The Great White Hopes (15 page)

Once he had won the championship, Johnson refused to honour his commitment to the club. This might have had something to do with the circumstances of his first visit to the NSC, when he was ordered to wait in the hall while his white manager Sam Fitzpatrick was invited into the inner sanctum to discuss terms for the bout.

Hague was brought in as a substitute to fight the great Langford. While he and Moir had been preparing for their British title fight, both boxers had been asked by Arthur ‘Peggy’ Bettinson, manager of the club, if they were prepared to fight the black boxer. Displaying a strong sense of self-preservation, Moir had replied immediately, ‘No, sir!’ Equally true to form, Hague had enquired vaguely who Langford was. When it was explained to him that the man regarded as second in the world among the heavyweights only to Jack Johnson stood but 5ft 6in tall and weighed less than 12 stone, the Mexborough man replied, ‘Fight him? I’ll knock his head off!’

True to form, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking and lazy Hague did no training for the fight, as he was still celebrating winning the British title. Although he was now a champion he still appeared on the booths, enjoying the boozy relaxed atmosphere of the fairgrounds. Bettinson, who was to referee the bout, visited Hague a few weeks beforehand to find the Englishman taking an afternoon siesta, his customary cigarette drooping from his lips. When Bettinson asked him why he was not training for Langford, Hague scoffed, ‘He doesn’t weigh twelve stone, does he? Whatever chance has a man of that weight got with me?’

Former world heavyweight champion, British-born Bob Fitzsimmons, who was on a variety tour of Great Britain, also visited Hague’s training quarters at Mexborough’s Montague Arms Hotel, but he was so disgusted by the heavyweight’s lethargy that he spent most of his time with his back to the ring chatting to his old mentor, 78-year-old former bare-knuckle champion Jem Mace. Almost thirty years before, at his touring booth in faraway New Zealand, it was Mace who had urged Fitzsimmons, then a young blacksmith in Timaru, to turn professional.

For his part, Langford had just as poor an opinion of his opponent as Hague had of him. After the black fighter had sparred a three-round exhibition contest with strongman Thomas Inch at the National Sporting Club, Inch tried to warn Langford and his manager Joe Woodman of the power of Hague’s punch. Both men laughed at him, regarding Langford as being far superior in class to the English heavyweight. Woodman was so confident that he bet Langford’s entire purse on his man to win.

Hague’s manager, on the other hand, did make one effort to gain an advantage for his man. He contacted Frank Craig, whom Hague had beaten several months earlier, and paid him to enlist as one of Langford’s sparring partners, to send back messages on the American’s progress in training. But Langford and his manager Woodman were too shrewd to believe that a man with Craig’s pride would sign on as a mere sparring partner; they guessed the real reason for his appearance at their training camp. Accordingly, at their first three-round sparring session Langford gave Craig such a sustained beating that the other man promptly packed his bag and left.

To everyone’s surprise, when the real fight started, on 24 May 1909 at the National Sporting Club, the Yorkshireman briefly got lucky when, in the third round, he landed a heavy swing on Langford’s head, sending his opponent crashing to the floor. Only Jack Johnson had ever floored Langford before. When the black fighter got up, Hague bullied him to the ropes and flailed away desperately, but none of his wild blows landed. Langford, who was receiving £2,500, the largest purse of his entire career, recovered his equilibrium and soon made short work of his opponent.

Hague went right-hand crazy, while Langford concentrated on ducking and countering with stiff lefts to the body. In the fourth round Langford pressed forward, jabbed three times to the face, then landed a right to the point of the jaw, which knocked Hague unconscious, giving Langford a quick victory. One of Hague’s seconds made a vain attempt to revive the fighter in time by dashing a bucket of water over his prostrate form from the apron of the ring. When Bettinson tried to intervene, Langford waved him back, saying quietly, ‘He will not stir, sir.’ Bob Fitzsimmons, who was sitting in the audience in full evening dress, was distinctly unimpressed by the British fighter’s performance.

Commenting on Langford’s grogginess when he rose from the knockdown,
Boxing
lamented, ‘Only the fact that Hague was dead out of condition saved him. Iron puffed and blew and could not keep on to his man.’

