a good one, and a hard opening round came to an end. no one supposed then that burns stood the faintest chance of winning. but burns was going to do his best. he was acutely conscious of his position as the white champion. he was filled with passionate antagonism to the black man because he was black. right or wrong, this antagonism is one of the strongest prejudices that moves men. and there was nothing about johnson, as there certainly was about peter jackson, to mitigate the accident of his birth. rather the contrary.
the second round began, and the negro taunted his white opponent. he, too, was a great hand at “mouth-fighting,” but as he talked he boxed, and he swung his right and caught burns 152 on the chin. the white man stumbled slightly and his ankle gave so that he fell, but he rose again at once to receive a straight blow on his left eye, which immediately began to swell. then johnson put in a swing on burns’s stomach. it was his round, and he went to his corner grinning widely, as only a black man can. burns tried to get close at the next set-to, and again and again hit his adversary’s ribs, but these blows made no impression on johnson who, whilst the in-fighting continued, struck burns heavily over the kidneys. during the fourth round both men talked, heaping insults upon each other. and so it went on. once, after pounding burns heavily on the ribs, johnson clinched and over the white man’s shoulder laughed for the benefit of the crowd, and made ironic observations to burns. it was in the seventh round that johnson began seriously to hurt his man, and it was palpable to experienced onlookers that he was trying to do so. “i thought tommy was an in-fighter,” he called out, and sent burns violently down with a terrific right on the body. both the white man’s eyes were now swollen, he was bleeding at the mouth, and johnson was all over him, hitting him as he liked, left and right, hard, but not too hard. he could have knocked him out at any time now, but that was not at all his idea of fun at the expense of the white race. he would keep him on his feet and hurt him. he knew burns would never give in so long as he could stand. he no doubt guessed that the referee would not stop the fight so long as the smallest chance remained of a lucky blow from burns.
then the talking began again. “come on, tommy, swing your right,” the black laughed, and burns snarled back, “yellow dog!” a disgusting performance on both sides, you say? yes: and yet there was something wonderfully fine about burns that day. his prejudice may have been foolish, his behaviour in talking, whether he started it or not, was childish, his methods of self-advertisement before the fight reached the nethermost pit of vulgarity. but he was game. to take a beating at any time, even from your best friend, is hard work. but take a beating from a man you abhor, belonging to a race you despise, 153 to know that he was hurting you and humiliating you with the closest attention to detail, and the coldest deliberation, to know that you don’t stand more than one chance in a hundred of landing a blow which could hurt him, and not one in ten thousand of beating him, and to go on fighting, doing your best to attack, your utmost to defend yourself, with your knees weak, your hands too heavy to lift, your eyes almost blinded, your head singing and dizzy—this requires pluck.
by the tenth round even johnson was a little tired, but burns was nearly done. his valiant but futile efforts to land a damaging blow drew forth the laughter of his adversary, who stepped away from him and banged him on the back or sent his right whizzing up from underneath to smash his wind, or pound him on the nose and mouth. burns’s mouth indeed had been badly cut some time ago, and round after round johnson hit it again and yet again, never missing, always with the fiendish desire to injure and to give pain. in the thirteenth round it was seen that the police were getting restive, they were closing in upon the ring, having in mind, no doubt, the likelihood of a serious attack being made upon johnson. and burns, reeling against the ropes, gasped out an appeal to the referee to let the fight go on and not to let the police interfere—which, naturally, was beyond the power of the referee. the fourteenth round was the last. burns tried to hit, then retreated, and johnson following quickly sent a hard right-hander to his jaw, which dropped him. very slowly, with obvious pain and difficulty, burns rose as the eighth second was counted. and johnson went for him again with all his might. then the police stopped the fight, and the referee pointed to the new black champion.
burns was a brave man, and he did the utmost in his power to put up a good fight against a much heavier, stronger, and more skilful boxer than himself. but it should certainly be recorded that he received for his considerable pains and trouble the sum of ￡6000—which he had bargained for beforehand, “win, lose, or draw,” and without the promise of which he would not have undertaken the contest.
