The Great White Hopes

by Graeme Kent

  This was true of the second of Johnson’s opponents, a real glutton for punishment who helped promote the fight himself. His real name was Joseph Francis Aloysius O’Hagen, but he fought for seventeen years and through 181 bouts as Philadelphia Jack O’Brien. Unlike Victor McLaglen, who had been little more than an enthusiastic novice, Johnson’s second adversary was a professional to his fingertips. In 1901 he had visited Great Britain, where he won eighteen fights in a year, hardly breaking into a sweat. During this tour he was rather taken with being introduced by one English master of ceremonies as ‘Philadelphia’ Jack O’Brien, and he retained that nomenclature for the rest of his career. He was a resourceful, streetwise character and a skilled boxer, with a good left jab and a florid turn of phrase, both of which made him popular with reporters. Once, when asked what he thought of the great and much-avoided black fighter Sam Langford, O’Brien replied seriously, ‘When he appeared on the scene of combat you knew you were cooked.’

  In 1906, O’Brien became one of the few professional boxers to appear in newspapers other than on the sports or crime pages. He achieved a brief notoriety on a stopover in New York City when, because of his avocation, he was refused admission to a succession of good hotels. With his huge shoulders and a nose spread magnificently over his face it would have been difficult to mistake O’Brien for a librarian, and boxers were personae non gratae in respectable company. The New York American commented drily on the matter in an editorial, which with some hyperbole referred to the champion as ‘the most eminent professor of the squared circle in the United States’, and went on to sneer, ‘yet when, with his valet and business manager and the rest of the staff necessary to the comfort and dignity of a champion heavyweight, he drove from hotel to hotel on Fifth Avenue, he was politely, but firmly, asked to seek some other spot, or, in the language of his associates in his own profession, “to skidoo”’.

  By the time Johnson won the heavyweight title, O’Brien’s career was coming to an end. He had plenty to look back on. He had won the world light-heavyweight title by knocking out Bob Fitzsimmons. The title fight had been in the nature of a grudge match, as in an earlier no-decision bout, Fitzsimmons was convinced, only the intervention of the police had saved his opponent from a knockout. ‘I had it on him when I boxed him in Philadelphia until he yelped for help from the police and the bluecoats came to his assistance,’ claimed the Cornish fighter sourly.

  O’Brien paid little attention to his light-heavyweight title, preferring to look for good-money bouts among the big fighters. He had even fought twice for the heavyweight championship, in Los Angeles in 1906 and 1907, drawing with and then losing to Tommy Burns, a heavyweight as diminutive, shrewd and cunning as the experienced O’Brien himself.

  Those bouts with Burns displayed O’Brien’s sense of realism in spades. The first fight, refereed by retired champion James J. Jeffries, started with mutual tantrums when O’Brien objected to a curious trusslike belt being worn by Burns to protect, he claimed, an old injury. O’Brien objected hotly, declaring that the belt was just another example of Burns’s gamesmanship and was an added source of protection for the champion. The challenger then tried to tear the belt from Burns’s waist. In turn Burns tried to hoist down O’Brien’s shorts. The dignified James J. Jeffries, who had been looking on in amazement, stepped forward and ordered Burns back to his dressing room to get rid of the support.

  The actual fight was an anticlimax. It ended in a tame and apparently overrehearsed draw. The next day, a sheepish Jeffries, fed up with the whole tawdry affair, disclosed that he had been approached beforehand by both contestants to announce the verdict of a draw if the action had seemed at all close. Later, O’Brien, who had a tendency for garrulity, admitted, ‘The promoter, (Bill) McCarey, had figured it out that, if we fought a spirited draw, he could bill the return match during fiesta week and make a small fortune by charging top prices.’ To call the ensuing bout spirited would be an exaggeration, but the controversy gave the encounter far more publicity than the lack of action in the ring had merited. A return match was set up for six months later.

  The second fight caused a sensation before it had even started. Burns walked to the centre of the ring and shouted self-righteously to the crowd, ‘Gentlemen, I declare that all bets that have been made up to now are off! I agreed to lose to O’Brien but now we are both in the ring I want to tell you that I am here to win!’

