CHAPTER 3

JACK JOHNSON VS. TOMMY BURNS

Fight: Jack Johnson vs. Tommy Burns
Weight Class: Heavyweight
Title at Stake: World heavyweight
Date: December 26, 1908
Location: Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, Australia
Outcome: Jack Johnson by unanimous decision
Referee: Hugh D. McIntosh

Background

During the tumultuous period between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many brilliant boxers of African descent (such as Canadians George Godfrey and Sam Langford, along with Peter Jackson, Joe Jeannette, and Sam McVey) were routinely denied world title shots in the heavyweight division. Only in the lighter weight classes were Black fighters permitted to challenge for world titles, albeit under very adverse conditions. The heavyweight division, then and now, has always been the most prestigious and profitable in all of boxing for any fighter not named Mayweather.

More than a few heavyweight title fights over the past 141 years have been billed as “The Fight of the Century.” The fight between Jack Johnson and James J. Jeffries on July 4, 1910, was the first to be billed as such, and it certainly lived up to its billing. Johnson won every round by a wide margin before knocking out the badly beaten and terrified former heavyweight champion in the fifteenth and final frame of a scheduled forty-five-round bout.

The first bout between two undefeated world heavyweight champions, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, on March 8, 1971, was also billed as the “Fight of the Century,” and it not only lived up to the hype surrounding it but, in many ways, surpassed it. Like all truly great prizefights, the Johnson-Jeffries battle and the first Ali-Frazier bout captured a historic moment in time.

In every respect, the Tommy Burns–Jack Johnson world heavyweight title clash really was the first “Fight of the Century.” This is due to its social and racial implications — it would be the very first chance for a man of African descent to fight for the heavyweight crown. Racial tensions throughout the United States were at a breaking point leading up to the match, and many white Americans were strongly against allowing any man of African descent to fight for the most important prize in all of sports.

The world heavyweight title, by design, had previously been the domain of white men. Many around the world were outraged by Burns allowing Johnson to challenge him for a title they felt firmly belonged in the arms of the white race. Men of African descent weren’t even deemed worthy of consideration for the title. This is why there was so much criticism directed at Burns for giving Johnson a crack at the crown.

The tidal wave of racism levied against Johnson was, as always, rooted in fear and ignorance. Biased white politicians, clergymen, and media all over the world urged their millions of servile followers to believe the virulent racist claptrap that white people were born superior to people of African descent. These ignorant, hate-filled white leaders had been spewing such garbage and calling it the gospel truth for centuries. Of course, what really terrified white leaders was the distinct possibility that Johnson could win, thereby exposing their prejudices and lies.

The previous heavyweight champions, all of whom were white, were also not pleased with Johnson’s title shot. John L. Sullivan, James J. Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, James J. Jeffries, and Marvin Hart were all extremely prejudiced toward African Americans. Hart was even rumoured to have been a member of the KKK.

The title of “world” heavyweight champion did not truly mean what it implied until Jack Johnson assumed the throne on December 26, 1908, at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, by fourteenth-round stoppage. Although the film that was later released to the public was edited, there can be no doubt that Burns had been knocked out as he was on the canvas when the police entered the ring to stop the fight.

Burns entered the fight as a six-to-four favourite. Obviously, the odds were racially inspired. A closer look at their respective careers reveals that Johnson had the better resumé going into their fight. Johnson had fought and defeated Sam Langford, Joe Jeannette, and Sam McVey, three men whom Burns assiduously avoided, and with good reason — they would have killed him. Burns had beaten some good heavyweights, but no one in the class of a Langford, Jeannette, or McVey. Burns was paid the enormous sum of $30,000 to face Johnson, which is equivalent to $1,003,659.78 in 2025. Some fans were outraged at the amount, but Burns’s logic was sound. Johnson was the biggest threat to his title; therefore, he should get the biggest purse possible. Johnson earned $5,000, which in 2025 comes to $167,276.63.

The fallout from Johnson’s stunning victory was far greater than the money either man received. Johnson considered his remuneration for the fight a personal insult, which it was. He took his fiscal anger out on the smaller Burns, punishing him unmercifully for fifteen one-sided rounds. Johnson could not have brutalized Burns any better had he been allowed the use of a baseball bat.

