The Great White Hopes

by Graeme Kent

  Even so, it was not always easy for Palzer to draw the crowds. On one occasion, when he was matched with Charlie Miller, the sale of tickets was so disappointing that Jimmy Johnston, who was promoting the bout, decided to take extreme measures. The Secretary of State at the time was William Jennings Bryan, a charismatic public speaker. With his tongue in his cheek, Johnston sent a telegram to Bryan, offering him $300 to deliver from the ring a lecture on a subject of his choice before the Palzer–Miller bout.

  Jennings, who recognised a fellow self-publicist when he saw one, treated the offer solemnly and declined with thanks. That was all that Johnston had been waiting for. He sent copies of both telegrams to all the local newspapers. The resultant publicity started the tickets moving freely again. All, as one of Johnston’s competitors said with reluctant admiration, for the cost of a dollar telegram.

  Unfortunately, Palzer let his opportunities slip. Increasingly homesick and disappointed by the percentages of the purses being passed on to him by O’Rourke, the heavyweight fell out with his manager. He went off in a huff and refused to train, turning down a number of offers for good-money bouts against meaningful opponents. In an interview with the Police Gazette, Palzer enumerated some of his grievances: ‘I have only sixty dollars to my name, yet I’ve won many thousands of dollars in the boxing game . . . On the road I have been getting a few hundred dollars now and then, while O’Rourke has been keeping big money each week. He’s tried to get me to drink wine and go out with the fly set . . . but I refused, as I never drink anything stronger than tea or coffee and I want to be fit all the time. I don’t believe that O’Rourke is on the square with me and I’m going to break away from him. He made me sign some kind of contract once, but he never let me have a copy of it. He won’t let me fight anybody unless he can get the lion’s share of the coin, and I am tired of it all.’

  The garrulous O’Rourke retorted in a scandalised fashion, accusing his White Hope of extreme disloyalty, claiming that the heavyweight was ungrateful and untruthful and pointing out that the boxer was attached to his manager by a cast-iron contract. The big man sulkily stayed out of the ring for more than four months before engaging in a minor six-round, no-decision contest with trial horse and former Jack Johnson opponent Tony Ross in Philadelphia.

  Reluctantly, Palzer then allowed himself to be reconciled with his manager, and at last signed to defend his white heavyweight championship against another promising White Hope, the former cowboy Luther McCarty, but his heart was no longer in boxing. Even though Jack Johnson was busy living the high life and touring with his lucrative vaudeville act, and had not entered the ring since his contest against Jeffries in 1910, the search for a White Hope continued to dominate the headlines.

  James W. Coffroth, one of the leading promoters, admitted that only a white heavyweight challenger would draw the crowds against Jack Johnson. In an interview in the French publication La Boxe in 1911, he admitted that it would be impossible in the USA to match Johnson against one of his black challengers like Sam Langford or Joe Jeanette. ‘It would be a great fight, the two negroes would not miss the opportunity to inflict the necessary and sufficient hiding that we would be entitled to expect from them. But the problem is that in America, they would not stand a chance of success. Why? For the only reason that the Blacks are hated in America. A fight that would put two of them face to face would not attract big crowds.’

  So would-be white challengers rolled off the assembly lines almost with the regularity of Henry Ford’s new Model Ts, although with less durability. Tom Kennedy was one of them. Because, unlike most boxers of the era, he had fought as an amateur, he was regarded as almost effeminate by some of his peers and given the quite erroneous title of the Millionaire Boxer. Managed by Dan McKetrick, a sports writer, he secured some creditable wins but lost a considerable amount of face when he was defeated by Bombardier Billy Wells in the latter’s second fight on his visit to the USA.

  Kennedy plodded on. He fought a particularly good ten-round, no-decision bout with a red-headed ex-sailor called Frank Moran. The two big men became close friends. When the globetrotting Moran was scheduled to sail to Europe for a series of contests, the former adversaries celebrated heartily together the night before, and a rather drunken Kennedy dutifully stumbled on board the liner to see his friend off. He fell asleep, and when he woke up the vessel was many miles out to sea. Not at all put out, Moran invited his fellow heavyweight to join him for an indefinite holiday. He promised the purser to pay the other man’s fare retrospectively from his European purses, until Kennedy could line up his own fights overseas.