  There was such a sensation that when the startled O’Brien tried to speak he was howled down. The fight went the full twenty rounds’ distance and was not much better than their first arid encounter had been. The reporter for the Milwaukee Free Press covering the fight wrote: ‘The affair grew monotonous. It was either a clinch with Burns . . . or else O’Brien circled the ring with Burns standing in the center looking at him and the crowd hooting. In the last round Burns stood quite still several times and begged O’Brien to come and fight him.’ Burns emerged a clear winner to retain his title. No weights were announced before the bout, but it was believed that both men scaled below the 12½ stone light-heavyweight limit. This meant that technically the Canadian was now also the world champion at the class immediately below heavyweight, but he never bothered to claim the championship.

  Afterwards, an embittered O’Brien put his side of the sordid story to anyone who could be bothered to listen to him. Apparently he had run into Burns in a cigar store soon after their first bout. According to the challenger, Burns had tried to persuade him to take a dive in the eleventh round of their next bout. Virtuously, O’Brien had refused the offer. Ever adaptable, Burns had then offered to lie down himself if he was paid enough.

  The second offer was of much more significance, as O’Brien pointed out self-righteously. ‘This interested me, purely from a business point of view, of course. I could see that there was plenty to be made as heavyweight champion, so I agreed to pay Burns $3,500 to lose. He agreed, knowing that I would ease up in training.’ O’Brien paused, almost at a loss for words at the enormity of Burns’s chicanery. ‘He then ratted when we got into the ring,’ he concluded, obviously shocked by the extent to which depravity could exist in the human soul.

  However, approaching the Johnson bout, O’Brien had reason to believe that he was on a lucky streak. In New York in March 1909, as a warm-up for his bout with Johnson, O’Brien went in with the fearsome Stanley Ketchel, one of the greatest middleweights of all time, in what was billed as a ten-round, no-decision contest, in which a contestant could only lose if he were knocked out. For nine rounds of their contest O’Brien jabbed Ketchel silly. Then, towards the end of the final round, the swinging Ketchel finally caught up with his tormentor. Describing the sensation after he had been struck, O’Brien said: ‘It just seemed as if all the lights went out.’ As he fell, his head struck the edge of the resin box, which his second, Kid McCoy, had inadvertently left in the ring. ‘It did not help my condition any,’ said O’Brien with atypical understatement.

  However, as the referee’s count reached eight, with O’Brien draped helplessly over the ropes like a heap of washing tossed over a line, the bell went to end the bout. Most reporters present agreed that O’Brien had done enough in the early rounds to get their unofficial decisions, and Ketchel was left ruing the fact that he had not caught up with his elusive opponent two or three seconds earlier.

  On the other hand, O’Brien, now approaching the veteran stage, decided that he was on a roll. To many, after fourteen years in the ring, he might have appeared a ‘shot’ fighter, but he still had enough of a reputation to draw in the crowds, given the right opponent. He was also extremely short of money. The only way for a big man to earn a decent purse in 1909 was to go in with Jack Johnson.

  O’Brien decided to ignore the disparity in size and give it a go. ‘Following the Ketchel bout, I returned to Philadelphia, where I did a little promoting, bringing heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in for a six-rounder,’ he said.

  It was not quite as simple as O’Brien made it sound. Johnson ha
d no objection to going in with a much lighter man and one who notoriously had no great punch, and the fact that at 30, and after many hard fights, his prospective opponent was coming to the end of his career did no harm either. Even so, the champion was aware of his bargaining power. He knew that he had the whip hand in any project concerning his title.

  First he insisted on the bout being a no-decision contest, knowing that even at his best O’Brien would never have had a chance of knocking him out. Then Johnson demanded a guarantee of $5,000, an exorbitant sum for six three-minute rounds with no likelihood of the title changing hands. O’Brien bit the bullet and agreed. At this point Johnson really started to turn the screw. Knowing that O’Brien had gone on record as disliking blacks in general and the champion in particular, he insisted on O’Brien making the long journey to a sleazy saloon in the black district of Pittsburgh to sign the contracts. O’Brien swallowed his pride, submitted to being patronised by the champion, and dourly made the two-way trip.

  The challenger then went into training for the bout; supremely confident, Johnson did not put himself out to the same extent.

