BLACK v. WHITE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 448, 14 January 1909, Page 3

BLACK v. WHITE.

The Johnson-Burns Fight.

Described by Jack London.

The Melbourne Argus was not content with an ordinary reporter’s acccount of the great fight between Jack Johnson and Tommy Burns for the championship of the world, at Sydney, on Boxing. Day, but it made special arrangements for an ad ditional account by Jack Loudon, the famous American writer, author of 11 The Call of the Wild,” “ The Sea Wolf,” “ The Game ” (a story of a pugilist), and other well-known stories. Naturally, the result was a clever bit of writing full of striking phrases, quaint metaphors and novel similes.

I,ondon tells us that there was never so one-sided aworld’s championship fight in the history of the ring. There was no fraction of a second in all the fourteen rounds that could be called Burus’s—so far as damage as concerned. Burns never lauded a blow. He never dazed the black man. It was not Burns’s fault, however. He tried every moment throughout the fight, except when he was groggy. It was hopeless, preposterous, heroic. He was a glutton for punishment, and he bored in all the time. Burns was a little man against a big man, a clever man against a cleverer man, a quick man against a quicker man, and a gritty, game man all the way through. But all men are not born equal, and neither are pugilists. The men were so unevenly matched that Burns was barred from showing anything he had in him—with the exception of pluck, Johnson was too big, too strong, too clever. Burns never had a show. He was hopelessly outclassed, and I am confident that, had a. man from Mars been present at the ringside witnessing his first fight he would have demanded to know why Burns was ever in the ring at all. The fight! The word is a misnomer. There was no fight. No Armenian massacre would compare with the hopeless slaughter that took place in the Standium. It was not case of too much Johnson, but of all Johnson. A golden smile tells the story, and the golden smile was Johnson’s. The fight, if fight it can be called, was like unto that between a colossus and a toy automaton ; it had all the seeming of a playful Ethiopian at loggerheads with a small and futile white man ; of a grown man cuffing a naughty child; of a monologue by one Johnson, who made a noise with fists like a lullaby, tucking one Burns into his little crib in sleepy hollow ; of a funeral, with Burns for the late deceased, and Johnson for the undertaker, gravedigger, and sexton. That is the fight epitomised Johnson’s smile. The gong sounded, and the fight and the monologue began. “ All right Tahmy,” said Johnson, with exaggerated English accent, and thereafter he talked throughout the fight when he was not smiling. Scarcely had they mixed, when he caught his antagonist with a fierce uppercut, turning him completely over in the air, and landing him on his back.

Johnson was impregnable. His long arms, his height, his coolseeing eyes, his timing and ditancing, his footwork, his blocking and locking, and his splendid outsparring, and equally splendid infighting, kept Burns in trouble all the time. At no stage of the fight was either man ever extended. Johnson was just as inaccessible as Mont Blanc, and against such a mountain what possible chance had Burns to extend himself ? He was smothered all the time. As for Johnson, he did not have to extend, He cuffed and smiled, and smiled and cuffed. And in the clinches be whirled his opponent around so as to be able to assume beatific and angelic facial expressions for the benefit of the cinematograph machines. Johnson play-acted all the time. His part was the clown, and he played with Burns from the gong of the opening round to the finish of the fight. Burns was a toy in his hands. For Johnson it was a kindergarten romp. “ Hit here, .Tahmy,” he would say, exposing the right side of his unprotected stomach. And when Burns struck, Johnson would neither wince nor cover up. Instead, he would receive • the [blow with a happy, careless smile, directed at the audience, tnrn the left side of his unprotected stomach, and say, “ Now here, Tahmy,” and while Burns hit as directed Johnson would continue to grin and chuckle, and smile his golden smile. One criticism, and only one, can be passed upon Johnson. In the thirteenth round he made the mistake of his life. He should have put Burns out. He could have put him out. It would have been child’s play. Instead of which he smiled, and deliberately let Burns live until the gong sounded. And the opening of the fourteenth round the police stopped the fight, and Johnson lost the credit of a knock-out.

London concludes by calling upon America’s unbeaten champion: “ But one thing remains. Jeffries most emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that smile from Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you.”