Joe Gans

by Colleen Aycock

  The announcer moved to the center of the stage to the great anticipation of a crowd waiting to hear if the bout would go forward. “Patrons of the Tattersall’s Athletic Association will be pleased to know,” he bellowed, “That despite the efforts of certain fakers and blackmailers, which resulted in failure, the program of the association will be carried out as announced, with the sanction of his Honor, Carter H. Harrison, Mayor of Chicago.”16 The term “faker” caught on and can be seen in use during more contemporary events, such as the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago where Mayor Daley shouted at the protesters in the crowd, “You’re a faker.” Ill-informed of the long history of the term in Chicago, the press confused it with another “f” word.

  One sportswriter described the colorful pageantry of boxing retinues that followed, “The arena looked like the stage of a Bowery museum with a picnic scene in progress.”17 (It was a reference to the stage play “The Bowery after Dark” which starred Terry McGovern.) Danny Dougherty, one of McGovern’s seconds, walked up and placed in his man’s corner McGovern’s good luck chair, the one he always sat in for his bouts in Chicago. Gans entered the arena to a respectable greeting from the crowd. It was noted that he was wearing a “mixed striped affair of gray and red.” Al Herford, Harry Forbes, Henry Lyons and Samuel Bolen entered his corner. Hearty cheers went up from the crowd as soon as the fans caught sight of McGovern, “togged out in a sweater of crimson color, with an olive green collar.” His entourage also included Jack Donahue, Charles Mayhood, and his manager, Samuel Harris (flamboyantly dressed in “a salmon pink creation, having a green collar, with three black buttons along his left shoulder”).

  Almost as soon as the bout began that night, it was over and the controversy began to rage. Sportswriters dictated and telegraphers tapped out headlines and stories that would appear in papers the following day. Baltimoreans would be shocked at the news from Chicago “Gans Knocked Out,” “All Over Within Two Rounds.”18 Headlines in Chicago denounced the bout as a bald fake, in a bout “heavily scented with crookedness.”19 The unlucky thirteenth of December was also the night the lights went out in public boxing halls in Chicago, shutting down the sport for more than twenty years.

  Each time participants engaged in an illegal boxing match, they risked going to jail. Gans especially had a lot to worry about with respect to criminal charges, afraid as he was of being incarcerated in the atmosphere of the times. Newspapers in the cities where he fought reported lynchings in the United States with mobs storming jails and yanking their victims from the legal process to exact immediate revenge. Reports of lynchings in American papers offer a chilling reminder of the era and what it must have been like to be a black gladiator facing a white audience.

  For Gans his ring opponents were the least of his objects of fear. Chilling accounts of blacks being lynched appeared alongside coverage of Gans’ fights. On the day after the first Erne fight, the Atlanta Constitution reported, “this morning in the heart of town the body of a negro, Louis Rice, was found dangling from the limb of a tree. The lynching is said to have been the result of a trial in the circuit court of Lauderdale County, during which Rice testified in favor of one of his color who was charged with the murder of a white man named Goodrich.”20

  In his book One Hundred Years of Lynchings, Ralph Ginzburg cites other headlines from 1900 and 1901, the time when Gans made his ascent to the title. Some of those headlines read:

  “An Innocent Man Lynched” (New York Times, June 11, 1900)

  “Two Blacks Strung Up, Grave Doubt of their Guilt” (Houston Post, June 11, 1900)

  “Negro Freed, then Lynched” (Chicago Record, Jan. 4, 1901)

  “Negro Suspect Eludes Mob, Sister Lynched instead” (N. Y. Tribune, March 17, 1901)

  “Negro Burned at Stake” (Chicago Record Herald, Aug. 8, 1901)

  “Lynch Mob May Have Erred” (Chicago Record Herald, March 31, 1902)

  “Negro Tortured to Death by Mob of 4000” (Chicago Record Herald, May 23, 1902)21

  Details from the crimes reported are either shockingly grotesque: “His head was mashed almost to a pulp before he was dragged out of his cell” (New York Herald, June 8, 1903); or morbidly matter of fact: “William Carr, Negro, was lynched without ceremony here today by an orderly party of thirty masked men who carried him to a railroad trestle and hanged him. He had been accused of killing a white man’s cow” (New York Tribune, March 18, 1906).22