  O’Brien was aided in his preparation by one of Philadelphia’s more eccentric sporting patrons. Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle was a banking millionaire who loved boxing and boxers. He was noted for causing chaos among those members of the noble art who were foolish enough to let him near them. ‘He was in Jack O’Brien’s corner with me once,’ reminisced manager Billy McCarney wonderingly. ‘He kept getting his foot stuck in the water bucket.’

  Biddle was a throwback, in boxing terms, to the eccentric, not to say mad, aristocratic patrons of the old prize-ring, and Philadelphia Jack O’Brien was his White Hope. For his part, the fighter, who mistrusted managers, was perfectly content to let the influential and well-connected millionaire have some limited input into his career, as long as it cost him nothing. O’Brien even went along with his backer’s church movement, Athletic Christianity, and suffered himself to be taken along to children’s Sunday School meetings and displayed as an example of one of Biddle’s holy warriors.

  There were other boxers in the millionaire’s extended family. It was his custom to invite local and visiting pugilists for a meal at his mansion and, once they had arrived, force them to spar several rounds with him in a specially constructed ring. Most of his guests went through the motions philosophically, but one White Hope, the towering Al Kaufmann, failed to catch the spirit of the affair. By accident or design he hit the useless Biddle with a substantial punch, putting the other man out of action for the rest of the day and forcing the cancellation of the proposed meal.

  No one disputed the banker’s dedication to boxing. On one occasion Biddle had persuaded former world heavyweight champion Bob Fitzsimmons to spar with his 10-year-old son. Fitzsimmons mistimed a jab and knocked the boy out. Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Junior recovered consciousness in time to hear his father, in all seriousness, congratulating Fitzsimmons on the efficacy of the blow.

  As he did with everything, Biddle put his whole heart into O’Brien’s preparation. He even fought a public four-round exhibition with his protégé to display his commitment. This gave the millionaire an idea. He suggested that next he should spar with the champion in order to see how fit Jack Johnson was. Jack O’Brien agreed to the proposal with alacrity. It was not disclosed whether he thought the plan a good one, or whether he just relished the thought of getting rid of his hearty patron for a few days.

  In any event, Biddle turned up at the gymnasium in Merchantville, New Jersey where Johnson was going through the motions of training, and offered to be the champion’s sparring partner. His pride suffered a blow when he was told that the champion was out driving with his wife. Biddle was forced to await Johnson’s return sitting on a bench with other would-be sparring partners. In a confused attempt to conceal his identity the banker introduced himself as Tom O’Biddle, an Irish heavyweight. Johnson, who was not deceived, could hardly believe his ears, but there were newspapermen present among the usual hangers-on, so he shrugged his reluctant agreement, thinking that he was in the presence of yet another white basket case.

  His view was reinforced when, at the first bell, Biddle uttered an ear-splitting yell and rushed at his opponent as if leading a bayonet charge. Lazily, the champion held him off at the end of a long, extended left hand, saying soothingly, according to some ringsiders, ‘Hey, Colonel boy! What’s your point? Don’t go getting yourself all stirred up.’ As Biddle’s daughter Cordelia later wrote resignedly in her memoirs, My Philadelphia Father, her father was always stirred up. The millionaire banker was not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner, and anyway his dander was up. He threw a mighty right swing, catching Johnson on the ear and upsetting the champion considerably. Johnson aroused himself from his lethargy sufficiently to charge back at Biddle, unleashing a volley of punches. Prudently, the Philadelphian covered up in a corner for the remainder of the round. By the time the bell sounded Johnson had recovered his self-possession sufficiently to let Biddle live, and leave the ring in one piece.

  The affair made the national headlines, with one newspaper commenting disapprovingly that the least Johnson could have done for the prestige of the Marine Corps was to allow Biddle, a reserve officer in the corps, to have floored him. The matter was taken as just another display of the champion’s ostentatious lack of respect.

  It was never recorded what advice his backer gave O’Brien about Johnson’s condition when he returned to Philadelphia, but on the night of the fight newspapers commented adversely on the spare tyre that the champion was carrying about his midriff. The hall was packed, enabling O’Brien to comment approvingly, ‘A full house turned out and I cleared over nine thousand dollars for my end.’

