At 9:00 P.M. boxing officials opened the main-event ceremonies, and Jack Johnson was the first celebrity introduced. Rather than issuing the customary challenge to a specific individual, Johnson challenged anyone in the world to fight him. The air was thick with the desire of the crowd to see a black fighter beaten. Gans came into the ring during the introductions and leaned against the ropes. What may have been viewed as unconcern about the upcoming match was actually a cover for his impatience. Britt, having raised a ruckus about timing of ring entry, was late.
Referee Ed Graney was introduced, and he went straight to his job of adjusting the scales that had been brought into the arena for the official ringside weigh-in. Introductions continued. Mike Sullivan, Jimmy Gardner and Young Corbett each issued challenges to the winner of the match. Officials announced that the betting had closed 10 to 6½ in favor of Gans. In Baltimore, Gans was a two-to-one favorite and the Baltimore Sun reported that “no fight in recent years has engaged as much betting as the Gans-Britt battle.”13 Reports surfaced that Baltimoreans originally thought the fight was to be a “fake” and that Gans was to “lay down” to Britt, causing many to bet on Britt. But by the afternoon of the fight large sums of money were bet on Gans. Al Herford’s brother Maurice “had his agents out looking for Britt admirers’ money.”14 Maurice was earning commissions on bets made until he could no longer find men willing to gamble on Britt.
By 9:24 Gans’ impatience was noticeable. According to the Articles, the fighters were to weigh in at 9:10, but Britt was nowhere to be seen. Insisting that the weigh-in begin, Referee Graney and Club Manager Harry Corbett conferred and then Graney motioned Gans over to the scale. Corbett set the machine at the 133-pound notch. Gans dropped his plaid bathrobe, and completely nude, stepped upon the scale. The bar never moved. From its steadiness it was assumed that he was at least a half-pound under the weight limit.
Gans returned to his dressing room. It was at least five more minutes before Britt walked into the ring and over to the scale. With fans cheering, he stepped up, wearing his black boxing socks. The bar quivered, but it did not rise. He went to his corner where his seconds, Tiv Kreling and Spider Kelly, began wrapping both hands in bandages. From elbow to wrist, they rolled the boxer’s forearms with the customary tire tape. From outside the ring, an unidentified spectator tugged at manager Billy Britt to get his attention. Britt looked at his watch and became agitated. It appeared that Gans had taken more than the ten minutes of rest, between the weigh-in and the fight, which was stipulated in the Articles. Britt did not want Gans to have the chance to re-nourish himself after the weigh-in. Britt was ready to take his complaint to Referee Graney when Gans climbed through the ropes. Gans went directly to Britt’s corner and shook hands with his opponent before taking his seat on the opposite side.
In Gans’ corner stood Sol English, Kid Sullivan, and Frank McDonald. The referee announced the fighters and called them to the middle of the ring to receive the instructions. Britt wore white trunks with the Olympic Athletic Club’s emblem on the side. Gans wore white elastic briefs and no bandages on his hands. The fighters touched gloves and waited for the bell.
The San Francisco Examiner reported the scene as “Worse Than a Spanish Bull Fight,” that at the sound of the gong, Britt exploded at Gans, “fighting fiercely” and throwing full-steam barrages at his body. Ramon Corral, vice-president of the Mexican Republic, was at ringside and said that he had never seen such a group of spectators at any bull fight in Madrid as the “maniacs I see gathered around me here.”15 According to the round-by-round returns that came into Baltimore, Britt missed his mark with the punches. Nevertheless, the first round seemed fairly even as Gans permitted Britt to do most of the work. Britt sent out numerous punches while Gans appeared to be sizing up Britt’s reach. Britt tried to attack Gans’ body, but the blows were not forcible, according to the Baltimore papers. Britt missed with a left hook to the body and a right to the face. Then Gans missed a straight right to the head. Just before the bell rang to end the round, Britt missed two attempts with lefts to the body.