  Lynchings in America were commonly understood at the beginning of the twentieth century to mean the torture of a black man by either hanging him from a stake (tree, pole, etc.) or burning him at the stake, a torture usually associated with medieval times rather than the Progressive Era in America. These horrific acts were not specific to the South. Before the Gans-McGovern fight, the Chicago paper, The Broadax, ran this front page article, December 1, 1900, with the title “Words of Warning to the Negro.” “It is from the northern state of Colorado and not from the South, that news of the latest horrible torture of a Negro comes. This Negro was a mere boy of 16.” He was “tortured at the stake.”23 Only a few days earlier in Phoenix, Arizona, The Anaconda Standard reported an attempted suicide of Ernest Scott, a youth charged with attempted assault of two white girls. He had swallowed broken glass from a medicine bottle for fear of “being burned or hanged.” The paper reported that he would probably die the next day.24

  Details of the human burnings at the stake continued for decades and could fill ghastly volumes. “Burning pieces of pine were thrust into his eyes, the burning timbers were held to his neck, and after his clothes were burned off to other parts of his body. He was tortured in a horrible manner.” “His flesh began to drop away from his legs and they were reduced to bones, once or twice he attempted to pick up hot coals and swallow them in order to hasten death. Each time the coals were kicked from his grasp by members of the mob” (Memphis Press, January 27, 1921).25

  Newspapers of the day offered grim reminders of what happened to black men who did not follow white men’s orders. Muhammad Ali said of the pioneers of the prize-ring who had to fight during this era, “I was inspired by the courage and confidence they must have had during the days when blacks were being lynched and jailed in the South for just bumping into a white man on the streets or talking back to a white policeman.”26

  Because of the prefight legal shenanigans, Gans’ life was at risk in front of the hostile Chicago crowd whether he won or lost. If he had to “fight to orders,” and his orders were to lose, he risked being charged with fraud and jailed. Immediately after the fight, Gans and his manager Al Herford defended themselves against accusations of fraud by stating that Gans had been hit by hard body blows, much like the “solar plexus” punch that Bob Fitzsimmons had used to wrest the heavyweight crown from Gentleman Jim Corbett. The explanations fell on deaf ears.

  In viewing the fight film it is clear that Gans looked out of sorts from the get-go. Terry McGovern was a fearsome puncher. But Gans was very experienced and, in addition to the weight advantage, he had a distinct height and reach advantage that he certainly knew how to use. However, he did not use it against McGovern. He also did not use his piston-like left jab to keep McGovern at bay. Gans allowed his foe to wade in unmolested whatsoever by Gans’ own punches. Even so, his defensive mastery is evident on film in the way he ducks and parries McGovern’s “knockout blows,” as if his body is too well-trained in avoiding punches for him to credibly fake being knocked out. As Joyce Carol Oates explains, “A boxer-turned-actor might be expected to perform, with no excess of zeal or talent.” But “boxing is so refined, yet so raw a sport that no match can be successfully thrown; the senses simply pick up on what is not happening, what is being held back, as a sort of ironic subtext to what is actually taking place.”27

  McGovern, a powerful spark plug of a man, threw every punch “with bad intentions,” as Mike Tyson used to say. And while some, including the referee, claimed that he never hit Gans with a blow hard enough to rock a baby much less kno
ck him out, there is credible evidence from the film that Gans was hit with a solid body blow in the first round, the one that he later said incapacitated him for the remainder of the bout. But he does not double up or even show any sign of being hurt. If Gans was earnestly trying to win, he could have easily kept the shorter McGovern at the end of his marvelous left jab, which even Joe Louis acknowledged as the best ever in boxing. Gans made no attempt to clinch after the knockdowns, which from his other fights he obviously knew how to do, and his corner men never objected to the foul reported at the end of the first round.