At the turn of the twentieth century, several world boxing champions were Canadian, which is astonishing for a country with such a small population. George “Little Chocolate” Dixon, Johnny Coulon, “Mysterious” Billy Smith, and, of course, Tommy Burns were just some of the great champions that emerged from Canada. Fellow Canadian Sam Langford is widely believed to be the greatest fighter never to have won a world title.

Tommy Burns garnered more press than any of these turn-of-the-century Canadian pugilistic greats except for Dixon and Langford. Why? Well, he held the most prestigious title in sports. Burns was an outgoing man who lived his life to the fullest and, like Johnson, always danced to a tune of his own making.

Tommy Burns

Tommy Burns fervently believed that he was born with a love for fighting the same way Mozart was born with a genius for music. Burns loved fisticuffs. He could never get enough fighting, in or out of the ring. He grew up in what was then considered frontier Canada, in southern Ontario, and was forced to endure a very rough and violent upbringing. Fighting was a way of life in small town Canada in the late nineteenth century.

Burns was born Noah Brusso on June 17, 1881, a mere fourteen years after Canada became a sovereign nation, in 1867. His parents were Frederick Brusso, an Italian Canadian cabinetmaker, and Sophia Dankert, a German Canadian housewife.

Noah Brusso was the first Canadian-born prizefighter to win the world heavyweight title. He was not, however, the first Canadian-born fighter to win a world boxing title. That honour belongs to the immortal African Canadian George Dixon, who won the bantamweight and featherweight world crowns and invented shadowboxing and the heavy bag. In his late teens, Brusso changed his name to Tommy Burns, to hide his chosen profession from his mother. Tommy Burns was from Hanover, Ontario, which is how he earned the sobriquet “The Little Giant of Hanover.”

Burns stood slightly over five foot seven and is still the shortest man ever to hold the heavyweight crown. He was really a puffed-up middleweight (with heavyweight power). Today he would be considered a super middleweight. In fact, Burns turned down a shot at middleweight king Tommy Ryan in order to go after the more glamourous heavyweight belt (and more money) by taking on Hart.

Burns was well put together. He had huge shoulders and thick calves. He took great pride in always being in tremendous physical shape. He may have been built like a middleweight, but he had enough power in his fists to stretch any heavyweight for a ten count. Burns carried dynamite in both hands and knew how to get full leverage on all of his power shots.

But the sport in which he really excelled was lacrosse, which is the national sport of Canada. Back then, lacrosse was a very violent sport. When trouble broke out on a lacrosse pitch, it was usually Burns who stepped in — he’d settle scores with opposing players and rambunctious, drunken fans alike. Burns never took fighting personally, except for his fight with Johnson. He was pugnacious by nature, never letting any slight or slur on his character pass unanswered. Although Burns loved fighting, he had never even considered a career in professional boxing.

While playing lacrosse in Detroit, a sportswriter named Joe Jackson told Burns he should pursue boxing as a vocation. Burns was getting into fights everywhere he went — bars, restaurants, hotels. He was a magnet for rowdy ruffians desperate to engage him in street brawls. And Burns was always happy to oblige. Jackson suggested to him that rather than fight for free, why not do it professionally and get paid.

Burns followed Jackson’s advice and began to pursue in earnest a career in pugilism. Jackson referred Burns to former boxer and promoter Sam Biddle, a crusty old cur of a man. Biddle might have been a curmudgeon, but he knew his boxing, and he knew how to bring a fighter along. Under his tutelage, Burns quickly learned the craft of boxing and started to ascend the ranks of the heavyweight division.

Burns acquired the undisputed world heavyweight title from Kentuckian Marvin Hart on February 23, 1906, in Los Angeles, California, via a twenty-round unanimous decision. Ironically, Hart had been gifted a decision over Johnson the previous year, in San Francisco, in a fight clearly dominated by Johnson. Upon winning the title from Hart, Burns upset many people in the boxing community by emphatically stating that he would be a champion for all people, regardless of race, creed, or colour. In 1906, this was a revolutionary proclamation — it was practically a declaration of war on the racial status quo of that era. Needless to say, Burns’s comment did not sit well with the boxing community or the boxing press.

