Joe Gans

by Colleen Aycock

  MIKE “TWIN” SULLIVAN: “I realize that he is one of the greatest fighters that ever lived.”

  SAM LANGFORD: “Joe Gans was the greatest fighter of all time.”

  ABE ATTELL: “The greatest fighter of all time was Joe Gans.”

  HARRY LENNY, boxer and trainer: “There was never anybody like Gans and there probably never will be.”2

  Boxing historians love to opine on the characteristics of “greatness.” More so than in any other field, historians are obsessed with who is the greatest of all time in the various weight categories and who is the best, pound-for-pound. During Gans’ lifetime sportswriters and fellow boxers rarely covered one of his fights or spoke of him without applauding some aspect of the champion’s technical genius. What follows are the views of premiere boxing experts and perspectives of scholars who typically have no occasion to comment on the sport. The interest taken by the latter group is remarkable for its rarity.

  In comparison to other champions, little has been written about Gans since the Old Master’s death. One current historian, however, has led the way in reviving Gans’ remarkable legacy and elevating his stature. Monte Cox answers the important question: Was Joe Gans the greatest fighter of all time?3 In a well-developed analysis, Cox rates Gans against the other all-time greats in ten categories that he considers essential for the purpose of comparison. The categories cover all aspects of boxing and include: punching power and effectiveness, speed and pace, defense, footwork, endurance, ability to take a punch, courage, and career record. Cox says of Gans that he was an iron man of the old timers, a “polished boxer-puncher” “who threw every punch perfectly, in combinations and with bewildering speed.”4

  When considering punching power and defense, Gans was judged by his peers and historians as unequaled, earning a “perfect score” on these points from Cox. Gans’ record of more than 100 knockouts attests to the power and dead-on accuracy of his short jolts. And while all of the experts say that he was a “clever,” “scientific” boxer, he proved to be a master of ring psychology. Anyone who has seen the film clip of the knockout of Kid Herman in Tonopah cannot fail to be amazed at how Gans in his wizardry plans the attack, corners his opponent, and draws him into the finishing blow, even turning to walk away as Herman falls to the canvas, knowing that he has landed the perfect punch. His speed with his hands and body stunned many opponents, leaving them confused and vulnerable. In the film clip with Battling Nelson (one is reminded of Ali), Gans dances around his prey, landing blow after forceful blow upon Nelson, blurring his senses, including the man’s instinct to protect his head.

  That Gans could fight with a broken hand in his long battle with Nelson and so disguise the fact from his opponent proves his resilience. Considering that Gans had a “weak constitution,” was bothered by stomach problems most of his fighting life, and spent the last years of his career simultaneously battling both the best men and the most debilitating disease of the time, his power and endurance are truly mystifying. At times, Gans’ remarkable defensive work with his mitts and elbows seemed more like offense. It was an elbow block of Jimmie Britt’s jab that broke the San Franciscan’s wrist and caused him to quit in their second bout. Gans’ defensive guard was so impenetrable that he was virtually impossible to knock down. As Monte Cox has pointed out, if you omit the two battles he lost to Nelson when he was so very ill and the orchestrated loss to McGovern by his management, Gans only lost five fights in his long career.5 His ring generalship was always noted in that he could control his opponent in ring center at close range, wasting little energy in either offense or defense. As Cox said, Gans was an expert at “stalking” and “baiting” his opponents.6 His superb skills, offensively and defensively, awed writers of his day who described them as gems of “beauty.”

  Monte Cox’s summary appraisal of the man is as follows:

  Joe Gans was the transcendent master boxer, a greatly experienced ring general, one who had tremendous punching power with his perfectly thrown Joe Louis like punches. Gans was quick on his feet, and a master at blocking and counter-punching to vital points. Joe was an extremely intelligent fighter from a scientific point of view who could feint his opponents out of position, but could not be feinted. If one combines the masterful absolute boxing skills of an experienced ring stylist with the great speed of a marvelous athlete, the tremendous power of a natural puncher, along with proven toughness and endurance one has a nearly unbeatable fighter. That describes Joe Gans. The greatest of them all!7

  In addition to the technical aspects of boxing, we would add the ability to rise to a great occasion. As Gans proved in the Goldfield fight and on many other occasions, he could deliver at the moment of truth.