  Here is the round-by-round report that came into Baltimore from Chicago:

  Round 1—McGovern led with his left. He rushed Gans to the ropes, pounding him very hard on the ribs with his left glove. McGovern missed right and left and then sent the colored man back with a left to the jaw. Gans was acting on the defensive. McGovern rushed, landing right and left on the ribs, and Gans uppercut under the heart.

  Gans next put right and left to face and McGovern sent left and right to the jaw. He sent Gans staggering with right and left, and following him up closely, put right and left on him again. Terry next sent Gans to the ropes with right and left to the face; then he landed a stiff right upon the jaw, staggering his man. A left on the face nearly floored the colored man, and another left smash on the jaw knocked Gans down.

  Gans arose at the count of seven. He was knocked down again one second after the bell rang. He was assisted to his corner in a groggy condition. No claim of foul was made by Gans for the blow after the bell.

  Round 2—As soon as the men came from their corners McGovern made a rush and put two lefts and a right to the jaw. Gans went down flat, arose slowly to one knee and took the count of seven. As he rose McGovern came in again with a fierce rush, sending his left to the body and whipping his right across to the jaw on the break away.

  Gans kept backing, but twice swung feebly at McGovern’s jaw. The blow would not have injured a baby, and McGovern paying no attention to them came in with a hard right on the ear and a left to the mouth. He kept right after Gans, who kept backing around the ring. When the colored boy stood his ground McGovern was at him like a flash, landing two lefts on the jaw and a right on the jaw immediately after it, sending Gans flat on his back. He took the full count of nine, but was very unsteady when he arose.

  McGovern caught him flush on the jaw and down he went once more. Up he came again and down he went faster than he got up. A left and right to the jaw did the business this time. It was all over and McGovern was a sure winner. He sent a right to the jaw as Gans wobbled to his feet again and the colored boy went down again. He came up, almost gone, without a chance in the world to win, and as he lifted his knees from the floor McGovern settled him. It was left and right to the jaw, then a right again and Gans lay on his back, the blood oozing from his mouth, the beaten man in a fight which had no share of credit or glory for him. He rolled over on his face, got up on one knee and remained in that position while Siler called off the 10 seconds. He was able to walk to his corner with the aid of his seconds and with the exception of a bleeding mouth showed no sign of hard punishment.28

  After falling down five times without being hit cleanly, Gans casually rose and shook McGovern’s hand. Terry McGovern turned and waved to the crowd acknowledging the deafening cheers. Before he could reach his corner, his manager and corner men lofted him into the air and carried him to his chair. Those nearest the ring poured onto the canvas, swarming his corner. “He only hit me once and that was in the first minute of the first round,” McGovern said jubilantly, still panting from the fight, “He poked his left into my mouth good and hard, but I knew I had him on the next exchange.”29

  The loss was shocking to a country of fight followers. In Milwaukee a Frenchman by the name of George Rondeau had bet all of his money on Gans. He was so distraught at the loss that his friend, Charles Ryan, recommended the “liquor cure.” When they were both totally soused inside the Bintz Hotel bar, Ryan pulled a gun and created quite a stir among the patrons. Rondeau grabbed the gun from his friend and went out into the alley, where he tried to commit suicide. Luckily his hand was so unsteady that when he fired, the bullet “missed its mark.” The man lived, but the episode illustrates the high profile of the fight and its betting stakes.30

  What had happened to Gans? His seconds offered only one excuse for their man, that his stomach had been a problem for him all day.

  The exhilaration of the McGovern win had hardly set in when spectators began calling the match a fraud. Al Herford telegraphed a statement to the Baltimore Sun on the night of the loss:

