The Great White Hopes (11 page)

Ketchel was rushed to a hospital in Springfield, where he died. Dipley was hunted down and arrested high in the Ozark Mountains. He and Goldie Smith were both tried for collusion to murder. Dipley was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The same verdict was also brought against Goldie Smith, but it was later reversed and she was released.

The great sports writer Damon Runyon wrote solemnly of Ketchel’s pre-eminent place in the hearts of many boxing fans. ‘It has been my observation that the memory of Ketchel prejudiced the judgement of everyone who has ever been associated with him. They can never see any other fighter.’

The news of Ketchel’s death was brought to Wilson Mizner as he sat playing poker for high stakes at the Millionaires’ Club. Selfish, flamboyant, untrustworthy but with a great gift for a phrase, Mizner murmured, ‘Start counting to ten; he’ll get up!’

5

A HOT DAY IN RENO

A
s many would-be managers were beginning to discover to their cost by the beginning of 1910, it took time and money to develop a White Hope. Great raw-boned giants with the bloom of youth on their cheeks and an avaricious glint in their eyes were beginning to emerge from the factories and farms in response to newspaper stories about the fortune that awaited a successful white heavyweight. As soon as they appeared they were being snatched into cluttered big-city gyms by wrinkled and ever-optimistic handlers looking for meal tickets.

For most of the clumsy tyros there lay months of expensive training and tutoring ahead before they could be launched in the ring against punch-drunk trial horses, but, when they did meet these hand-picked opponents, too often the Hopes were flattened by the hopeless ones. Credible challengers would eventually emerge, the managers were sure of that, but it would take another couple of years before any of them were ready to face Jack Johnson.

In the meantime the public was clamouring for a white man to defeat Jack Johnson. Promoters were circling like sharks, waiting for the opportunity to match a White Hope against the champion. One of the first to announce his intentions was the Australian Hugh D. McIntosh, who had put on the Johnson–Burns championship fight. Weeping crocodile tears of remorse at having given a black man the opportunity to win the title, in April 1909 McIntosh arrived in New York and told a reporter from the
Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin,
‘Now that a negro is the champion, because of the fight which I promoted in Australia last fall, I shall do all that lies in my power to reverse the situation . . . If possible I will bring the present champion into conflict with a white man who may wrest the honours from him.’

There was only one possibility on the horizon. That was the retired, undefeated former champion James J. Jeffries. A solitary man, he had given up trying to cash in on his former fame. For a time he had toured as Davy Crockett in a stage production of
The Man from the West.
The intended dramatic climax had been for Jeffries, clad in fringed buckskin, to use all his strength to hold a broken door shut against the attacks of the real wolves being used in the production. At the same time the former champion had to make sure that he was not obscuring from the gaze of the audience the slender form of his 6-stone leading lady. Neither the wolves nor the anorexic actress had satisfied many audiences, so in a revised version the former champion would take his curtain-calls, hurry into the wings and reappear in fighting costume to go three rounds with a sparring partner. Sometimes he would even spar between the acts. Even this did not catch on. William Brady, his producer, complained, ‘Although Jeff was a fairly good actor, the public would not go to see him.’

With some relief Jeffries had given up the stage and had been living quietly until the requests for him to make a comeback. Jeffries did not want to fight again. He was happy with his alfalfa farm and saloon and, at more than 4 stone overweight, knew that it would take months of agonising training to get back into condition again – that is, if at the age of 34 he could ever regain his old fitness and agility.

The pressure from the public for Jeffries to fight Johnson was tremendous. In April 1909, the
Chicago Tribune
even printed a photograph of a young girl pointing tremulously at the camera, with the caption: ‘Please, Mr Jeffries, are you going to fight Mr Johnson?’

Slowly Jeffries began to consider the prospect of a comeback. He went on a diet and began stepping up his exercise. Finally he decided that if the doctors cleared him and told him that he could get back into shape, he would consider fighting Johnson.

First he approached his old manager, William Brady, who had guided him to the heavyweight title back in 1899. To his dismay, Brady rejected him out of hand. The reason that the veteran gave was that he was too busy producing another Broadway play. However, during his partnership with Jeffries he had put on as many as eight Broadway shows a year without letting it affect his managerial duties.