  The sporting world was then surprised by the announcement that another White Hope had appeared on the scene. George Hackenschmidt, the Russian Lion, well into his thirties and the former heavyweight wrestling champion of the world, let it be known that he was going into training to re-emerge as a boxer in order to challenge Jack Johnson. An Estonian, Hackenschmidt was an enormously strong man, capable of pressing a weight of 20 stone over his head.

  Journalists who witnessed his early training sessions wondered, however, if perhaps he was still concentrating too much on the development of strength at the expense of speed when the Russian carried a 5-hundredweight sack of cement on his shoulders, with a heavyweight sparring partner perched on top of the sack.

  Nevertheless, the wrestler’s attempt at transmogrification into a boxer secured plenty of publicity, until an Australian reporter revealed that Hackenschmidt had pulled exactly the same stunt a few years before, at another quiet time in his professional career.

  It had happened on a tour of Australasia in 1907. Hackenschmidt had tried to launch a similar publicity campaign then, claiming that he was going into training for a boxing match with Philadelphia Jack O’Brien. Gunner Moir, the British heavyweight fighter, who was a member of the wrestler’s troupe, claimed that he had given the Russian boxing lessons and that his pupil showed great promise.

  Unfortunately, Sydney reporters with a keen eye for a story had persuaded the grand old man of Australian boxing, Larry Foley, to visit the gymnasium in which the wrestler was training and spar a few rounds with him. Foley was credited with introducing modern boxing methods to Australia.

  Although he had been 60 years old at the time, Foley had had no trouble with the lumbering and inept Hackenschmidt. Leaving the ring, Foley had told the reporters curtly that any third-rate heavyweight boxer would dispose of the Russian Lion with ease. Hackenschmidt thereupon announced with dignity that he was taking Foley’s advice and sticking to wrestling.

  When the American newspapers realised that, five years later, the Russian was merely resurrecting his 1907 ploy in order to bring the crowds back to his vaudeville act, they dropped him abruptly from the register of White Hopes.

  There were plenty of giants willing to take his place. Managers continued to find and boost new prospects. Six-feet-four-inchestall Fred Fulton was rated for a time. Big and strong, he was championed enthusiastically by his manager Jack Reddy. The handler gave newspapers a list of his heavyweight’s abilities, which, he claimed, eminently suited him for the title of the best of the White Hopes.

  These characteristics included: ‘He is as fast on his feet as a lightweight. He can outbox any heavyweight. He has a straight left that no heavyweight of the present time can block. If necessary he can dance around any heavyweight in the business for hours. He has a knockout punch in either hand. He has never had a black eye or bloody nose. He is of Scotch–Irish parentage. He has never chewed, smoked or drank. He is positively sure no man in the world can beat him.’

  Fulton rattled off a string of victories, many of them by knockouts, defeating Al Kaufmann, Arthur Pelkey, Jim Flynn and Gunboat Smith, but a knockout loss to Al Palzer set him back. He lost two torrid bouts with the newly savage Carl Morris. In each one Morris displayed his full repertoire of dirty tricks. The quick-tempered Fulton replied in kind with such energy that on both occasions he managed to get himself disqualified first. After th
eir first bout, the referee said that he could have ruled Morris out at least twenty times if only he had not ejected Fulton from the ring first.

  Eventually, in 1917, after the White Hope campaign was over, Fulton lost face when he was outsmarted in a gymnasium spar by Australian middleweight Les Darcy. Darcy was going through a bad patch himself, having smuggled himself out of Australia during the First World War, contrary to regulations, to pursue his boxing career in the USA while many of his peers were fighting and dying. Nevertheless, he was a fine boxer. A reporter from the Globe, who witnessed his gym humiliation of the huge Fulton, wrote, ‘The result was a revelation. Despite his recent inactivity Darcy gave the slowmoving Minnesota White Hope a boxing lesson which was abruptly terminated by Fulton pulling off his gloves after two rounds.’