  Some boxing historians complain that ratings are too often “subjective.” Bill Gray’s impressive system of ranking the greatest champions of all time uses a scientific, quantitative system when rating all of the fighters who held world titles. Gray’s system is scientific enough, but it places Gans 27.8 One of the reasons Gans ranks so low is because the numbers Gray uses in Gans’ case are inaccurate. For example, he says that Gans defended his title once a year from 1902 to 1904. However, the record shows at least 10 official title defenses in those years and over 30 victories for Gans during this period.

  How Would Gans Fare in the Ring Against Modern Fighters?

  For aficionados of the quadri-latero, as they say on Mundo del Box, there are two questions that must be answered in determining how Gans would compare to a lightweight champion of another era. In deciding who is the greatest of all time, we must determine if Gans could have beaten a great fighter like Roberto Duran (generally considered the all time greatest lightweight) if he had lived in Duran’s time. We must also determine if Duran could have beaten Gans if he had lived in Gans’ time. As for the first question, if Gans had lived in the 1970s, had access to all the modern training equipment, and had not lived his fighting life with his hands tied by gambling interests and racism, he could have easily defeated Roberto Duran. A 15-round fight for Gans was a relatively short evening. Duran, although a great fighter, was easily frustrated, as was shown in his infamous “No Mas” capitulation against Sugar Ray Leonard. As for the other question, could Duran have beaten Gans in 1906? Again the determining factor would have to be Gans’ superior endurance. Duran, so used to overwhelming his opponents, would not have been able to last over 20 rounds with Gans.

  It is always difficult to make comparisons across time and weight categories, but a good measure is the number of years the title was held along with the number of title defenses. A century later, Gans still toes the mark against the fighters who came after him.

  Benny Leonard, also considered by many the greatest lightweight ever, only defended a handful of times in his long reign as champion. Sportswriters Robert Edgren and Grantland Rice both admired Gans over Leonard. (Edgren would say that had Gans been white, he would have been the most popular fighter of all time.) In a discussion of Leonard, it should be noted that while Nat Fleischer generally rates Gans as his number one pick in the lightweight division, he vacillated over the years as to whether or not Gans could defeat Leonard if both men were in peak condition. Current boxing historian Mike Casey takes Fleischer to task, “Gans had such a cool and calculating mind. Was he anything less of a wizard than Leonard? If anything, he was even more so, and I believe his lively and inventive brain would have given him the ability to adjust to any distance and any set of circumstances. The evidence is extremely weighty in favor of Joe Gans being the greatest lightweight that ever lived. He was most definitely one of the greatest pound-for-pound ring mechanics of them all. And let us never forget that he achieved much of what he did with one hand tied behind his back.”9

  Welterweight Sugar Ray Leonard, as well, only made a few successful title defenses during his career. The great Sugar Ray Robinson, who won the middleweight title five times, successfully defended only a total of three times during all five reigns. Gans defended his title 17 times.
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br />   A comparison of their records in title fights follows:

  Gans

  1 win of the lightweight title

  1 draw for the welterweight title

  1 win of welterweight title

  17 successful defenses of the lightweight title

  1 loss of the lightweight title

  2 lost attempts

  19 total title-fight victories

  3 losses (had TB in two, cut eye in other fight)

  1 draw

  Robinson

  1 win of welterweight title

  5 successful defenses of welterweight title

  5 winning efforts of middleweight title

  5 losses of middleweight title

  4 unsuccessful attempts at middleweight title

  3 successful defenses of middleweight

  15 total title-fight wins

  9 losses

  In tribute to Sugar Ray Robinson was coined the phrase “best pound-for-pound.” Ray was a dashing dancing master who could fire punches at angles that seemed to defy gravity. No stranger to organized crime, Ray was a tough-minded businessman who held his own with thuggish types named “Blinkey” and worse. After killing one opponent in the ring, he was pressed by a grand jury as to whether he knew he had his man in trouble. “Mister,” Ray shot back, “my business is keeping those fellas in trouble.”10 Sugar Ray could punch as tough as he talked. But his defense did not compare with that of Gans. Robinson took many blows that Gans would have easily avoided.

