If Johnson’s demeanour had always been insolent, it is unnecessary to look for another word to describe the conduct of Tommy Burns. For all I know, at heart Burns may have been a modest man, though I don’t think so. But to hear him talk you would think that no other boxer had ever existed. There are two ways of getting a hearing and of making people think well of you: one is to talk as though the person spoken to was the most important and interesting and delightful man or woman alive, to talk with such conviction in that way that the person in question believes himself to be just that. The other way is to shout aloud that you are the most important person (and all the other things) alive, and upon my soul, if you shout loud enough you will find believers. Naturally or deliberately, Burns did this, and quite a large number of people believed in him. And it must always be remembered that they had something to believe in. Burns was a decidedly good boxer. His manner in the ring was unorthodox. He had no settled attitude or position to take up at the beginning or return to between rallies. He kept his hands and his feet in the positions which suited the demands of the moment. His style was loose and easy, and he could hit hard. Also he went in for glaring balefully at his opponents, stamping on the floor to inspire terror, and worst, “mouth-fighting,” pouring vituperation upon his man and telling him exactly what he was going to do to him. All this sort of thing makes modern professional boxing a sorry business, though no peculiarly bad instances have occurred lately. Indeed, boxers have begun to understand that it does not pay.

The men entered the ring on the appointed day, and Johnson’s natural advantages were at once evident. He was taller, heavier, and stronger than Burns. They were both well trained, but Burns always scorned the conventional abstinences and smoked cigars right up to and including the day of a fight. He never looked really hard all over. And now directly the fight started Johnson began by going straight for his opponent and knocking him down. Burns rose in eight seconds, obviously shaken. He crouched with his right hand forward and his left back, and attacked the black man’s body. Johnson kept away from him and sent his right across to Burns’s chin, rather too high to bring him down again, but enough to make him stagger. Then Burns sent home a blow on the jaw, but not a good one, and a hard opening round came to an end. No one supposed then that Burns stood the faintest chance of winning. But Burns was going to do his best. He was acutely conscious of his position as the white champion. He was filled with passionate antagonism to the black man because he was black. Right or wrong, this antagonism is one of the strongest prejudices that moves men. And there was nothing about Johnson, as there certainly was about Peter Jackson, to mitigate the accident of his birth. Rather the contrary.

The second round began, and the negro taunted his white opponent. He, too, was a great hand at “mouth-fighting,” but as he talked he boxed, and he swung his right and caught Burns on the chin. The white man stumbled slightly and his ankle gave so that he fell, but he rose again at once to receive a straight blow on his left eye, which immediately began to swell. Then Johnson put in a swing on Burns’s stomach. It was his round, and he went to his corner grinning widely, as only a black man can. Burns tried to get close at the next set-to, and again and again hit his adversary’s ribs, but these blows made no impression on Johnson who, whilst the in-fighting continued, struck Burns heavily over the kidneys. During the fourth round both men talked, heaping insults upon each other. And so it went on. Once, after pounding Burns heavily on the ribs, Johnson clinched and over the white man’s shoulder laughed for the benefit of the crowd, and made ironic observations to Burns. It was in the seventh round that Johnson began seriously to hurt his man, and it was palpable to experienced onlookers that he was trying to do so. “I thought Tommy was an in-fighter,” he called out, and sent Burns violently down with a terrific right on the body. Both the white man’s eyes were now swollen, he was bleeding at the mouth, and Johnson was all over him, hitting him as he liked, left and right, hard, but not too hard. He could have knocked him out at any time now, but that was not at all his idea of fun at the expense of the white race. He would keep him on his feet and hurt him. He knew Burns would never give in so long as he could stand. He no doubt guessed that the referee would not stop the fight so long as the smallest chance remained of a lucky blow from Burns.

Then the talking began again. “Come on, Tommy, swing your right,” the black laughed, and Burns snarled back, “Yellow Dog!” A disgusting performance on both sides, you say? Yes: and yet there was something wonderfully fine about Burns that day. His prejudice may have been foolish, his behaviour in talking, whether he started it or not, was childish, his methods of self-advertisement before the fight reached the nethermost pit of vulgarity. But he was game. To take a beating at any time, even from your best friend, is hard work. But take a beating from a man you abhor, belonging to a race you despise, to know that he was hurting you and humiliating you with the closest attention to detail, and the coldest deliberation, to know that you don’t stand more than one chance in a hundred of landing a blow which could hurt him, and not one in ten thousand of beating him, and to go on fighting, doing your best to attack, your utmost to defend yourself, with your knees weak, your hands too heavy to lift, your eyes almost blinded, your head singing and dizzy—this requires pluck.

By the tenth round even Johnson was a little tired, but Burns was nearly done. His valiant but futile efforts to land a damaging blow drew forth the laughter of his adversary, who stepped away from him and banged him on the back or sent his right whizzing up from underneath to smash his wind, or pound him on the nose and mouth. Burns’s mouth indeed had been badly cut some time ago, and round after round Johnson hit it again and yet again, never missing, always with the fiendish desire to injure and to give pain. In the thirteenth round it was seen that the police were getting restive, they were closing in upon the ring, having in mind, no doubt, the likelihood of a serious attack being made upon Johnson. And Burns, reeling against the ropes, gasped out an appeal to the referee to let the fight go on and not to let the police interfere—which, naturally, was beyond the power of the referee. The fourteenth round was the last. Burns tried to hit, then retreated, and Johnson following quickly sent a hard right-hander to his jaw, which dropped him. Very slowly, with obvious pain and difficulty, Burns rose as the eighth second was counted. And Johnson went for him again with all his might. Then the police stopped the fight, and the referee pointed to the new black champion.

Burns was a brave man, and he did the utmost in his power to put up a good fight against a much heavier, stronger, and more skilful boxer than himself. But it should certainly be recorded that he received for his considerable pains and trouble the sum of £6000—which he had bargained for beforehand, “win, lose, or draw,” and without the promise of which he would not have undertaken the contest.

CHAPTER VI
TOMMY BURNS AND JOE BECKETT

In order to dispose of Tommy Burns so far as this book is concerned, it is necessary to break the chronological order of contests and jump twelve years. Between his defeat by Johnson and the encounter to be described now, the records tell us that he engaged in five matches, none of the first importance. Then, in July of 1920, an affair was arranged with Joe Beckett, the Heavy-weight Champion of England. This took place at the Albert Hall, and should be regarded rather as an event than as an athletic contest.

As already suggested, the interest in many widely-advertised glove-fights is spurious: a passion of sensationalism stimulated by the Press. The fight between Beckett and Burns hardly comes under that head, because there is always a genuine interest in watching the return of a veteran, whether that veteran be boxer or prima donna. Burns had been in the hey-day of his fame when Joe Beckett was a young lad. He had been execrated by sportsmen for his trick of “mouth-fighting,” for trying to intimidate his antagonists by heaping insult upon injury during the course of a battle; and also for his rank commercialism. He had been one of the first “business boxers” to be seen in England, and we had been rather appalled by the phenomena. Since those days we have grasped the fact that there is a practically negligible correlation between professional sport and sportsmanship, so far at least as boxing goes—especially now that men like Jim Driscoll and Pat O’Keefe (both of whom appeared as seconds in Beckett’s and Burns’s corners respectively) have retired. It was from Burns that we first learned the dodge of demanding a fixed fee for a contest—so much down, whatever happened. And Burns, having through his Press agents arranged to be famous and to be a certain attraction to the multitude, could get pretty well what he asked.