In fact, the producer would not entertain resuming his association for two reasons. He had grown disillusioned with the prize ring, especially in New York, because of the amount of corruption which had crept into the sport. ‘Night after night,’ he complained in his autobiography
Fighting Man,
‘fake fights were pulled off all over the city.’

Another reason for Brady’s refusal was his fear that Jeffries would get badly hurt by Johnson if the two should meet. When Jeffries said that he was determined to go through with the fight, Brady told him, ‘If you do, you’ll regret it as long as you live, for Johnson will surely beat you.’ Brady said that following this Jeffries never spoke to him again.

As a result Jeffries called upon an old friend, Sam Berger, to handle his affairs. Berger, a studious, reflective sort, had won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1904 St Louis Olympics, the first time that boxing had been introduced at a modern Olympiad. In Athens in 1896, it had been rejected by the organisers as ‘ungentlemanly, dangerous and practised by the dregs of society’. Only Americans had entered in 1904. Berger, a member of the San Francisco Olympic Club, turned professional after winning his Olympic championship but did not have a glittering career. The highlight of his paid record was a six-round, no-decision bout with Philadelphia Jack O’Brien.

By the time he was approached by Jeffries in 1909, Berger had abandoned the ring in favour of a successful business career, which was to culminate in the ownership of a large San Francisco clothing store. However, he was prepared to put all this on hold to handle negotiations for Jeffries and act as one of his sparring partners in the initial stages of the old champion’s comeback.

Next, Jeffries sailed for Carlsberg in Germany, to be examined by doctors at this weight-reducing haven and begin his self-imposed regime. He stayed there for three months and lost 2 stone in weight. He also encountered King Edward VII of Great Britain, who was taking the waters. The monarch was interested in boxing to the extent that when Tommy Burns had been evading the challenges of Jack Johnson he had scornfully referred to the champion as ‘a Yankee bluffer’, forgetting that Burns was a Canadian. The king and the prizefighter met in the streets of Carlsberg, where Edward hailed the huge American with a hearty, ‘Hello there, Jim Jeffries! Going to fight the black fellow, eh? Jolly good!’

The British magazine
Boxing
noted with approval the efforts of the former champion to regain fighting fitness and seemed to be in no doubt as to the eventual success of his comeback. ‘James Jackson Jeffries, ex-boilermaker, retired champion heavyweight and now wealthy farmer, has come out of the quietude to regain for the white section of Americans the world’s premier honours, and is taking the baths at Carlsberg.’

Towards the end of the year, Jeffries sailed back for the United States and announced that he was prepared to challenge Johnson for the latter’s crown. In the meantime, Sam Berger had been engaging in a series of secret meetings with George Little and Sig Hart, Jack Johnson’s co-managers, hammering out the details of the fight. They announced to promoters that those wishing to bid for the contest should submit sealed bids, to be opened on 1 December 1909. In order to avoid time-wasters, and as a sign of solvency, the fighters announced that each bid should be accompanied by a cheque for $5,000.

This led to a frantic competition to put on the bout. Soon Tex Rickard emerged as one of the promoters jostling to stage the tournament. A hard-hearted, crafty but fair man, who was renowned for always paying his debts, Rickard had worked as a lawman, saloon-keeper, gambler and general entrepreneur. In order to bring visitors to his saloon at Goldfield, Nevada, he had already promoted a fight for the world lightweight championship between Joe Gans and Battling Nelson. To add a touch of drama to the occasion, Rickard had put the entire $30,000 purse in gold eagles in the window of a local bank.

Ever restless, Rickard had moved on to another Nevada frontier mining town, Rawhide. Here, in order to publicise his gambling saloon, he had persuaded the best-selling novelist Elinor Glynn to visit the town. In order to impress the author and encourage her to write about Rawhide, Rickard had simulated a gambling session, an attempt to put out a fire and even a gunfight with blank ammunition and the plentiful use of ketchup on the ‘dead’ miner. Glynn believed everything she had seen and returned East to write of Rickard and his cronies in the
New York American,
describing them as ‘brave fellows fighting nature to obtain from her legitimate wealth’.

