Joe Gans Read online

  The subject of boxing and its association with the fringe elements of society in the Gay Nineties was a topic of hot political debate. The “manly sport” was so dangerous, causing frequent injuries and an occasional death in the ring, that it was eventually banned in most states and countries during Gans’ lifetime. Gans’ own fight in Chicago would be the death knell of boxing in that state for several decades. All that, plus the public perception of a “low life” pastime that included gambling, eventually caused politicians to submit to pressures by religious leaders to “protect the populace” by legislating the sport out of public life.

  John L. Sullivan spoke to the issue of public opinion and civic choice: “People have got a bad view of boxing. If a horse gets killed or a jockey, the race goes on just the same, but if two men box and one gets killed, a lot of ministers get up and call it an outrage. They ain’t fair. Boxing ain’t brutal, and we are going to try to show that it is just as legitimate as any other sporting proclivity. If a man wants to go to church, let him; if he wants to go to a fight, he’s got a right to.”7

  In the 1890s, many newspapers reported boxing stories near sensationalized crime reports. On the page below a rather uneventful report of a YMCA bicycle show, one paper reports star boxer Bob Fitzsimmons’ trouble with a conductor. It seemed that the boxer “made at” the conductor after claiming that he insulted the women in Fitzsimmons’ crowd. A policeman called to the scene warned the boxer to remain quiet. The placement of the news event above a more threatening headline implied just how endangering a boxer could potentially be on public streets. Below the Fitzsimmons was an article titled “Pugilist Convicted of Manslaughter,” referring to the death of Louis Schmidt by a blow from boxer Frank Klein. Below another sports report of a bout was an account of a police raid of a proposed boxing match. Both boxing stories appeared next to the doleful account of the life sentence in Paris of American Bunco O’Brien, who had shot and killed an “American crook.”8 That the sport of boxing was frequently associated with unseemly behavior, something other than the YMCA’s wholesomeness, is evident in the vivid reportage of the boxing world’s undesirables, death, and public threats.

  The statue of Joe Gans was sculpted in the 1930s by Mahonri Mackintosh Young, grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young. Located in Madison Square Garden, New York, the statue draws fighters going into the famed ring who rub the Old Master’s bronzed mitts for good luck. Some say the ghost of Gans haunts the Garden to this day (courtesy Madison Square Garden, L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.).

  In Baltimore the specter of death was not limited to the ring. Anyone familiar with the gritty harbor life in old east Baltimore was intimate with the Grim Reaper. There, the frequent brawls and disagreements cut life expectancy short. Sailors came and went, and some sort of commerce to accommodate them existed in most every three-story row house in the old section, renowned for its bars, boarding houses, and brothels. Fleet Street, the location of Al Herford’s restaurant, was particularly notorious for gambling.

  Boxing and betting were tandem public entertainment. When laws were enacted to ban the sport, athletic clubs were privately chartered to circumvent them. Cincinnati had the Olympic Club, New York, the New Manhattan Athletic Club, and Long Island City, the Eureka Athletic Club. The great American painter George Bellows, who enjoyed the sport of boxing but was critical of its elitist establishments, depicted the action at one of these “private” clubs in 1909.9 Ironically, in George Bellows’ painting Both Members of This Club, neither fighter in the depicted match would have been a member of the club, the white fighter being socially unacceptable and the black fighter being of color. In Baltimore, Al Herford would adopt the name of the New York establishment for his club. On March 6, 1895, Abraham L. Herford incorporated the Eureka Athletic Club and leased the Front Street Theater from J. L. Kernan in Baltimore for his boxing events. Kernan owned the Monumental Theater and the Front Street Theater. Management included his brother, Maurice.10 For years such clubs were the “speakeasies” of fistiana.

  On that same day, March 6, 1895, luck was a lady for Gans when his bout with Soloman English drew the largest fight crowd of the season and The Baltimore Sun gave him his first great press coverage. He was finally visible to the world. And so, indebted to Al Herford for his interest, enthusiasm, and patronage, as well as his luck, Gans’ career was launched. Early accounts from New York refer to Gans as “The Baltimore Wizard.” The images of wizardry and magic would attach to Gans throughout his illustrious career. If boxing and death are soul-mates, the occult is a not-too-distant cousin.