In theory, this meant that Jack Johnson, the number one challenger for Burns’s crown, and the best heavyweight on the planet for almost four years, would finally get his long-overdue shot at the celebrated world heavyweight belt. But this chance would not happen immediately. First, Burns wanted to make as much money as possible from the heavyweight crown by defending it against lesser opponents, before facing what would be his toughest test in Johnson.

Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson was born John Arthur Johnson on March 31, 1878, in Galveston, Texas, thirteen years after the end of the American Civil War. His parents, Henry and Tina (known as Tiny) Johnson, were formerly enslaved. Johnson was the third of nine children, and the first son. As a teenager, he enjoyed watching both amateur and professional boxing matches and sparring contests. He quickly fell in love with the sport and gradually developed an unrelenting determination to learn and master the art of prizefighting.

Johnson was a very intelligent man. He was self-educated and his ring smarts were off the charts. He was able to glean important tidbits of information from veteran fighters he met along the way and instantly incorporate these nuggets of wisdom into his own arsenal, on his journey up the heavyweight ladder. With Johnson, once learned, a lesson stayed with him forever. Johnson made his professional prizefighting debut at the age of twenty in his hometown of Galveston, Texas, at Professor Bernau’s Gymnasium on November 1, 1897, against Charley Brooks. He knocked Brooks out cold in the second round of a scheduled fifteen-round bout and was awarded the Texas State Middleweight Title.

In Johnson’s era, a boxing debut did not necessarily mean a fighter was engaging in his first professional fight. It usually indicated this was the fight in which a boxer would be showcased to the media for the first time. Johnson likely had other professional fights prior to facing Brooks, because it was unheard of back then for a fighter to debut professionally in a fifteen-round bout. Most nascent pros first fought four-, six-, and eight-round fights before working their way up to the fifteen-round distance.

A fourth-round knockout loss to “Jewish” Joe Choynski on February 25, 1901, at Harmony Hall in Galveston, Texas, turned out to be the major turning point in Johnson’s magnificent career. The fight was scheduled for twenty rounds. The veteran Choynski knocked Johnson unconscious in the third round. Choynski had set a trap for Johnson, into which the naive young man readily stepped. At the beginning of round three, Choynski held his hands very high, deliberately exposing his midsection. It was an old sucker move. Johnson leaned forward to jab Choynski’s stomach, thereby exposing his head. Choynski immediately tagged Johnson with a brutal left hook behind his right ear, sending the future champion into dreamland.

After the fight, both men were arrested by the local constabulary for staging an illegal prizefight. Someone had neglected to pay off the police. Johnson and Choynski were only in jail for a month, but each day they put on boxing exhibitions for the jailers, the sheriff, and their fellow prisoners. During these exhibitions, Choynski taught Johnson the science part of the Sweet Science. Johnson eagerly absorbed Choynski’s pointers on tactics, strategy, and technique, and successfully applied them in his subsequent fights. Choynski told Johnson that with his considerable height and reach advantages, he should never get tagged with a flush shot. And except for the Jess Willard fight, he never did.

It was Choynski who turned Johnson into a deadly counterpuncher, educating him on how to use the entire ring to his advantage. It was Choynski who instructed Johnson on how to successfully use his opponents’ momentum against them. After his loss to Choynski, Johnson became a much more complete and dangerous fighter. His rise to the top of the heavyweight division was meteoric, although he would have to wait a while for a title shot because of the racism endemic to the era in which he fought.

Johnson used his poleaxing jab to keep his opponents in perfect position to be hit with straight right hands and fight-ending uppercuts. He put Choynski’s sage advice to good use with devastating effect. Fighters who recklessly ran at Johnson winging wide punches often woke up several hours later, groggy and confused with many teeth missing, asking what had happened.

Johnson is considered to be the greatest defensive heavyweight champion of all time. It was an odd decision for an African American pugilist to become a defence-first fighter back then. During Johnson’s era, many African American fighters lost very questionable decisions to white fighters. This is why so many African American fighters became knockout artists — they desired to take the decision out of the referees’ hands. Yet, in seventy-four fights, Johnson recorded only eleven knockouts. Incredibly, the racism of his times did not induce Johnson to alter his fighting style. He was confident enough in his own abilities that he could beat any man without having to go for a knockout.

