Johnson’s victory over Burns in 1908 created, if we are to be judged by our newspapers, both in England and America, a sort of absurd terror. A black man was champion, and no white man could be found capable of beating him. Of course, the enmity that he inspired was very largely Johnson’s own fault. His conduct was outrageous, and, worst of all, he had a white wife. If he had behaved as Peter Jackson did there would have been much less trouble. As it was, one man after another was tried with a view to training a “White Hope,” as it was said, and no new man could be found anywhere who would stand the least chance of beating the negro.

At last, nearly two years later, the old champion, James Jefferies consented (after, we may be sure, some prodigious bargaining) to fight Johnson, and the match was arranged to take place at Reno, in the state of Nevada, on July 4th, 1910. Before the fight he is said to have bragged that no living man was capable of knocking him down for ten seconds. But boasts of that kind should always be discounted. They mean very little. If said at all, they are said for print in the hope that they may have a depressing effect upon the opposing camp. It is unlikely that Jefferies really believed what he said.

Once again some doubt was felt whether the black would have a fair chance of winning, but if any plans ever were made to “get at” him or to break the ring, they were frustrated. The greatest doubt of all in the minds of the public, both in England and America, was whether Johnson would be heavily paid to let Jefferies knock him out. And that doubt was set at rest by Johnson himself, who, in an “interview,” which was obviously sincere, explained that he could get all the money he wanted by fighting straight, and that his one ambition was to thrash any white man pitted against him so that the “white race should kow-tow” to him.

The men were fairly well matched, though some doubt was expressed as to Jefferies’s health. There is no doubt that they trained well, though again the white man certainly had superfluous flesh on him. He weighed 16 stone 4 lb. against Johnson’s 15 stone 2 lb. Their height was much the same, but Jefferies’s enormous chest made Johnson look narrow. Jefferies’s greatest handicap lay in the fact that he had retired six years before and had not fought since. His retirement had been genuine. He had no desire to fight again. But he was badgered and worried and importuned: it was “put to him as a white man.” And as a white man he nobly agreed to fight the black, but—that was not the only consideration. The purse was one of 101,000 dollars.

Now Jefferies had never been either very quick or very skilful, but he had never been beaten. He had won all his many fights in the past by his strength. He knew that he was now matched against a very good man, but he really expected as well as hoped to win. Good judges of boxing shared the hope, but not the expectation. The return of a veteran always fills every one but the most sanguine of his supporters with misgivings.

The crowd about the ring was enormous—women, cowboys, poor men, rich men, yellow, red, and black men. The grand stand alone held 18,000 people. It was announced by the doctor officially appointed for the occasion that Johnson was upon the brink of nervous collapse. But a few minutes later when he entered the ring he certainly appeared to be well and confident.

Nothing of any interest occurred in the first round. Both men were desperately cautious. Jefferies crouched with his head sunk between his huge shoulders, whilst the black stood up straight, a magnificent figure of a man, his left hand up and out, his right diagonally thrown across his chest in the conventional manner, his knees very slightly bent. He was perfectly poised, his weight equally shared by both legs. The crouching attitude has its advantages, but amongst the several points against it is the fact that it is unnecessarily fatiguing. So the men circled round each other, hitting tentatively now and again, to see whether the other was on the alert and quick to guard, not letting go, risking nothing. And in the second round also both exercised the extremest care. Once Jefferies hit out with all his might and missed Johnson by inches as he side-stepped. And the black laughed at his failure. An equal round.

But Johnson got seriously to work in the third round, sent in a hard right-hander to the head, and during a clinch put in two upper-cuts which, however, appeared to do no damage. Jefferies smiled and kept perfectly cool. It would not have been worth while smiling unless he had been hurt just a little. He was boxing well. Oddly enough, despite his long inactivity, many of the spectators observed that he had never boxed better. There were very hard exchanges in the next round, Johnson landing on the ear, Jefferies drawing blood from the mouth. Indeed the white man landed again and again, but he was not the man who had knocked out Bob Fitzsimmons. He did not hit nearly so hard. It is quite likely that his actual boxing was all the better for a long rest and then careful training with many different sparring partners: but hard hitting must be practised constantly, and moreover, it is a virtue which to a less degree than the science of boxing, follows the general trend of a man’s health: and Jefferies had not the constitution he once had. The fifth and sixth rounds consisted mostly of clinching, but at the end of the latter Johnson opened up an old wound on Jefferies’s eyebrow which bled so severely that the blood streamed down his face, and his eye began to close at once. The next round was certainly Johnson’s. A vicious right swing on the side of the head staggered the white man, who was already beginning to lose what little speed he had. Weeks of severe training are made of no avail in an amazingly small number of minutes of hard fighting. Jefferies was hurt, and his way of boxing now showed the onlookers that he was hurt. Johnson, meanwhile, was perfectly cool and boxing easily and well. There were to be no tricks this time, no cruelty of keeping an opponent on his legs so as to hurt him. Jefferies was a harder man than Burns, and Johnson would not take the smallest risk. Was he not “out” to humiliate the whole white race? Had he not said so, and was he not doing it? Of course, to those two men and to ninety per cent. of the onlookers this contest was, as it were, a life and death affair, as important as a minor war. I don’t suppose that it occurred to any one of them that boxing is, when all’s said, a sport, a sort of game, a method of exercise for spare time. Certainly the men were being very highly paid for their “game,” but did that fact alter the essential littleness of the whole thing? No: it was perceived to be a desperate encounter between the white races and the black, and nothing less portentous at all.

Photo: “Sport and General.”

Jem Driscoll.