In the second round, according to telegraph returns, Britt rushed in and missed a left and then a right hand punch to the body before connecting with a left to Gans’ head and then a left to his body. Gans forced Britt around the ring and they fell into a clinch. Then a heated exchange ensued. Britt missed a left hook to the body but hit Gans in the nose with a straight left. Each returned lefts to the body. They exchanged a mix of rights and lefts to the face, and then Britt “missed a vicious left for the body,” which landed below the belt. The Examiner claimed the next day that “after (Britt) had sampled some of the colored fighter’s punches and found there was little sting to them, he increased his pace until he fought at whirlwind speed. That he was in the humor to commit infractions of the Queensberry code was evident in the second round, when he struck Gans a palpably foul body punch with his left hand.”16 Graney warned Britt, but the early foul came as a surprise to Gans and took its toll on his energy. The Examiner reported that “Gans was wide-eyed and open-mouthed,” while Britt “was as full of vim and venom as an enraged tiger,” and “just warming up to his work.”17 Britt missed another right to the body before he connected with a left and right on the face when the bell rang to end round two.
All that was said of the third round in San Francisco was that “Gans was holding on like grim death in the clinches.”18 In this round Gans fought back and both fighters connected with several punches in close quarters. Britt sent Gans a hard right-cross on the jaw and it appeared that Britt’s punches were more powerful than Gans.’ The fighters were clinched when the gong sounded.
In the fourth round, the fighters continued to clash, block and clinch. Gans appeared tired but continued to rally. The Baltimore paper reported that “it was apparent that Gans was scared.”19 More likely, he was extremely confused about Britt’s agreement to perform well and then foul out, as well as the referee’s failure to call the fouls. After one of Britt’s body blows followed by a right to the neck, Gans fell to one knee in a half clinch. He rose and continued fighting and then fell to the other knee. When he fell a third time, Britt hammered him in the jaw. Gans’ seconds jumped to the side of the ring and cried “foul,” but Graney ordered the fight to continue.
In the fifth and final round, Britt rushed at Gans at the bell, punching fiercely at close range. The Examiner noted that Gans “stood his ground, but he was in bad shape. His eyes had a glittery look and he seemed to be choking in his efforts to suck air into his lungs. He stopped some of Britt’s body smashes with his elbows, but he could not cope with them all and he cringed visibly when Britt rammed his fists into the midriff.... In the long run he was almost ‘dead on his feet,’ while his blows had no more force than baby taps.”20 Britt hit Gans with a succession of rights and lefts to the jaw that sent him to the floor. With Graney refusing to call the fight on fouls, Britt’s victory appeared imminent. But as Gans attempted to rise, Britt could not contain his excitement and “pummeled him,” according to the Examiner, “on the side of the head with left and right punches.”21 With Gans down again, Britt expected Graney to call the fight in his favor. But when the referee jumped between the two fighters, pushed Britt out of the way, and slapped Gans on the shoulders to give him the win by disqualifying Britt on the foul, the challenger pulled back and in full attack mode socked Ed Graney, a former fighter himself, with a right squarely in the face.
Pandemonium ensued.
The San Francisco paper said,
Then there was trouble of various kinds. Graney smashed back and the referee and the native son pugilist went to the floor together, pummeling each other. They were dragged apart by big policemen and rushed into different angles of the ring. Britt wept in his chagrin at the way things had gone and Graney’s fighting blood was aroused.
“He struck me; he struck me,” Graney cried, and he wrenched off his Tuxedo and tried to get at Britt again. They were kept apart and Britt’s friends reasone
d with him.