  Some of the new White Hopes managed to attract backers of great prestige. When the Englishman from Helsingham in Cumberland, Tom Cowler, crossed the Atlantic, coincidentally just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he managed to get a fight in Canada, where he was seen on a theatrical tour by no less an authority than James J. Corbett. The former world champion declared that the young man was a heavyweight of great promise. Corbett even gave the Englishman tips on his ring performances. ‘The fellow has something these other alleged heavyweights didn’t have,’ the old heavyweight champion told the Beloit Daily News of 23 July 1915. ‘He’s got the best left jab I ever saw or felt and I have seen and felt, also dodged, quite a few.’

  In Great Britain, Cowler had defeated some fair second-rate heavyweights like Iron Hague and Ben Taylor. He started off well enough in the USA, holding his own in no-decision contests against Gunboat Smith, Porky Flynn and Bill Brennan, but he lost to Battling Levinsky and was knocked out by Jack Dillon and, in the first round, by Fred Fulton. In 1916, less than two years after he had arrived in the States, Cowler announced his retirement. The Washington Post of 13 February 1916 said of the Cumbrian, ‘His physicians have advised him to retire, as he is said to be in poor health and his condition such that further bouts might prove dangerous.’

  Jim Corbett, his erstwhile mentor, concurred, publicly washing his hands of the Englishman. ‘There’s a lad who possessed all the physical make-up of a champion,’ he said bitterly. ‘I took a fancy to him because I admired his style and I liked the way he punched. He had everything that a good fighter should have. He was clever, he was fearless, but he couldn’t think.’

  Cowler continued to fight sporadically, but, as an Englishman active in New York while his fellow countrymen were engaged in a war, he encountered a great deal of hostility. This was evidenced in the Des Moines Register of 15 January 1917. Describing Cowler’s fight with the former sailor Gunboat Smith in Rochester, the ringside reporter wrote of Smith’s manager Jim Buckley’s actions at the start of the fight, ‘At the opening of the round Buckley stood up straight with his face pressed against the ropes and yelled to the Gunner as follows: “Fight him hard, Gunner! Remember that you were there when your country wanted you, right there on Uncle Sam’s battleship. Remember that you didn’t run away at the first sight of danger!’

  The references to Smith’s patriotism must have puzzled the Gunboat, a former heavyweight champion of the Pacific Fleet, because, by his own admission, he had spent most of his sea duty in the waters off China and Japan serving time in the brig for insubordination. However, the writer went on to report that Cowler, who lost in the tenth round, was obviously affected by Buckley’s remarks: ‘Cowler is tired of being asked why he isn’t in the trenches.’

  Cowler was reduced to the status of a mere ‘opponent’, fighting wherever he could earn a few dollars, crossing and recrossing the continent by train. A list of the cities in which he fought gives some idea of the peripatetic life led by the White Hopes. Between 1915 and 1919 Cowler visited, often more than once, New York, Boston, Rochester, Wheeling, Buffalo, Providence, St Louis, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Jersey City, Oakland and Baltimore.

  In 1919, after Johnson had lost his title, Cowler actually fought the fat and washed-up former champion in Mexico City. Johnson still had enough to knock the Englishman out, but Cowler was as game as a pebble. Shortly before the end, Johnson muttered to him, ‘Why don’t you give up, Tom?’ to which the Cumbrian replied rather incoherently, ‘I shall when you leave me alone!’

  An unusual White Hope was the Canadian Sandy Ferguson. A big, brave and reckless man, Ferguson was born in New Brunswick in 1879 and started boxing when he was 19. He fought out of Boston and was undefeated in his first sixteen contests. He soon developed a reputation as a man who would fight anyone anywhere. Unlike most of his white contemporaries, Ferguson never drew the colour line and went in with most of the leading black fighters of his era.

  From an early age Ferguson displayed a reckless streak which was to cause him considerable grief. In 1901, he secured a post as sparring partner to the gangling Cornish-born Bob Fitzsimmons, the former world heavyweight champion. Ferguson proved to be no respecter of persons, as the Police Gazette of 15 June reported with a straight face: ‘Bob Fitzsimmons has lost his sparring partner, “Sandy” Ferguson, of whom great things were expected. While boxing the other night “Sandy” started to mix it up with Bob. The result was a smashed ear, a bloody nose and several other catastrophes for “Sandy”, followed by his sad departure for his home in Boston.’