  Boxing as practiced by men such as the Old Master is both science and art. It is also, to a larger extent than most endeavors, a pursuit in the realm of the spirit. Fear of attack is a basic instinct, and it is human nature to turn to mantras, prayers, talismans, or whatever will inspire strength to face such a threat. Perhaps this is boxing’s great allure—to witness mortals combating life-threatening attacks. Joe Gans, the father of modern, scientific boxing technique, although not immune to the need of spiritual uplift, would be the first prize fighter to prove throughout his career that ring-science is the antidote to superstition, and whatever malevolence awaited a fighter inside the four ropes. Be that as it may, boxers at Madison Square Garden still rub the bronzed left glove of Joe Gans for good luck as they pass by his statue on their way to the arena before they climb through the ropes.

  5

  Straight Hitting

  Wait for your opportunity, and when it comes, avail yourself of it.

  —Joe Gans

  Gans attributed his success to what he termed “straight hitting.” He said, “The idea of boring in and sending smashes helter skelter without reason doesn’t amount to a row of pins. In the long run, save if you are a man of abnormal strength, nine times out of ten it will beat you. Every time you miss a swing it is worse than being hit. I could be the champion of the world until I was as old as Methuselah if I could have for opponents fellows who just rushed at me with swinging blows. All I would have to do would be to let them waste their energy and when they were weakened just land one blow, a straight one, to be sure, and it would be all over in a jiffy.”1

  The importance of straight hitting is, to this day, well known in boxing circles. “Straighten up that right cross,” a trainer will tell his fighter. “I gave him the round because his punches were straighter,” a fight judge at a Golden Gloves tournament will remark. Straight hitting is one of the gifts that Joe Gans gave to the world of pugilism. It would also come to represent the integrity he brought to the sport. As the first black American world sports champion, Gans would endure outrageous criticism aimed at his character before gaining acceptance during his lifetime as an all-time great sportsman. Before becoming known as the “Old Master,” even the “Grand Old Master,” he gained attention in his earliest fights as a clever boxer and as an astute general of the ring.

  Gans Won 60 Bouts Before National Newspapers Took Note

  Because the newspapers didn’t take note of Gans until he became a star, we know very little about his professional fights between 1891 and 1895, the year that catapulted him into the public’s eye. During these early years, Gans won decisive battles against renowned hitters such as Johnny Van Heest, Dave Horne, and Dave Armstrong, where the winner’s portion of the purse ranged from $1.40 to $15.00.2

  By the time the national papers began to follow Gans’ career, he was noted for a remarkable string of wins, at least 60 wins by 1896. Whatever the actual number, ring historians have always noted that Gans had more fights than what were actually recorded. Bill Gray, in his book Boxing’s Top 100, says that Gans’ early recorded bouts may only represent half of his actual ring activity.3 To put Gans’ record in perspective, in the first five years of his professional life, he had already won more fights than Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali would win in their entire careers. While Gans had fought a solid career’s worth of fights by the time he achieved notoriety, when he was discovered by
the rest of the world he was hailed as a wonder boy, seeming to appear out of nowhere. It was as if the public had uncovered a long hidden treasure, and yet he was only beginning.

  Gans brought a disciplined, professional style to his work that earned him the admiration of white as well as black Americans of his day. His was a new, scientific approach to what would become a mainstay of American culture, the professional prize ring. How sadly ironic it is that for much of the 20th century his name would be muddied in gossip, scandals, and speculation about shenanigans determined, even during Gans’ own lifetime, to be the sole fault of his management. While many have said that Gans never needed an Al Herford and would have risen to the top with any wise management, Gans was steadfastly loyal to the man who had discovered him and set him on a professional path, showing Herford the same gratitude and respect he showed the woman who had taken the orphan Gans to rear as a son. And regardless of what would happen later with Herford’s schemes gone awry, it was the smooth handling of the Baltimore boxer by Herford that originally brought press attention to the prodigy.

  The year 1895 gave Gans his lucky break. While his fights were all staged in Baltimore, he was moving up the professional ladder and onto the national scene thanks to Al Herford’s plotting. Before the end of the year’s 18 fights, Gans reigned as both Maryland’s champion and “the colored featherweight champion of the South.” He would also benefit from the genius, or as some said, “craftiness,” of his manager.