Although Johnson well understood the racial implications of his fight with Burns, he never viewed the contest in such myopic terms. Johnson felt that viewing any occupation strictly on racial terms was self-limiting and demeaning. He was determined to be judged only by his ring success and the content of his character. While in Australia, Johnson paid a quiet visit to the grave of his hero, the great African Australian heavyweight (by way of the Virgin Islands) Peter Jackson. Johnson knew how Sullivan had drawn the colour line against Jackson, denying him a much-deserved shot at the heavyweight title. Sullivan did this out of fear, for Jackson was a bigger and infinitely more skilled heavyweight than Sullivan. The Boston Strong Boy knew he could not beat Jackson, even on his best day.

Jackson died at forty from tuberculosis, aggravated by alcoholism. Johnson no doubt had Jackson on his mind when he stepped into the ring to face Burns. Jackson’s demise had hardened Johnson’s resolve — this was his chance at stardom, and he intended to take full advantage of it. Johnson was a bigger picture man with a well-defined view of the world and his place in it. He was in prizefighting to make money. Period. He did not believe it was his job to stand up for the rights of all African Americans. Just navigating the treacherous shark-infested waters of professional boxing was more than tough enough for one lifetime, thank you very much.

Johnson never looked at life in purely racial terms. He was certainly aware that other people did, but that was their problem. Johnson was primarily concerned about receiving full financial remuneration for his ring efforts. He was combative when it came to money, and for good reason: boxing managers and promoters were crooks and not to be trusted. Johnson managed his own finances during his career and used various white managers only to negotiate contracts. He knew he would make big time money from future title defenses. Still, Johnson unhappily agreed to fight Burns for one-sixth of the champion’s purse. His bitterness over his purse for fighting Burns never left him.

It was long rumoured that Johnson refused to make the walk to the ring unless the Australian promoter, Hugh D. McIntosh, gave him more money. Demanding more money immediately before a fight began was a tactic he employed often, but no promoter ever gave into these bullying tactics. Rumour has it that McIntosh put a loaded pistol to Johnson’s head to induce him to begin his ring walk. If the story is true, it certainly worked.

By 1908, Johnson had chased Tommy Burns all over the world for almost two years, hounding him at every stop to give him a shot at the world heavyweight title. Burns ignored Johnson’s challenges as long as he could, but the pressure he felt from fans and the media to give Johnson a shot at the crown was unrelenting. The long-held boxing fiscal strategy is to make the most money for the least amount of risk. That option no longer existed for the champion. There really was no other credible opponent for Burns to fight.

Johnson stabbed his manager Sam Fitzpatrick in the back after the Burns fight by firing him and never repaying the money Fitzpatrick had loaned him. Johnson was angry that Fitzpatrick had not earned him a better purse. But Fitzpatrick was in a delicate situation while negotiating on Johnson’s behalf. The offer made to Johnson via Fitzpatrick, by promoter McIntosh, was a take-it-or leave-it offer. If Johnson had turned down the offer, the promoter would have asked Sam Langford to face Burns. That would have been a historic event in and of itself, as it would have been the only time that two Canadian-born heavyweights had ever faced off for the undisputed world heavyweight title.

Although Johnson did not view the fight as a black-versus-white scenario, not everyone shared his sanguine view. In the minds of many white people, there was much more at stake than mere money or fame. Whites felt that it was Burns’s solemn duty to uphold the supposed “glory” of the white race. Ironically, those same fans felt Burns should protect the “superiority” of the white race by refusing to fight Johnson. Burns ignored the naysayers — what good was holding the undisputed world heavyweight crown if you could not profit from it immeasurably?

Johnson was the only opponent who could bring Burns his biggest payday in the sport. In that sense, fighting Johnson was an easy financial decision. Burns was not in boxing to lose money; however, Burns mistakenly thought no promoter would meet his exorbitant price of thirty thousand dollars, thus allowing him to avoid facing Johnson altogether. This scheme backfired when McIntosh gladly agreed to foot the bill. Burns then had no choice but to defend his beloved title against the superior Johnson or look like a yellow cur for deciding otherwise.