  In the same year, still smarting from the adverse newspaper publicity, Ferguson embarked upon a ten-fight tour of Britain, where, in three fights, he lost to, beat and drew with a leading English heavyweight, Ben Taylor. He was overmatched, however, when he came in as a last-minute substitute for Bob Armstrong to box one of the leading black American heavyweights, Denver Ed Martin, at the National Sporting Club. Ferguson put up a very brave show before being beaten in the fifth round.

  Ferguson’s courageous display against the big black fighter was commented upon favourably when the Canadian returned home at the beginning of 1903. He was regarded as a good rough-and-tumble fighter who needed only to pay more attention to his training to be worthy of a title shot against James J. Jeffries. If ever there was a time for a white fighter to go carefully and avoid all the hard men while his contender status was strengthened, it was now.

  Instead, feckless and broke, Ferguson agreed to meet the new rising black star Jack Johnson over ten rounds in Boston. Ferguson fought bravely but was outclassed by the black boxer. One newspaper account said that the white fighter was made to look a novice against the silky skills of the Galveston man.

  For a white fighter to have gone in with Jack Johnson once could have been seen as an error, but the foolishly brave Ferguson then fought the future champion four more times over the next three years. In fact, Ferguson was a heavy drinker and had an expensive lifestyle, when he could afford one. Mixed-race matches were frowned upon in many quarters, but they drew large crowds, and even losing to a prominent black fighter like Johnson, Langford or Jeanette could earn a white boxer a good purse.

  Ferguson soon drank away most of his money from the first Johnson bout, and the next month he turned up with boozy optimism at the black fighter’s contest with Joe Butler at the Philadelphia Athletic Club. After Johnson had knocked Butler out in the third round, Ferguson reeled into the ring and challenged the victor to a return match. Johnson, who had not even broken into a sweat against Butler, looked at his challenger with the anticipation of a cat offered a saucer of cream, and agreed quickly, before the white man could change his mind.

  They fought a six-round, no-decision bout in the same hall two months later. This time Ferguson did better, but all the newspaper verdicts went in his opponent’s favour. Ferguson then boosted his record with an impressive first-round knockout against Bob Armstrong, a veteran black fighter. This victory may have given Ferguson delusions of grandeur, although it is more likely that he had drunk most of his ring earnings away again and was broke. He accepted an offer to fight Johnson over twenty rounds in Colma in December 1903. Johnson won handily over t
he distance, although Ferguson won plaudits for his phlegmatic endurance.

  Ferguson, however, was already building up a reputation as an unreliable fighter. On 26 March 1904, the Police Gazette reported that the Boston-based fighter had stormed out of a proposed match in Gloucester, Massachusetts. ‘The main attraction was to have been between Sandy Ferguson of Chelsea and Walter Johnson, of Philadelphia, but owing to some disagreement in the choice of a referee, Ferguson would not go on and left the club.’

  Ferguson met Jack Johnson in another six-round, no-decision meeting, and then, a year later, on 18 July 1905, the two men had their most spectacular clash. It took place at the Pythian Rink in Chelsea, Massachusetts. By this time the Canadian heavyweight had built up quite a following with his spectacularly inept efforts to best Johnson, and a large crowd turned up to see what his opponent would do to him this time. Every seat was taken in the packed, sweltering hall, and at the back standees were crushed shoulder to shoulder in a swaying mass.

  The first three rounds were probably the best Ferguson had ever fought. He stood toe to toe, slugging it out with Johnson, who was forced to abandon his normal defensive mode. The crude Canadian landed a number of crushing right hands on Johnson’s shaven head, and even forced the black man back to the ropes on several occasions.

  By the fourth round Ferguson’s lack of fitness caught up with him, and Johnson began to surge forward as the crowd screamed to the white fighter not to give up his advantage. The contest was so exciting that brawls were breaking out all over the hall between supporters of the two heavyweights.

  By the fifth round, Ferguson had shot his bolt and was beginning to foul Johnson in a desperate effort to stay in the match. In the sixth round he hurtled a left hook deliberately into his opponent’s groin. Johnson screamed and fell writhing to the canvas. In an effort to fool the referee and get him to start the count, Ferguson leapt over the ropes and headed from the ring through the incensed crowd, trying vainly to give the impression of a victorious fighter abandoning the field of conflict in triumph.