Did Black Figters Hold Back from fighting their best against Whites in early 1900's?

Does Gerald Early provide examples in his book of this phenomenon? Just curious. Or Nagler?

I don't doubt that there are cases of blacks fighting "with the cuffs on" as the old saying goes. Sam Langford spoke of it and I have no reason to doubt him. But "usually committed to defeat by obligation"? I dunno about that one. I'm sure it happened her and there, but I don't believe it was as rampant as those authors suggest. I would need to see lots of examples to believe that it was so widespread.

I also haven't seen many cases of black fighters having to deal with backlash from angry white mobs. The fight crowd tends to be a bit more along the lines of "may the best man win", regardless of rooting for their white fighter over the black. Was George Dixon attacked by angry white mobs after defeating any of the scores of white fighters he beat? Gans? Walcott? Johnson?

Heck, forget the champions. Did even the challengers have to deal with this violence? Did Frank Craig? Dave Holly? Rufe Turner? Ike Boone? Kentucky Rosebud? Harry Wills?

 

as far as i can see most every black fighter from that period had to do this on the way up/to secure title fights. not in title fights though that ive read

i bet some white fightrs did too.

i dont think it is exactly a race issue, more a people in power issue, i.e lamotta fox (different era but a 100% proven example of acting to get a shot)

 

This is another reason 2 y i do not care much about de "old times" .

fixed fights 4 this and other reasons , catchweights , avoiding best opponents just like 2day , lack of footage of fights that mattered .

How come that 1 has 2 go this much 2d past in order 2 find a gr8 wyte fighter?
and no , Wladimir is not gr8 and does not make my top 10 HW OAT , Vitali does , but I do not consider him a gr8 fighter , only a gr8 h2h @ his w8 .

D lattest Yts that r considered gr8s by most r Lou Ambers , William Pep and Salvatto Angott , if i m not mistaken .

Yt ppl include fighters that they only read about / barely watched in their top 20 lists and claim that de sport has regressed since then .

Maybe it regressed from 15 yrs ago , maybe it regressed from 30 yrs ago , but it did not regress from Greb's / Fitzsimmons' / Langford's days .

 

Did fixes possibly happen on rare occasion, or did some black fighters carry some white fighters here and there? Perhaps so. But in general, the assertion is hogwash. Most black fighters wanted to win and most indeed fought to win. Their records prove it.

 

!!!

Race riots broke out all over the U.S and hundreds were injured and a few people died when the first black heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson won the title from Jim Jeffries [http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/l...etext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&index=0] .

Where are you getting your information from, don't speculate about history.

 

Of course, Joe Louis couldn't even celebrate after winning most of his fights and could never be seen in public with a white woman to save his image.

 

Johnson didn't win the title from Jim Jeffries. And to the best of my knowledge was never assaulted by an angry white mob after winning the title from TOMMY BURNS.

But I'll do my best to get my info straight

 

I think that this was more of a problem for some black fighters, than for others.

A dangerous black contender, who had poor mangment, or did not offer big rewards to somebody who beat him, could expect to wear the cuffs at times.

 

Oh yeah it was from Tommy Buns, my mistake. Race riots did break out after he beat Jim Jeffries though, its in that old newspaper.

 

The media was pretty good at crying foul whenever there appeared to be any funny business (Langford-Ketchel is a good example). Langford admitted in interviews that he'd had to go easy on some fighters. Makes sense in a way. That guy could tear your head off with a single punch! Everyone was afraid of him.

You'd probably have to go and check out obscure clubfights for that one. I scour newspapers regularly and I haven't read much about those types of things. Doesn't mean they didn't happen though.

I see your point. But being that there was no real precedent for such a thing at the time, I don't see how a fighter could be convinced to throw it by such a threat. There is no "Remember what happened at the such-n-such fight? You want that ta happen ta you, ya mug?!" fight that they could point to.

Read about some of the baseball games from the 1890s to the 1920s. Now THOSE could become VIOLENT! Boxing was child's play in comparison to some of the extracurricular nastiness that happened there. Death threats, crowd violence, etc. Baseball was a real crazy person's game.

True, but Battle Royales were considered acceptable forms of entertainment. Fixed fights, even ones that would give a gift decision to a white fighter over a black or have a black with the "cuffs on" definitely were NOT. You'd better be careful if you were going to try and pull off something like that. Even the most racist segment of boxing society wanted to see fair play. [/quote]

Well, the reasons for Johnson not being able to get a title shot were numerous. I've never bought that it was all because he was black. I've always believed that if there were no Jack Johnson then another black would have fought for the title somewhere between 1900 and 1910. And we also wouldn't have had the troubles Johnson caused that led to no blacks fighting for the HW championship until Joe Louis came along decades later.

"If you really ain't gonna be another Jack Johnson, you got some hope. White man hasn't forgotten that fool n****r with his white women, acting like he owned the world. "--Jack Blackburn

“The man was a disaster to anyone who came near him. American blacks are still paying for him."--Archie Moore

 

No prob :smoke

Indeed they did. My point was that no black fighters were regularly set upon by "angry white mobs" who were pissed that the "colored boy" beat up on the white fighter. So intimidation to throw a fight or carry a white opponent on those grounds was unlikely.

 

There weren't mobs all the time for sure, but you can't deny that there would be some pressure on the black fighters during that time to not beat their opponent's too badly, or knockout the white fighter in a brutal fashion. For the most part, boxing is an unbiased sport which is why it was one of the first sports in which colour barriers dissapeared