“Graney is technically right,” is a remark that was tossed around among the Brittites.22
The San Francisco paper summed up the fight in a self-serving, “Britt-serving” way, “It may be said that disinterested onlookers also felt that it was a pity circumstances should have arisen to deprive the local lad of a full measure of credit when he had shown himself to be the master of a pugilist who has always been hailed as the greatest lightweight the world has produced.”23
Because of his manager’s strange arrangement with the Britt clan, Gans’ showing that evening was poor. Spectators never saw his clever offense, his stinging jabs, his invincible guard, or the clever techniques he had learned from spending half of his life in the boxing ring. Britt said when he issued Gans a challenge to a return fight: “I will fight him again for a side bet of $5000 or any other sum of money. He did not hit me a jarring punch at any stage of the game, and he did not seem able to stand the body punishment I gave him.”24 It took a seasoned boxer who had been in the ring with the master to comment on how unusual it was that Gans did not land his own jarring punch. Terry McGovern, listening to the telegraph reports with Tom Sharkey in New York, noted that Britt “did what few fighters have ever done to Gans in getting through his guard as he did.”25 Throughout his career Gans’ reflexes were as quick as a cat’s; he could virtually catch any punch with his mitts. He was too professional, too experienced in his art, to make such elementary blunders as were seen that night. There was an earlier time in Chicago when Gans put up an equally poor showing, but the papers at the end of 1904 never made the comparison with the McGovern fight. Britt had given his hometown what they wanted to see—their favorite son beating the black champion.
Gans’ Words Distorted and Used Against Him
The next day, Gans issued a statement loaded with subtext, one that would be misquoted to the present time. Gans said that he was willing to fight Britt “at any time he wants.” Gans’ next words appear hauntingly lucid a hundred years later: “I am sorry that the fight had to be decided on a foul, as I am confident that I can whip Britt any day in the week in fair fighting.”26 While the public was too intoxicated by Britt’s showing to take note of the words “fair fighting,” the statement was not lost on Al Herford and Willie Britt. It would cause manager and Gans to part ways.
Gans went on to say, “I am willing to fight Britt any time he wants to, but not at 133 pounds ringside.”27 The San Francisco paper’s headline read, “Sorry He Won on a Foul, but Says He Will Never Train Down Again to 133 Pounds Ring-side, as He is Too Old.” These words have been used to support the idea that after the Britt fight Gans left the lightweight division. But this is false. First, there was no stringent regulation weight for a specific title at that time. Clearly Gans fought Erne for the championship at a weight above 133. Fight managers negotiated weight and rules for a title challenge in the Articles of Agreement for the fight. And second, even more germane to the dispute over Gans’ title is the fact that only part of his statement is ever reprinted. Within the same breath he went on to say, “If we ever meet again I will insist on 133 at 3 o’clock, as it is asking too much to have me make that weight at ringside.”28 Gans was not refusing to fight at 133 pounds, he simply wanted to have the official weigh-in earlier in the afternoon, a demand not unreasonable and in perfect accordance with the Marquis of Queensberry Rules.
As early as the week after the fight, on November 8, a sum of $1,000 was deposited with the sports editor of The Chicago American to bind a return match between Joe Gans and Jimmy Britt at 134 pounds ringside. When asked by a reporter about this, Britt responded in what has become his self-proclaimed crowning as the lightweight champion, “I’m strickly a lightweight and I regard 133 in the ring as the lightweight limit. In short, I want the Examiner and the country to understand that Jimmy Britt is the best lightweight on earth. I want the nation to realize that Gans isn’t ready to meet me at the lightweight limit. He asks for 134 pounds. I feel sure I can beat Gans if he weighs 180 pounds, but for the present I am going to make matches only with pugilists who have an idea they can beat me at 133. In other words, I figure I have shown there isn’t a 133-pound man who stands a 500 to 1 chance with James Edward. After I have had all the ease and theatrical money I want I may think of beating Gans at catch weights and of taking on all the other 140-pounders on the horizon.”29
By the end of 1904 Gans had headed back to the East Coast. His wife was suing him for divorce and he and his manager would soon part professional company. For Gans, the outlook for 1905 looked bleak.