  It was the end of the good news for the challenger. He was much lighter than Johnson and had never been much of a puncher even at his best. O’Brien boxed cautiously while Johnson was content to pad about the ring, exchanging badinage with ringsiders and occasionally cuffing his opponent about the head. Afterwards, as would be expected, there was some discrepancy among the contestants as to the route the bout had followed. Johnson’s version took the form of a laconic, ‘the result of the fight, although no decision was given, clearly showed that O’Brien would have to be eliminated as a contender.’ O’Brien’s summary was a more hopeful, ‘I spotted Johnson forty pounds and had no trouble outpointing him.’ The consensus among spectators and newspaper reporters alike was that, had there been a decision announced, Johnson would have won it out of sight, a view summarised by a Philadelphia newspaper, which reported, ‘O’Brien got some very hard bumps and was pretty badly hurt at times, and there is no doubt that the Negro had the better of the contest.’ In the record books the May 1909 bout is delineated as a six-round, no-decision contest.

  It was almost the end of the road for Philadelphia Jack O’Brien, but he had one more good pay-day ahead of him. It lay in a return match with Stanley Ketchel, who was also being groomed for a title shot with Johnson. If Ketchel could defeat O’Brien decisively, it would strengthen his chances of a match with the heavyweight champion by the end of the year.

  For his part, O’Brien was still trying to convince himself that he had done well enough against Jack Johnson to continue fighting at the top level. To make matters even better, A.J.D. Biddle seemed to have lost interest in him for the time being. ‘Satisfied I had found myself, and was right again, doing my own managerial work, I signed for a return go with Ketchel,’ O’Brien said, revelling in his independence, free from the interference of millionaire bankers.

  The return bout took place in Philadelphia in June of the same year. O’Brien was guaranteed $5,000 as his share of the purse. The fight was a sell-out, thousands arriving to see if Ketchel could catch up with his opponent this time. ‘I wore Irish green tights with a red, white and blue belt,’ said O’Brien, describing the entrance of the gladiators. ‘Ketchel wore flaming red tights and a smirk.’

  It was all over in three
rounds. Ketchel gave O’Brien a beating from the first bell. As O’Brien later admitted, when the referee, Jack McGuigan, stopped the fight, ‘I had taken the same type of trimming from Ketchel that I handed out when I knocked out Bob Fitzsimmons four years previously to win a title.’ He added to his friend Harry Pegg, ‘Just remember, kid, pugilistic flowers bloom and they fade – that’s life!’

  Over the next four years O’Brien fought only eight more times, taking part in seven no-decision contests and being knocked out in five rounds by Sam Langford. Philadelphia Jack also became a great favourite among boxing writers looking for colour pieces. One of them, the great A.J. Liebling, once asked O’Brien what he really thought of Ketchel. It was the old fighter’s considered opinion that his erstwhile opponent had been nothing but ‘a bum distinguished only by the tumultuous but ill-directed ferocity of his assault’.

  Anthony J. Drexel Biddle made only one more attempt to contact the old light heavyweight. He threw a large society dinner for his friends, and invited a number of old retired fighters to the event. It was the banker’s intention to get the boxers to recapitulate some of their great bouts for the entertainment of his society friends. O’Brien was asked to spar with the formidable Joe Choynski, whom he had outpointed many years before, in 1902. Both fighters rebelled at being asked to provide a free Roman holiday for the assembled guests. They put up a display of such deliberate ineptitude that Biddle brought their reluctant bout to a halt and instead fought a much more spirited contest with his long-suffering son, Anthony Junior.

  With O’Brien disposed of, Jack Johnson fought two more no-decision contests before the end of 1909. The best that could be said of his two opponents was that they were warm and upright, for most of the time anyway. In Pittsburgh, over six rounds he boxed Tony Ross, the ring name for Italian-born American Antonio Rossilano. Ross was a rugged fighter, weighing around 15 stone, but at a height of only 5ft 9in he always found difficulty getting close to taller, smarter boxers, of whom there were plenty around in the first decade of the century. Starting out in 1905, at the age of 20, by the time Ross came up against Jack Johnson he had engaged in twenty-three contests. He had won ten of them, lost six, drawn two and taken part in five no-decision bouts. The only names of any consequence on his record were former heavyweight champion Marvin Hart, who had defeated him on a foul in thirteen rounds, and Sam Langford, who had crushed him in five rounds.