Burns’s well-known racist comments before, during, and after the fight were surprising but not out of character for the time. Prior to his contentious bout with Johnson, Burns had never displayed any outward signs of racism or hostility toward African Americans or African Canadians. Like many top white fighters, Burns had had Black sparring partners. Indeed he had fought six Black fighters before winning the world heavyweight title, all without any attendant hullabaloo. In fact, Burns was briefly married to a Black woman named Irene Peppers. Irene was the sister of one of Burns’s opponents (and occasional sparring partners), Harry Peppers. Burns and Harry got along exceedingly well, and the two men became close friends. Irene was an absolutely stunning woman who turned heads everywhere she ventured.

Many educated and uneducated whites feared that a Johnson victory over Burns would disprove their ignorant and often violent racist beliefs of white supremacy. Johnson had no doubt heard this garbage many times before and was inured to it by this point in his career — he was too close to attainting his life’s goal to allow anything to get in his way. He stayed above the racial fray. The uppermost thing on Johnson’s mind was simply destroying Burns.

Unlike most prizefighters, Johnson well understood the business of boxing. The majority of fighters back then were uneducated and illiterate and placed far too much trust in their managers and promoters. Fighting in the squared circle and the business of boxing are two entirely separate but related entities. The amount of money an elite fighter receives has always come down to how many asses he puts in the seats. Johnson filled stadiums, mainly with spectators coming to see him get beat, much like Muhammad Ali would during his prime, almost sixty years later.

Although promoters made significantly more money than fighters during Johnson’s day, they always complained about the fees Johnson demanded for his services. Johnson’s monetary requests were not excessive if they were correlated to what his fights brought in at the box office. Rather, it was the manner in which he went about his fiscal requests that angered promoters. Johnson’s pleas for more money were always made after he had signed his contract and usually on the day of the fight. He did the same thing during his vaudeville tours — he held promoters hostage in order to get additional funds. This tactic almost never worked. It also did not win him many friends or allies. Johnson felt that by holding promoters hostage to his whims, he would benefit financially. His reasoning made sense; it was his execution that lacked finesse. The fans indeed came to see Johnson and not the promoter; however, putting a gun figuratively to a promoter’s head is never a sound business strategy. It only served to alienate prospective promoters from hiring him. In the end, Johnson became unbookable, and with only himself to blame.

There was another factor at play here regarding Johnson asking for more cash from McIntosh. Johnson was slightly past his prime when he beat Burns. Thus, he wanted to make as much dough as possible until his career clock ran out. He was smart to do so. Johnson knew that once he lost the title, his earning and bargaining power would rapidly diminish. Johnson, like every other heavyweight champion in history, including Tyson Fury, was intent on squeezing every last nickel possible from the heavyweight title. It was his turn to be the best fighter in the world, and he was going to enjoy the ride.

As well as being a brilliant fighter, Johnson, like Ali, knew how to unnerve his opponents in the ring. They were both masters at psychological warfare. Johnson endeavoured to get under the skin of his various opponents. He knew an angry man is rarely successful in the ring. Fortunately for Johnson, getting under Burns’s skin was as easy as saying hello, because Burns had a hair-trigger temper and was apt to explode at even the slightest provocation. Burns was a pugnacious character. It was part of his DNA.

Contrary to how some historians have portrayed him, Burns was not an unskilled boxing luddite. He knew the ins and outs of the sport and was a skilled ring technician. He even published a book, titled Scientific Boxing and Self Defence. Burns smartly fought out of an exaggerated crouch, to make himself less of a target to his opponents. He fought with his left arm straight out (much in the manner of James Jeffries), using it as a rangefinder against his opponents. Burns found great success with this style; however, against Johnson, this strategy did not work. Burns tried all sorts of boxing tricks and moves, but in the end, Johnson was too big, too fast, too mobile, too strong, and most importantly, too smart for Burns. Burns had an uphill battle against Johnson from the moment the contract was signed.