  No doubt you have got reports of the Gans-McGovern bout not being a genuine contest and on its merits. Now I want to say this for Joe Gans and myself that Joe got a left hand, body punch in the stomach the first crack out of the box in the first round which completely upset him. It was the same blow that Fitzsimmons whipped Corbett with in Carson City—a solar plexus one. There is no one in the sporting world who has ever found me to be mixed up in a transaction of that kind, as I brought Gans up from the bottom of the ladder when he was fighting for a $100 purse and got him as near to the championship class as any other lightweight has ever been. So how could I afford at this stage of the game to be mixed up in that way? The cause of all the rumors is that there are some people in Chicago who believe Terry McGovern can whip Jeffries in a six round bout and this class is mostly a pot of sure thing gamblers, so when Terry went out of his class to meet Joe they said from the beginning he would knock Gans out. Why the betting here in Chicago three weeks ago was 1 to 2, Terry would stop Joe. You can’t stop people from betting their money. Now, If any one paper will show one proof that Joe Gans laid down to Terry McGovern, I will say they are right, but I don’t believe in people accusing one of being implicated in a thing of this kind unless they can prove the same. Now another thing. It is taking credit from Terry McGovern to use those ‘fake’ remarks. He won from Gans and he won fairly. Now, if McGovern will give us a return battle of 20 rounds at 133 pounds at 7 o’clock I will bet any part of $3,000, let the winner take all.”

  —Joe Gans

  —Al Herford31

  Each of the fighters made statements to the press. Gans issued a signed statement to the Chicago Times-Herald that was reprinted in the Baltimore Sun: “The better man won. That is all I can give in explanation of the result. I did not ‘lay down.’ I was hit hard early in the fight and that seemed to take the wind out of me. I don’t think there is anyone who can stand up before McGovern at the lightweight limit.”32 McGovern issued this signed statement to the Times-Herald: “I did not fake, that is a certainty. I tried to finish the fight as soon as I possibly could, but I must confess the result was somewhat of a surprise to me.”33

  The next morning, promptly at 9:00, Gans, Herford, McGovern, Harris, Siler, and Houseman found themselves in court. Because Prosecutor Frank Hall was not able to produce witnesses and because the charges were brought and the arrest warrants issued before the bout actually took place, the charges were dismissed. The judge told the fighters, promoters, and managers to go home.

  George Siler, referee for the fight and sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune, wrote the next day “I do not wish to accuse any fighter of faking but if Gans was trying to win last night I do not know much about the game. Gans, of course, is entitled to the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not numerous body blows which Terry pumped into him in close quarters during the early part of the fight weakened him. But the fact remains that the few blows he delivered were the weakest ever seen from a man of his known hitting ability.”34

  The Times Herald concluded that the match was “heavily scented with crookedness.”35 The conclusion was based upon two things: a betting pattern observed when men at ringside passed through the aisles offering even money that Gans would be knocked out, and Siler’s report that the “fight had a bad look,” in that he didn’t see any blow that could have caused Gans’ grogginess in the first roun
d. The Tribune reported that the betting had turned from Gans to McGovern on the day before the fight, that Gans had been up nearly all night the evening before the fight, and that “colored” sports all over the city were betting for McGovern.

  When Herford returned to Baltimore, he said that the newspapers had called the fight a fake, but he insisted again that Gans had been dealt a hard hit to the ribs. He said, “When [Gans] went to his corner he told me that he felt as if the flesh had been torn from his ribs. That punch weakened him so much that he was an easy proposition after that.”36 Herford went on to say that to this point Gans had made for him a total in purses and bets a sum of $87,000 and that he would not be a party to a fake. He said that Gans typically fights 6, 8, even 14 rounds defensively before he knocks his opponent out.

  Gans and his manager professed to have lost a good bit of money on the fight. Herford and Harris had bet each other $2500 on their men the night before the fight and Herford bet additional money with spectators. Back in Baltimore at the Germania Maennerchor Hall during a fight that night set up by the Eureka Athletic Club, Herford’s brother Maurice placed a bet that Gans would win. George Mantz, referee of the Broad-Whistler fight that night, bet money on Gans. There were few people betting for McGovern, so when money was shown for McGovern, bets were quickly taken up on Gans. It was noted that these few betters on McGovern won big. When the returns were announced in the ring that night that Gans had lost, a shout went up.37 The shout may have come from the money-winning crowd that had bet on McGovern. One simple explanation for the rejoicing was that Gans was not fighting in Baltimore; he had been scheduled for fights in venues other than Baltimore, perhaps making for anti–Gans sentiment in the Monumental City.