Te details that and more are here: [url]https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/35417116?downloadScope=page[/url]
You lose all credibility backing this cellar fight business. Who in the world would fight in the cellar for nothing? What black man in his right mind would have agreed to go down into a basement where he could easily get a knife in the ribs? This has nothing to do with defending a boxing title in the ring. The article otherwise is very self-serving. Jeff claims Johnson wasn't in his class in 1904 or 1905. The same as Dempsey always saying Wills would have been right up his allay. If a champion doesn't defend against a top contender, he should at least shut his mouth about his judgment on the quality of the avoided opponent.
Although, to his credit, Jeffries seems deeply ashamed of offering to take Johnson down to the cellar. I will say this: for a supposed "second rater at best", Jeffries spends a lot of time discussing the man who humiliated him.
This story was seen for what it was, an attempt to try to make Jeffries look tough in the face of an obvious duck. Only a fool would fall for such an obvious shell game which is why Mendoza puts so much faith in it.
The story has been told time and again ... the end result is that Jeffries should have made the fight while still in his prime. He didn't and the rest is history ...
The alleged invitation to a private fight in the cellar and Johnson's declining of same, even if true, obviously means absolutely nothing. However, it's obvious what the alleged event was meant to imply - that Jeffries didn't fear Johnson and was willing to put his title on the line in a no holds barred fight. Jeffries alleged inclination to a private fight contradicts several of Jeffries oft repeated, publicly stated reasons for NOT defending his title against Johnson in the ring. IF it was something that Jeffries was not proud of (and he still diffused it by suggesting it was someone else's idea), it's likely that he wouldn't have publicly admitted to the "incident". It seems that the sincerity implied by Jeffries in that regard has some people convinced that he was being truthful on the whole. Just as easily, if not a lot more so, Jeffries claim to being embarrassed could be viewed as part of the whole sell job - an injection of self-critique (small loss of credibility for a greater gain in sincerity) with the greater, overall gain STILL being his tale of inviting Johnson to fight and Johnson declining. Jeffries certainly never retracted his position on the color line - till the end of his days, but suggested he wasn't proud of offering a private fight to Johnson in a cellar with the title on the line? I mean, c'mon. In my book, a fabricated story with the obvious motive to save face (for NOT engaging Johnson in the ring during his reign and getting beaten badly when he came back to face Johnson). A story only circulated years after Jeffries' career had finished. There are also obvious reasons NOT to believe that Jeffries offered Johnson a winner take-all fight that was declined by Johnson (just after Johnson KO'd Jeff's brother Jack). Suffice to say, Johnson's cut for the Burns fight, several years after Jeffries' retirement, was relatively pitiful - but a cut Johnson agreed to in order to finally get his chance at the title.