Nevertheless, Hague’s brief moment of glory in the third round was enough to qualify him as a temporary White Hope. There was a tremendous sensation when it was announced that Hague was to be groomed for a contest with Jack Johnson. A man who could floor Langford, it was reckoned, might be able to floor any opponent.

An American syndicate offered to back Hague and take him to the USA. Scornfully the British champion spurned the opportunity, preferring to remain in the proximity of his favourite alehouse.
Boxing
commented sadly on the heavyweight’s dereliction of duty: ‘All Hague’s travelling, hotel and other expenses [were] to be paid,’ it reported, ‘and, in addition, an allowance of £5 a week was to be made to him for pocket money. Every conceivable facility was to be afforded him to get as fit as possible and to acquire the finest possible training experience.’

Hague’s new backer, F.J. Law, owner of the Montague Arms Hotel in Mexborough, tried to persuade his heavyweight to go to the USA as the latest European White Hope, but the insular and unambitious Hague would have none of it. Instead, he went to Plymouth and fought a swinging, aggressive and slightly crazy Irishman, Petty Officer Matthew ‘Nutty’ Curran. Curran was apt to go off the rails in his enjoyment of a fight, and as a result had been disqualified on a number of occasions. This time Curran connected legitimately with lethal effect quite early on in the fight and Hague had to be supported out of the ring.

Because the bout had not taken place at the National Sporting Club, Hague was deemed by that superior body not to have lost his title. Indeed, the committee now invited him to defend his crown against Bill Chase, a Notting Hill butcher. Chase was a novice who, like Hague before him, had won a competition at the NSC. Chase knocked Hague down early on, but the Mexborough man still had his punch, and he got up to knock the butcher out. This caused one animal-loving member at the ringside to murmur, ‘Won’t the bullocks be pleased!’

Hague had half a dozen more fights. He lost to Jewey Smith, but again retained his title when the NSC refused to recognise Smith; he then outpointed Smith in a return contest. Next, in 1911, Hague was invited to defend his title at the NSC against Britain’s up-andcoming White Hope, Bombardier Billy Wells. Their fight was for the first Lonsdale Belt to be awarded in the heavyweight class. Hague’s Yorkshire connections begged their man to take the fight seriously. A victory over Wells would mean the heavyweight securing for himself some very lucrative matches in England against the everincreasing number of visiting Americans.

In one of the most curious pairings in the history of the sport, he was inducted into the training regime of the aesthetic Welshman Freddy Welsh. An ardent physical culturist and devout vegetarian, Welsh was the British lightweight champion who a few years later would win the world championship at his weight. A strict, harsh, humourless man subject to fits of depression, he harried Hague from morning till night at his training camp.

What was worse, he made the corpulent heavyweight eat just one main meal a day, and a vegetarian one at that. After a morning of running, ball-punching and physical exercises, Hague was allowed to devour a single nourishing plate of potatoes, beans and macaroni cheese, garnished with two poached eggs. To drink, the beerswilling Mexborough man was given the choice of water or milk. Hague protested long and loud, to no avail, but the chastened and mutinous heavyweight was dispatched to London by his trainer in, by the heavyweight’s standards, peak condition.

Early in the fight Hague connected with his overarm right. For a moment Wells tottered, but he recovered to jab his way out of trouble. Gradually he got on top of the game Yorkshireman, flooring Hague four times and ending the bout with a mighty righthand punch in the sixth round.

Bereft of his title, it was the end of the road for Hague as a White Hope. He fought on, beating a few no-hopers but losing to the good men he encountered in the ring. Immediately after the Wells bout, he met Scot Jim Robb in his home town. He was still showing the effects of Freddy Welsh’s strict training regime, causing the
Mexborough and Swinton Times
reporter to comment approvingly of their man, ‘He turned out better than I think I have ever seen him and he had a healthy colour.’

Robb never landed a punch or even made a lead. Hague hit him once on the chin. The local reporter wrote, ‘Robb tumbled down in an inglorious heap, grovelled on his stomach amongst the resin, was counted out, dragged to his corner, and left the ring explaining to his own seeming satisfaction what had happened.’

A month later, Hague fought another White Hope, the Cumbrian Tom Cowler, who would go on to make quite a stir in the USA. They fought for a side-stake of £25, and Hague was knocked out in eight rounds.

