Jack Johnson (boxer) - World Heavyweight Champion

World Heavyweight Champion

Johnson's efforts to win the world heavyweight title were thwarted, as world heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries refused to face him then. Black and white boxers could meet in other competitions, but the world heavyweight championship was off limits to them.

However, Johnson did fight former champion Bob Fitzsimmons in July 1907, and knocked him out in two rounds. There is a report that Johnson even fought and KO'd Jim Jeffries' brother Jack, and taunted him about it to force a fight, with no success.

Johnson finally won the world heavyweight title on December 26, 1908, a full six years after lightweight champion Joe Gans became the first African American boxing champion. Johnson's victory over the reigning world champion, Canadian Tommy Burns, in Sydney, Australia, came after stalking Burns around the world for two years and taunting him in the press for a match. The fight lasted fourteen rounds before being stopped by the police in front of over 20,000 spectators. The title was awarded to Johnson on a referee's decision as a knockout.

After Johnson's victory over Burns, racial animosity among whites ran so deep that it was called out for a "Great White Hope" to take the title away from Johnson. As title holder, Johnson thus had to face a series of fighters each billed by boxing promoters as a "great white hope," often in exhibition matches. In 1909, he beat Frank Moran, Tony Ross, Al Kaufman, and the middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel.

The match with Ketchel was originally thought to have been an exhibition, and in fact it was fought by both men that way, until the 12th round, when Ketchel threw a right to Johnson's head, knocking him down. Quickly regaining his feet, and very annoyed, Johnson immediately dashed straight at Ketchell and threw a single punch, an uppercut, a punch for which he was famous, to Ketchel's jaw, knocking him out. One of the most pervasive myths is that several of Ketchel's teeth stuck in Johnson's glove, because the filmed fight shows Johnson touching his wrist after having knocked Ketchell out. However, former lightweight champion Jimmy Britt swore that this did not happen, but that his brother Willus, who was Ketchell's manager at the time, found a tooth in a ring somewhere, and later had it mounted on his watchchain. When Willus unexpectedly died, he inherited the gold watch and chain, in a collection of his personal belongings, which shortly disappeared, and he never recovered it. Even a casual inspection of the saggy horsehair-filled 5 oz. gloves would show that it would be impossible for teeth to stick to a glove, apart from the fact that it would have been the only time in recorded boxing history that such a thing had occurred.

Johnson's fight 4 months earlier with Philadelphia Jack O'Brien had been a disappointing one for Johnson: though weighing 205 pounds (93 kg) to O'Brien's 161 pounds (73 kg), he could only achieve a six-round draw with the great middleweight.