Burns liked to be the aggressor. Johnson was the greatest counterpuncher that ever lived, and Burns’s aggression would play right into his hands. Johnson would not have to go looking for Burns, which would make the fight even easier for him. But to the crowd’s utter astonishment, when the bell clanged to begin round one, Johnson flipped the table on Burns by attacking him directly out of the gate. Burns had not prepared for such a possibility and was at a loss as to how to defend himself while moving backwards. He had never experienced a situation like this in his title reign and just stood there, stupefied like a little kid on his first day at school. Burns was used to being the aggressor, not the defender. He was physically incapable of moving Johnson backwards. Johnson was effortlessly physically dominating Burns less than thirty seconds into the fight! Being the smaller man, moving forward and getting inside Johnson’s reach was strategically the smart move, but Burns never got the chance. Johnson overwhelmed Burns from the outset and never let up until the fight ended in the fourteenth round.

Johnson’s hand speed was breathtaking. No one in attendance had ever seen a big man with such lightning-quick fists. Johnson systematically annihilated Burns in every way. He dropped a crouching Burns with a huge uppercut a mere five seconds into the bout, a knockdown from which Burns never recovered. Johnson broke Burns’s jaw with either that first uppercut or another punch later in the round. Burns was broken and bleeding from that point on.

Burns had no answers for Johnson’s prodigious arsenal of ring weaponry. He followed Johnson all over the ring while, continuously and unwisely, squaring up against the bigger man. He was severely concussed and confused. Johnson jabbed him to pieces while consistently nailing him with straight right hands and bone-rattling uppercuts, verbally taunting him the entire time. By the close of the opening round, the champion had been reduced to a blood-soaked punching bag. Burns possessed neither the skill nor the strength to change the one-sided trajectory of the fight.

The fight became particularly odious during the middle rounds when Burns, who obviously knew better, disgraced himself mightily by directing a chorus of shameful racist jibes toward Johnson. Stunningly, it never occurred to Burns that provoking Johnson would only worsen the beating.

This was the only time in his career that Burns was known to have lost his cool in the ring. That Burns lowered himself to such a base level is inexcusable. There has been an unsettling tendency recently to excuse the racism that existed in boxing during that era, simply because it took place a long time ago and was common to that period. Such an opinion does not hold water. It has never held water. Just because such racism happened over one hundred years ago does not in any way mitigate its egregiousness or the hurt it caused its countless victims. The bitter aftertaste of bigotry is never dissipated through the passage of time.

It’s worth noting that the big breakthrough for boxers of African descent came when African Canadian George Dixon became the first Black man (and Canadian) to win a world title when he won the world bantamweight crown by knocking out Nunc Wallace in nineteen rounds on June 27, 1890, in Britain. Barbados Joe Walcott became the second Black man to hold a world title by capturing the world welterweight crown via TKO over James “Rube” Ferns in Buffalo on December 18, 1901. The third Black man to win a world title was the “Old Master,” American Joe Gans. He won the world lightweight title by stopping Frank Erne in one round at Fort Erie, Ontario, on May 12, 1902. These three giants of boxing had shown Black athletes the world over that anything was possible.

Jack Johnson was the fourth Black man to win a world boxing title when he soundly trounced Canadian Tommy Burns on Boxing Day, December 26, 1908, in Australia. Truth be told, except for a very dubious loss to Marvin Hart and a disqualification loss to fellow great Joe Jeannette, Johnson had been the best heavyweight in the world for quite some time. Johnson’s capturing of the heavyweight title had a much bigger worldwide impact than the title victories of Dixon, Walcott, and Gans because the heavyweight crown was the most important title in all of sports. Also, for their own safety, Dixon, Walcott, and Gans were quiet, introverted men. Johnson was loud and bellicose. Compared to him, Ali was shy.

Interestingly, after he won the heavyweight crown, in one of prizefighting’s most extraordinary ironies, Johnson drew the colour line. He refused to face Langford, Jeannette, or McVey ever again. More than any other man on Earth, Johnson knew how truly dangerous these men were inside the ring. Only once, on December 19, 1913, did Johnson defend his crown against an African American fighter, easily beating journeyman heavyweight and third-rate fighter Battling Jim Johnson by decision in Paris.