The search for a viable and young English White Hope continued. All over the country promoters wishing to draw the crowds would advertise a White Hope tournament and invite a few inept clumsy giants to swipe away at each other. And there was no shortage of would-be hopefuls. Much was made at the time of the plight of a certain Corporal Lightfoot of the Royal Scots Guards, one of the many huge soldiers who had taken up boxing. He had displayed some skills in the Army as a heavyweight boxer, and managers were eager to buy him out. His regiment refused to let him go, citing the regulation applying to service footballers, who, because of the depredations wreaked upon forces football by the incursions of professional managers, were forbidden from resigning in order to join one of the burgeoning football league clubs.

With Hague out of the reckoning, the time for the emergence of another national White Hope was ripe, and in 1910 it looked as if one had arrived in the person of Bombardier Billy Wells. A wellbuilt, handsome, wavy-haired young man of 22, Wells had achieved considerable success as a heavyweight in Army competitions in India, where he had been serving in the Royal Artillery, culminating in three wins in contests at Poona to take the All-India championship.

Army boxing continued to flourish. In 1908, Colonel Sir Malcolm Fox, Inspector of Gymnasia, led the way by encouraging the Brigade of Guards to hire professionals to teach its men to box according to Queensberry rules, in order to develop aggression in recruits and aid skills in bayonet fighting. Other units had followed this example, and in India young Gunner Wells was coached by the professional Jim Maloney, who had once been a well-respected lightweight.

Maloney had his own training camp, which was sponsored by the military. He had been quick to spot the young heavyweight’s potential and had urged Wells to buy himself out and profit from the craze for White Hopes sweeping across Great Britain. Wells was a cautious man but he could see the sense of the experienced fighter’s advice. He paid the necessary £21 release fee and returned to England, arranging for Maloney to follow him and become his manager.

Wells had been demobilised with the rank of bombardier, equivalent to corporal, an appellation which he used throughout his ring career, even when he became a sergeant major upon his recall to the colours during the First World War. Soon after he had landed back in Great Britain, Wells went to the offices of the trade magazine,
Boxing
, and asked for advice. The editor, John Murray, arranged for the ex-bombardier to have a private trial with the highly rated and very experienced Gunner Moir. For two rounds Wells boxed beautifully, but in the third the Gunner caught up with him and put him down with a hard body punch. Still, the All-Indian champion had shown up well enough to be offered a job as Moir’s sparring partner.

Although he had held the British heavyweight title, Moir was never regarded as a White Hope. He had been defeated in ten rounds in a world-title challenge against Tommy Burns. During this bout, among other sharp practices the crafty Burns had trapped Moir’s glove under his arm while he was hitting the Englishman, while also managing to give the impression to referee Eugene Corri that it was Moir who was doing the holding. Afterwards Moir commented on the incident with shocked dignity in his instructional book
The Complete Boxer:
‘I permitted myself, foolishly, to become sufficiently exasperated to draw Mr Corri’s attention to the actual state of affairs, with the result that I had my face cut open in two places.’

Wells acquitted himself well in the role of sparring partner to Moir and embarked upon a career as a professional boxer. He started by knocking out Gunner Murray in the first round, attracting the interest of a celebrated referee, Eugene Corri. Corri idly mentioned to a reporter that the young ex-soldier might even one day develop into a fitting opponent for Jack Johnson. The newspaper splashed the story across its sports pages and Wells was famous before he had even emerged from the novice stage. His next fight was against Corporal Brown of the Coldstream Guards in the arena off the Whitechapel Road known as Wonderland. It was there before a large and expectant crowd that the young heavyweight displayed two of the traits that were to prevent his ever scaling the fistic heights nerves and a soft heart. W. Barrington Dalby, who was in the crowd that night, described in his book
Come In, Barry!
how Wells was literally shaking with fright before the bout. The fighter’s seconds did their best to calm their man, but one of them turned to a ringside spectator and muttered in disgust, ‘He’s no good – too long in the bleeding belly!’

In the first round Wells caught his opponent with a good punch but seemed disinclined to press home his advantage. Taking heart, Brown bundled into his opponent, scoring with some heavy blows. In the second round Brown gained in confidence and started hitting the cautious Wells almost at will. The former champion of all India was booed back to his corner when the bell ended the round. During the interval Wells’s chief second did his best to stir his charge, hissing at him the immortal phrase, ‘Get out there and get wicked!’