Although in 1908 he subsequently lost all his money in a fire which had destroyed his saloon in Rawhide, Rickard did not allow this to depress him for long. His reputation for probity was such that he could always raise money.

In this instance he borrowed it from a millionaire business associate, Thomas F. Cole. Armed with his friend’s cash Rickard then went to work. Several days before the closing date for bids, he went to Pittsburgh, where Jack Johnson was appearing in vaudeville.

First the Texan visited Etta Duryea at the boarding house she was sharing with the fighter. The champion usually introduced her as his wife, but in fact they were not married until 1911. Getting straight to the point, Rickard asked her what she desired most in the world. Etta Duryea replied that she would like a fur coat. Rickard promised her one if she would use her influence to persuade Johnson to accept the bid for the fight he was about to submit.

Next Rickard visited Jack Johnson backstage at the theatre. Etta had made it clear that the high-spending champion was short of money. From his wallet Rickard produced $2,500 in highdenomination notes and pressed them upon the champion. In response Johnson told him that he had heard that the highest of the credible bids that were about to be made would be $100,000.

That was all that Rickard wanted to know. He suspected that with his generous ways he had already half-won the champion over. In order to maintain his advantage, he travelled to New York in the same train as Johnson and Etta for the opening of the bids. Stopping only to buy Etta her fur coat, Rickard then took the ferry across the Hudson River to Meyer’s Hotel in Hoboken, where the bids were to be scrutinised.

At once Rickard embarked upon a frenzy of negotiating behind the scenes. He found Jeffries and his new manager Sam Berger cold and unwelcoming, but Berger did condescend to hint that the fight had been as good as wrapped up in advance by a friend of his, actor and playwright Jack Gleason, representing the Californian promoter Sunny Jim Coffroth.

Rickard hunted down Gleason and told him that he had secured the allegiance of Johnson. If Gleason would betray Coffroth and could persuade Jeffries, through Berger, to look favourably on the Texan’s bid, Rickard would give Gleason half the profits ensuing from the mooted tournament. Rickard was never afraid to spend a dollar in order to make two.

Gleason knew when he was on to a good thing and agreed without hesitation, although he warned Rickard that Berger would also have to be taken care of financially. Rickard hurried back to the hotel room, which was crowded with would-be promoters of the bout, while many more had submitted their bids through the post and by messenger.

One by one the bids were opened in the crowded, smoke-filled room. Jack Johnson was present but Jeffries did not arrive, leaving Berger to represent his interests. In the event, some of the major players submitted disappointingly small offers. The great Hugh D. McIntosh tendered only $75,000 for the bout to be held at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, while the august members of London’s National Sporting Club came up with a paltry $50,000.

On the other hand, there were several wildcats bandying about enormous sums. A St Louis promoter proposed an astronomical $150,000, while a New Orleans syndicate was prepared to go to $110,000. These, however, were regarded as bids of dubious provenance, with the promoters unlikely to be able to come up with the full sum when the chips were down.

All the established favourites among the promoters, as Johnson had divulged in Pittsburgh, offered sums of $100,000 or a little under. Then Rickard’s bid was opened. It was for $101,000, plus a percentage of film and vaudeville rights. That was not all. In addition to the obligatory cheque for $5,000, his envelope also contained fifteen $1,000 bills. Promoters present said that Johnson’s eyes widened at the sight of the banknotes tumbling invitingly onto the table before him.

It was all over bar the shouting. Johnson accepted his new patron’s offer with alacrity; Berger was scarcely less forthcoming. Tex Rickard had secured the rights to stage what was soon being called the ‘Fight of the Century’.

In the meantime, promoter James J.Coffroth had been waiting in another hotel for news of his bid for the bout. Years later he told a reporter of the experience. ‘I waited and waited,’ he recounted ruefully. ‘Gleason was to have telephoned me the outcome of the deal. There was no telephoning. I tried to contact Gleason. He wasn’t to be found. Finally it dawned on me that perhaps Jack Gleason had made what he figured was a more advantageous deal for himself. That turned out to be the case . . . I was out in the cold!’