According to Langford’s manager, Joe Woodman, Johnson had signed a contract to make his first title defence against Langford at the National Sporting Club (NSC) of London if he beat Burns. Johnson reneged on the deal because he wasn’t eager to face such a high-risk opponent so soon after winning the title. He also believed that he deserved much more than the five thousand dollars offered to meet the dangerous Langford — Langford was the best heavyweight in the world at that time, next to Johnson.

Also, Johnson thought, and rightfully so, that it was insulting for the NSC to negotiate his purse on his behalf without consulting him. Johnson was right about deserving more money to face Langford. More important, however, is the fact that Johnson had signed a legal contract in good faith, which he blithely discarded. This was part of an unsettling pattern for which Johnson became known. Johnson clearly never considered the long-term negative effects such actions would eventually have on his boxing career. You can only alienate so many promoters before you run out of people willing to book you.

There was some logic behind Johnson’s refusal to face Langford. Johnson knew that the public would pay substantially more money to see him face a white fighter rather than a fighter of African descent. In that sense, Johnson used the white public’s racism against them by playing on their hopes of seeing a white fighter like James J. Jeffries or Stanley Ketchel defeat him. Johnson was making the white man pay handsomely for the privilege of being a bigot. Burns and Johnson were similar in one respect — they both saw the championship as a gateway to untold riches. Like it or not, the heavyweight title has always been a means for personal financial gain.

The former white heavyweight champions of the world, prior to Burns, were hypocrites as well as racists. If Johnson had been an inferior fighter, it is unlikely they would have been so vehemently opposed to his challenge. Another point to consider is, these former champions were, with the exception of Corbett, broke. It was Burns’s large purse that annoyed them as much if not more so than Johnson’s skin colour.

As brave and cocksure as Burns portrayed himself to the press and public, he had to know in his heart of hearts that he stood almost no chance of retaining his title against a ring master like Johnson. When you factor in the considerable size, speed, reach, and power advantages possessed by Johnson, Burns must have felt like he was walking into a meat grinder. Boxing had never seen a fighter like Johnson because there had never been a fighter like him before in the heavyweight division. Johnson was uniquely a creation of his own making.

The overconfidence of Burns and the white race ended only five seconds into the first round, when Johnson dropped Burns and then picked him up like a rag doll. The look of stunned incredulity on Burns’s face seemed to indicate that he really believed all of the bigoted scuttlebutt regarding Johnson and other Black fighters. The racists who ran boxing back then believed all Black fighters had a yellow streak of cowardice. This belief was predicated more on hope than on actual evidence. Burns and everyone in attendance was painfully disabused of this ridiculous notion less than ten seconds into the fight.

Johnson could have stopped Burns at any time during the scheduled twenty-round fight, had he so wished. Johnson allowed the fight to last fourteen rounds, just to punish Burns for making him wait so long for his title shot. Johnson knew the fight was being filmed for later theatrical release, and he well understood that it would be considered the most remarkable event in sports history at the time. There were twenty thousand fans in the arena screaming for his death, while an additional thirty thousand fans awaited his demise outside the arena. On that afternoon, Sydney, Australia, was a simmering cauldron of racial hatred. For Johnson, it must have felt like he was attending the world’s largest KKK rally — all that was missing was the burning cross. The vociferous audience, including American sailors docked in Australia, never once stopped hurling racial invectives at Johnson. This kind of aggressive bigoted reception was certainly nothing new to Johnson, although this was on a level never before witnessed. Johnson remained calm, proudly flashing his golden smile as he thoroughly dismantled the heavily outgunned Burns.

Controversy

The salient questions stemming from the Burns-Johnson bout are as follows: Did Johnson, by prior arrangement, agree to carry the champion Burns for at least fourteen rounds? Also, why didn’t Burns just draw the colour line, like his predecessors, to avoid fighting Johnson? Additionally, why were so many (white) people around the world enraged by Burns’s decision to give Johnson a shot at the title?

Was Tommy Burns literally terrified of facing Jack Johnson? Is it true that Burns did not win one round in his fight with Johnson? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, were the local police asked beforehand by McIntosh to stop the fight if Johnson was on the verge of scoring a knockout?