  The first press article of any length describing a Gans battle appeared when his March 6 bout with Soloman English drew the largest crowd of the season.4 Fight fans were not particularly interested in seeing their hometown boy, nor excited by the main event’s meager purse of $100. To debut his new Eureka Athletic Club and put Baltimore back on the fighting map in the company with clubs such as those of New York, Herford brought one of the most famed fighters of the time to the Monumental City. The great Australian Bob Fitzsimmons was the first triple titleholder in history.5 Herford put Gans on the same fight card at the Monumental Theater with the great “Fitz,” also known as “Ruby Robert.” Four years earlier in 1891, Fitzsimmons had traveled to America to beat world middleweight champion Jack Dempsey (the original), aka “The Nonpareil,” from New York in a 13-round battle in New Orleans. (In 1896 Fitzsimmons’ colorful destiny would bring him to one of the most remote spots “west of the Pecos” “inhabited by rattlesnakes and scorpions but spurned by buzzards and coyotes” where he would KO Peter Maher in one round in Langtry, Texas, under the infamous jaundiced eye of Judge Roy Bean.6 That same year he would KO heavyweight Tom “Sailor” Sharkey, but referee Wyatt Earp would call the fight in Sharkey’s favor. The following year, 1897, he would win the world heavyweight title from James J. Corbett.)

  In Baltimore on the same evening as Fitzsimmons’ appearance, Gans was to fight Solomon English in the preliminary fight. The main event was to be a four-rounder between Bob Fitzsimmons and Fred Fredericks of Norfolk, Virginia. That night, Gans soundly beat English, but no verdict was rendered because the police stopped the bout in the ninth round. Gans would have many fights like this, where he was clearly the winner, but the police intervened before he was officially declared the victor, resulting in many “No Decisions” on the early records.

  Herford Pulls a Rabbit from His Hat, Puts Gans in the Limelight

  With excitement building for the main event, Fitzsimmons in his fighting togs, and the police ever attentive, the crowd and the news reporters were greatly disappointed when Fredericks failed to show. The crowd suspected they had been deceived. (Herford later explained that Fredericks backed out of the fight. But with the wisdom of hindsight, it might be assumed that Herford fabricated the whole charade to draw the spotlight to his new club with the appearance of Fitzsimmons and shift the attention to Gans.) With his showman’s hubris, Herford appeared on stage and, with a puff of cigar smoke, transformed the convulsive jeers of the crowd’s near riot into bantering jibes when he invited anyone who would like to stand in for Fredericks to do so. After appeasing the crowd, the evening ended such that the last fight anyone had seen was Gans’ remarkable performance. The fact that the newsmen had nothing to write about the great Fitzsimmons’ appearance in Baltimore was a stroke of luck for Gans, whose boxing career received its first significant notice from the press. The world got a great description of the punching power of Joe Gans when the following day’s sports report was devoted to a mere preliminary bout rather than the main event. The great Fitzsimmons garnered only brief mention and Gans an entire column.

  Fitzsimmons spent the next few months giving exhibitions on the East Coast. To Herford’s credit, he supported Gans and encouraged him to attend Fitzsimmons’ exhibitions to study his boxing style. This early experience was perhaps the most formative in Gans’ professional career. From these ring bouts, Gans studied, analyzed, adopted and modified the moves and techniques of this early master of boxing. Fitzsimmons can be credited for giving Gans his short straight-arm jolts. Years later Gans remarked, “I regard Bob Fitzsimmons as one of the greatest exponents of straight hitting that the prize ring has ever known. Fitz was a wonderful fighter and all of his straight punches were very effective. Until age set in, and his hands went back on him, there were few fighters able to withstand that famous shift of his. When Fitz delivered this blow he carried the whole weight of his body with it.”7

  While Herford may have had his hands tied to a certain extent by public prejudice when promoting fights for his young charge, by March 18, 1895, the promoter was overtly and successfully playing the race card in the press with Gans’ career, arranging a series of bouts with the “best colored fighters” north and south of Maryland. Gans’ work at the Monumental Theater in Baltimore against Howard Wilson, a 125-pounder from Washington, D.C., was described in the Baltimore Sun with admiration, noting Gans’ “clever, strong left.”8 The two “colored boxers,” as the paper noted, “put on a fine exhibition.”

