Jem Driscoll.
And Jefferies tried again and again to batter his way through Johnson’s guard and failed. He feinted and hit, but he was too slow; and each time his glove went out with all his power behind it, the black ducked or side-stepped, getting away from danger with an agility which was astonishing in so big a man. And Jefferies knew now that he could not beat him. He was desperate, and made mad-bull rushes without avail. In the tenth round one eye was so swollen that he could not see from it, and Johnson hit him again and again. A man less strong would have been knocked out long before. Jefferies went slowly and painfully to his corner at the end of the eleventh round, his great chest convulsed with his hard breathing, his face haggard. He tried his best, but he was now hopelessly weak, and by now he had lost a good deal of blood. He was terribly punished in the thirteenth round, but he took his gruel without flinching. Three hard blows sent him staggering just before time was called. And Johnson was still fresh and strong, boxing calmly and well. The fifteenth round was the last. Jefferies staggered up from his corner and Johnson went straight up to him and knocked him down with a long straight left. Very slowly, very painfully, Jefferies rose, only getting to his feet at the tenth second. Then the black hit him again, and again he went down. This time he was utterly dazed. With all the will in the world he couldn’t rise in time; and the ten seconds were gone at the moment when he, after a dreadful struggle, had risen to his knees.
It wasn’t until April of 1915, that Jack Johnson ceased to be Champion of the World. He was then knocked out at Havana by Jess Willard (who stood 6 feet 6 inches and weighed 17 stone) in twenty-six rounds. No interest whatever was taken in this contest in England for, bearing the date in mind, obvious reasons. Also, the encounter was not seriously considered on sporting grounds. Willard was subsequently beaten very easily by Dempsey in three rounds.
CHAPTER VIII
GEORGES CARPENTIER AND BOMBARDIER WELLS
Bombardier Wells has a most peculiar record. The chart of his successes and failures is like conventionalised lightning. He began with success and then failed miserably: then up again to the top of the tree and down again to the bottom of the ladder. His career, his temperament, the state of his nerves, have been more widely and more portentously discussed than the weight of Tom Sayers, the muscle of Tom Cribb, or the reach of Peter Jackson.
One school maintains that Wells is a first-rate boxer, another that he is a bad boxer. It all depends upon what you mean by boxing. If boxing is a game as golf is a game, an almost theoretical attack and defence, the rudest expression of which is what we call an “Exhibition”—then Wells is a first-rater. But if boxing is the translation into rude and rough sport of a quite practical defence and offence, whereby one man disables another (but confined within rules which are unlikely to be obeyed in a very serious affair, any more than the Geneva Convention is obeyed in very serious wars)—if, within these rules boxing means the real conflict between two men whose strength and endurance as well as skill are supremely tested—then Wells is, on the whole, a bad boxer.
The explanation of Wells is extremely simple: he is a scientific boxer who does not really like fighting.
When we talk of a “natural fighter” we mean a man who, however good-natured—and good nature has nothing to do with it—enjoys bashing people and is willing to run the risk of being bashed. He may be skilful too, though that is beside the point. Wells has been called a coward—which is frankly absurd. He has never provided any evidence of cowardice. He does, no doubt, “know the meaning of fear”: the bravest men always do. The “man who does not know what fear is” clearly is a very useful man indeed, but he is not so brave as the man who knows all about it, is indeed afraid, but keeps his fear in hand. In this sort of discussion too sharp a line is usually drawn between brave men and cowards: too sharp a line is usually drawn in any discussion about primitive qualities. I don’t suppose that Wells enjoys being hurt any more than I do, but his difficulty lies in the fact, that he gets no enjoyment from hurting—or, let us say rather, winning physical domination over—other people. A boxer to be a good boxer must have the instinct for bashing. This may not be a highly civilised instinct, it may (for all I know) be highly reprehensible, but it is present in successful pugilists, and they can’t get on without it.
Wells was born in 1889, and as a soldier and amateur won the Championship of all India by beating Private Clohessey in 1909. Two years later he won the English Heavy-weight Championship by knocking out Iron Hague at the National Sporting Club in six rounds. Wells was one of the names mentioned as a “White Hope” at the time when England, Australia, and America were being ransacked for a champion to beat Johnson. The match was actually arranged, but it was very wisely stopped by order of the Home Office. There was, as already said, a great deal too much “feeling” associated with the proposed contest which had nothing at all to do with the sport of boxing. It is impossible to say how any fight that never took place would have gone, and retrospective surmise is fairly unprofitable: but so far as we can judge from the two men’s respective records, there seems to be no doubt that Johnson would have won quickly and with the utmost ease.