In January 1905, Jimmy Britt won the audience over with his humorous monologues and his brilliant boxing display at the “best Ladies night the Olympic Club has had for some time.”30 But it was a series of headlines in the San Francisco Examiner by sporting editor W.W. Naughton that put the nail in Gans’ championship coffin: “Lightweight Laurels Belong to Boxer James Edward Britt,” “Britt’s Punches Mayn’t Act ’Mediately but They’ve Made Him Lightweight Champ,” and “Gans Admits That He Cannot Make the Weight,” with subtitle: “Though the Native Son Lost on Foul, in Sporting Minds He Won the Battle.”31
Newspaper opinion was so weighty that what was written in the paper could become fact. The famous sports editor was no novice to the number one sport. And while he was in a league of racist newsmen (consider the condescending language he used to describe “Mistah” Gans in one headline), he knew talent and he knew about ring titles. Lagging in time as his article did, over a month after the fight, his lead editorial with its bold headline seemed out of place and time, but it nevertheless declared Britt the lightweight champion for several reasons: because he outfought Gans, and with a subtitle that indicated Gans refused to fight Britt again (i.e. relinquished the title) because he couldn’t make the weight. With its strange logic, the article was written as though Naughton’s boss had given him a directive to make Britt the world lightweight champion. Here is the first half of the editorial (the second half is titled “Britt Fills the Bill”) and the elaborate conceit that has influenced public opinion over the decades, leaving trails of misinformation that continue to haunt the Old Master’s legacy to this day:
If claims to pugilistic titles were aired in courts of law, the same as titles to real estate and other things, Joe Gans of Baltimore would have little difficulty in establishing his right to be called lightweight champion of the world.
In the first place he could produce ample testimony to show that it has been the custom from time immemorial for men contesting the lightweight championship to box at 133-pounds, ringside weight. Having thus laid a foundation, as the lawyers say, for the introduction of further evidence, Gans could proceed to make clear that he recently entered into contract with one Jimmy Britt to box for the aforesaid championship at 133 pounds ringside; that said Joe Gans and said Jimmy Britt did box for the lightweight championship; that Referee Edmund M. Graney declared Gans the winner, and that the title, purse and bets followed the decision.
On the face of it, it looks as if a judge and jury would be bound to regard these things as uncontrovertible facts, yet every fair-minded sporting man knows that Gans is champion only by virtue of a technicality and that the youngster who has proved himself the king pin of the 133-pound class in the year that is past is James Edward Britt.
In support of this contention it may be instanced that something tantamount to an admission that Britt is Gans’ master at the lightweight limit has come—and is still coming—from Gans stronghold. Manager Herford, according to report, wishes to arrange another match between Gans and Britt. Herford claims that illness and suffering prevented Gans from showing up in his usual form in the contest held in October, and from the fact that he asks for an afternoon weighing in case another match is arranged it is to be inferred that he considers it unwise to have Gans attempt the task of making 133 ringside a second time.
Incidentally Herford claims that of late years pugilists boxing for the lightweight championship have been pe
rmitted to weigh in hours before the gong summoned them to midring. Such may have been the case on sundry occasions when Gans was supposed to be boxing for the title, but it did not establish a new custom by any means.32
As history would prove, Gans could beat Britt in fair fighting. (Britt would quit after five rounds with Gans three years later, when Gans should have been even more “ringworn.”) It would be more than a year before the public would hear another side to this story, but by then Britt had taken the limelight with the help of a powerful newspaper, and effectively had stolen the title. Gans, although still champion, could barely make a living in 1905.
In Britt’s subsequent fights, many newspapers of the day, as Monte Cox has shown, referred to him only as the “white lightweight champion of the world.” But this distinction seemed enough to establish a new title line. Bat Nelson fought Britt and won. On March 14, 1906, Nelson fought Terry McGovern and the New York Times carried the headline “Crowd Hisses Fighters Clinched for 6 Rounds: Champion is the Stronger.”33 Nelson is called “the lightweight champion” in the Philadelphia bout, with the New York Times continuing to promote the erroneous lineal championship title. Six months later in Goldfield, these two “lines” would meet back up, and in pre-fight press every paper in the country would call Gans the champion and Nelson the contender.
Joe Gans Page 16