  Monte Cox has on several occasions compared Gans with Sugar Ray Robinson, and Gans always comes out on top in his evaluation of who was the greater fighter, pound-for-pound. The authors agree with Cox that Gans comes out on top in the analysis based purely on boxing skills, and would add that, for all the reasons stated in this book, Gans also surpasses Sugar Ray in historical significance.

  Cox writes,

  In a head-to-head comparison with Ray Robinson, the most popular choice for greatest fighter of all time, Gans was equal in speed, skill and punching prowess and superior in his defense. Defensively Robinson relied primarily on his height, reach and footwork to avoid punches. When cornered he would duck, turn sideways and roll with punches but he was often hit cleanly by his opponents. Robinson was not clever when it came to eluding punches. In his ’51 fight against Lamotta he was even hit by Jake’s slow jabs. Gans, a master at stopping an opponent’s leads, would never be hit by this kind of a punch. Gans’ classic defense with glove and elbow blocking was much tighter and allowed him to stay in the pocket using angles to slip punches and his footwork was used to slide and counter. Joe Gans’ defensive capability was far superior to Robinson, and his speed, power and athleticism is comparable. In terms of sheer talent Gans was every bit as good as Robinson, and technically, dare I say, better overall.11

  Various accounts show Gans defended his title as few as 14 times, and as many as 17 times. This ambiguity relates to the peculiarities of the weigh-in process in his day. Managers often demanded a ringside weighing in of the contestants just before the hostilities were to begin. This would be in addition to the scaling the day before the fight. If both fighters “made the weight” the day before, but not the day of the bout, the fight would usually go on as scheduled but the championship would not be at stake, as with the case of Gans’ Baltimore fight with Gardner. Gans’ number of title defenses, whether 14 or 17, remains a record among the lightweight champions of history.

  It should be noted that today many followers of pugilism are calling for a return to the day-of-fight weigh in. Fighters in the lighter categories will often dry out and starve themselves in order to make a weight 10 to 20 pounds less than their natural poundage. They hope to replenish their bodies sufficiently after the weigh in. This has at times proven dangerous, for example, when Ricardo Sandoval nearly died in defending his bantamweight crown in the early 1980s against Orlando Canizales. Later he stated that he had starved himself for weeks before the fight in which he was knocked out.

  In comparison with the great Joe Louis, the level of competition and the number of fights that Gans won far exceeds that of Louis. Louis won his title after fighting just three years. In this time he faced tough competition in only one instance, the fight he lost against the German Max Schmeling.

  Joe Louis, in addition to inspiring pride in the black community by his defeat of the Nazi representative of their so-called master race, also had a way with words. When one opponent said he would run from Louis, the latter replied, “He can run but he can’t hide.” On the war with Japan and Germany, Louis said simply, “We will win because we are on God’s side.”12 Louis was certainly close to Gans in historical significance. But in the ring, Louis’ skills were nowhere near the equal of Joe Gans.

  Henry Armstrong, Hammering Hank, is often cited as one of the top fighters, or even the top, of all time. Armstrong overwhelmed opponents with his kamikaze windmill style for several years. But like all “face fighters” he soon wore out and became a punching bag.

  Many boxing historians suggest that ring statistics alone don’t tell the whole story of a fighter’s greatness—that it is impossible not to recognize other, less tangible qualities that add to a man’s record, such as a man’s character or what he brings to the sport. Gans’ mastery of the ring transcended the world of pugilism so much that sportswriters in the first half of the 20th century took entire pages of newspapers to remind their readers of Gans and how great a true athlete could be. It is quite regrettable that film technology was not sufficiently developed to capture the wealth of Gans’ great performances in the ring. But the lack of film carried with it the need for top-rate sportswriters to provide telegraph reports in real time. The blow-by-blow descriptions written by the greatest and fastest pens of the day survive in newspaper accounts to tell us how the Old Master’s fights looked from ringside.

