Charlie Mitchell's praise of Frank Slavin is extremely homoerotic if that's what you're in to. I can't tell if he was trying to hype him or trying to marry him.
Oh no, I’m not into that - didn’t I make that clear? George Constanza overreaction ensues……. LOL. It’s actually a very uncomfortable read for mine. However, are we misreading a different time and forms of expression therein? Or does some of the literature contain barely lidded latency? Haha! I dunno.
I’d give Burns 10/10 for courage. Though it involved the right price (primary motive for all fighters anyway), at least Burns gave Lil Arthur a shot. Would any price have been right for Jeffries to bite the bullet? It seems not - and that was more or less straight from the horse’s mouth. I wonder if Tommy really believed he could beat Johnson? He certainly was a very confident, egotistical guy in general. Maybe he did think he would win but knew it would be a very tough fight. Then again, maybe he knew a match vs Johnson would be the end of the road for him - thus wanting top dollar to bow out with. In my readings, it appears that Burns, as was the case later for Jeffries, became quite agitated as the fight drew closer. Burns had said previously he believed in fighting all comers - so I don’t know if upholding white supremacy was necessarily a priority or a “thing” in his eyes. Certainly the prospect of facing the much larger Johnson would’ve been intimidating enough on its own. For Jeffries later in the piece, I think the mental anguish was a combination of the pressure to regain the title for the white race and having to face Johnson in his own right. Jeffries more or less had a breakdown as the fight neared - a fact well corroborated by his camp and his wife. Apparently he barely slept the night before the fight which would’ve done him no favours atop all other disadvantages. As with Burns, I think if Johnson seriously fought to win as soon as possible vs Jeffries, the fight would’ve been over a lot sooner. For years I had only read here and there Burns being KD’d twice in the first round - it wasn’t until Ken Burns doc that I saw the footage for the first time. Amazing. Finally, where the film stops on the Jacobs/Clayton edit of Burns vs Johnson - it isn’t the actual end of the footage. It continues for longer and Burns doesn’t actually go down - some have advised that it isn’t actually footage of the 14th round - rather it’s an earlier round but it looks pretty convincing as being played off as when the cameras were stopped. Loving the Old Timer’s talk. Excellent.
That knockdown wasnt from the first round. It was a knockdown from the 7th round. Ken Burns used the same knockdown twice, reversing the image once, to make it look like two knockdowns. This content is protected
Well there was the little matter of blacks still being lynched back then so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that someone would have a go at him and that’s something he had to live with. I agree, he did bring a bit more on to himself with some of his behaviour, but I suppose some would have preferred that he was a cap doffing reverential type of black guy.
Not the greatest of scans but still more than legible - a detailed newspaper description of the Johnson vs Burns fight. [url]https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/39419975[/url]