  Herford and his sporting buddies had been fighting the heat of public backlash against the rising tide of the sport’s popularity. That its welfare depended upon political support is evident by the formation of an early lobbying group. The day after the Gans-Wilson fight, notables from nearby Ellicott City in Howard County, Maryland, held a meeting at the courthouse to form a committee called the Maryland Game Protection Association.9

  In April, Gans’ notoriety skyrocketed when he beat Walter Edgerton, “The Kentucky Rosebud,” at the Eureka Club at its new Front Street Theater location on two different occasions, the 1st and the 25th. His first fight with Edgerton, of Philadelphia, was billed as the main event following three preliminary fights. The Rosebud was famed for beating featherweight champion George Dixon in three rounds. Gans and Dixon were already good friends, and as historian Nat Fleischer noted, Gans may have been highly motivated to beat the Rosebud to make up for Dixon’s loss.

  Gans beat Edgerton in six rounds on April 1 and again in the rematch in eight rounds on April 25. The press thought that Gans would be forced to fight on the defensive in this last fight, but “he proved himself the more clever man, and the bout showed that Edgerton was only a right-arm fighter who is not dangerous to a fearless man who goes at him.”10 The Baltimore Sun noted, “Gans had the Rosebud groggy in the last, the eighth, he had him at his mercy and the gong had to be rung in the middle of the round to save the Bud, who was nearly knocked out.”

  By October of 1895, Joe Gans was called the “colored lightweight champion of Maryland.” Spectators called him a ring genius when he knocked out the previously undefeated Joseph Elliott. Gans was able to land punches with extraordinary power because of the leverage and precision of his straight-hitting style. To this day he represents the gold standard when it comes to pugilistic form. In the 9th round he delivered what the Sun called “a most unusual knock-out combination.” Gans threw a right hand to the body. When Elliot tried to block it, Gans ducked and let his left hand go. It struck Elliott so powerfully on his right sho
ulder that it grazed his jaw and landed firmly on his forehead. Elliott stepped back and dropped to the floor.11

  By the end of the year, Herford was anxious to promote his new athletic club and to garner national attention for his star boxer. In November Herford arranged a boxing tour de force between Gans and former featherweight champion Albert Griffiths, aka “Young Griffo,” a world class champion from Australia who had contended in the previous year with American icons George Dixon, Jack McAuliffe and Kid Lavigne. The bout with Gans was scheduled for a day when Baltimore would be packed with sporting men for the horse races at Pimlico. This was also the first fight in which Gans’ management was publicly accused of having “rigged” the deal, and the only fight to have favored Gans in the deal making, if the rumors of the fix were true.

  Undefeated as a featherweight, Young Griffo had left Sydney for America in 1893 when boxing was banned “down under” due to deaths resulting from ring contests. Griffo was as much a character as he was a boxer, equally at home in the bar as he was in the ring. Stories were numerous, but the favorite among journalists was his handkerchief bet to get free drinks. He would walk into a bar, spread out his white hankie, and announce he would buy the drink if anyone could knock him off the linen. “Befuddled strong men” would advance, he would duck, pick up the hankie and order his drink.12 Griffo was known to enter the ring inebriated. Nevertheless, he was a formidable fighter and fifteen years later Gans said of him, “He was a straight hitter from the word ‘go.’ Had he possessed the punch and taken care of himself he would have been in harness today.”13 Instead of billing Gans as the Maryland champion, Herford dubbed him the “colored Southern lightweight champion” to bring his protégé up to the level of his world-famous white adversary and to take promotional advantage of the residual political divisions and apartheid-like social tensions of the time. (The fact that Herford claimed the title seemed of little concern to anyone.) The place was packed and no one expected Gans to last the scheduled ten rounds against the Australian champion. The majority white crowd did little wagering because the betting scales were so tilted in favor of Griffo. Before the fight, Herford announced that if both of the contenders were still standing on their feet after the tenth round it would be called a draw. Herford’s strategy backfired when both fighters fought defensively and Griffo failed to put Gans out. Gans was unable to knock out the Australian wonder, and the crowd grew indignant. Gans landed more punches than Griffo: and while the paper reported that Griffo “let go several vicious blows ... they all fell short.” If left to the press, the decision that night would have gone to Gans.14