  In the wake of the Gans-Nelson fight, Joe Gans took on super-human qualities, appearing invincible as king of all fighting men. Sportswriter and cartoonist Tad Dorgan depicts what it would look like if lightweight Gans fought against heavyweight Jim Jeffries. Dorgan thought so much of Gans’ ability that he believed his skill at defense would even the fighting odds. The caption reads, “How Gans the heavyweight would block Jeff’s drive and cut him with hooks and uppercuts” (illustration from The San Francisco Examiner, September 23, 1906).

  Many of the great sportswriters of Gans’ day and after wrote about what it was like to have seen the Old Master’s talents. Tom “Tad” Dorgan of the New York Evening Journal, the boxing authority who is credited with giving Gans the moniker the “Old Master,” asked his New York readers in 1911 to submit their choice for the greatest fighter of all time. The name they chose, over Sullivan, Jackson, Corbett, Dempsey, Fitzsimmons, Lavigne, or Griffo, was Joe Gans. In 1926 he asked the same question of San Francisco readers, sports who had seen Ketchel, Attell, Johnson, Dempsey and Jeffries; and once again, they picked Joe Gans, by two to one. Years later Dorgan said of Joe Gans’ talent and character, “he was the greatest fighter I have ever seen; never wasting a move, nothing was an effort for him.... And he was the most modest fighter I ever met.”13

  Writing in 1942, Bill Moran of Nevada said, “There can be only one Greatest Fighter Who Ever Lived,” and the “daddy of them all, the champion of all races, was a coffee-colored Baltimore boy named Joe Gans, who demonstrated with his two hands the perfect coordination that man is capable of developing between mind and muscle.”14

  Tom Mulvey of San Francisco, who was associated with boxing in California as long as Jim Coffroth, said that Joe Gans was his choice for the greatest man who ever wore boxing shoes. “I liked his style: it was so easy going. A master at blocking and a terrific man with a punch—when he hit he hit! He wasn’t a splashing mauler. Everything was timed with Gans and everything went like clockwork. Taken all in all, I don’t really believe that such a master in ring craft will ever live again.”15

  Perhaps the highest mark of a champion is not his stat
istical record at all, but exemplary sportsmanship and the will it takes, even against the cross-currents of belief, to “fight the good fight.” Referee Siler compared Joe Gans to a knight of the middle ages when he said of Gans’ behavior in the ring with Battling Nelson: “He has shown forbearance; he has shown courtesy; and in the ring on Monday he displayed chivalry which is not unworthy of being classed with the superlative notions of the gentle men of the middle ages who wore spring suits of boiler plate and tilted at everything in sight for the defense of some fair lady. He failed to take advantage of technicalities; he aided his fallen foe and was assaulted even while his glove still maintained his friendly grasp on that of his adversary. He fought a good fight when crippled, and although fouled more than once, refrained from taking the advantage which the rules gave him.”16

  Nat Fleischer, as noted, embraced the racist attitudes of his day to some degree, but this did not prevent him from acknowledging the greatness of black fighters. In the late sixties, having had time to see fighters up until Muhammad Ali’s day, he picked blacks as the greatest fighters in several divisions, including heavyweight, welterweight, and lightweight. Jack Johnson was his pick at heavyweight, Barbados Joe Walcott at welterweight, and Joe Gans at lightweight.

  Ralph Ellison never mentions Joe Gans by name in his novel Invisible Man, but some of the scenes and images are straight out of his life story. The battle royal, the manipulative relationships between black and white, and the old, blinded boxer in the pages of the book prove how powerful a metaphor for life was boxing during the first half of the twentieth century.

  H.L Mencken, premier scholar and chronicler of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, states that Joe “was probably the greatest boxer who ever lived and unquestionably one of the gamest.... Joe became widely known as the most gentlemanly pugilist then on earth. His manners were those of a lieutenant of the guards in old Vienna, and many managers sent their white boys to him to observe and learn.”17