The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip

Round 3: Reno, “Center of the Universe”

62 America’s preeminent boxing historian Randy Roberts aptly described the famous prizefight for the heavyweight championship held in Reno on July 4, 1910, as a “racial Armageddon.” It was an epic spectacle that captivated the attention of the American people because it was defined by journalists, ministers, and politicians, as well as gamblers, hucksters , and bartenders, as a supreme contest that was “for all the racial marbles.”1 Sportsmen everywhere made their bets and eagerly followed the prefight “dope” in the newspapers. Cornelius Vanderbilt had a special telegraph machine installed in his Newport, Rhode Island, mansion to receive round-by-round reports for the benefit of invited guests, and in cities large and small across the country crowds gathered outside Western Union shops to hear reports. Even from distant Africa where he was on his famous safari, former president Theodore Roosevelt wrote expressing concern whether “Jeffries can get back into form.”2 Although black boxer Jack Johnson had won a lopsided contest over Tommy Burns to claim the title at Rushcutter’s Bay in Australia the day after Christmas in 1908, many white Americans were reluctant to recognize him as the legitimate champion. Writing from ringside Tex Rickard was a good friend of mine. Money was never his main interest—it was just stuff to move around. He loved publicity and wanted to be known as the greatest promoter of all time. That was all. In this he was and will remain safe. He was the greatest. —Grantland Rice, The Tumult and the Shouting: My Life in Sport (1954) Reno, “Center of the Universe” Round 3 Round 3  63 after witnessing Johnson administer a humiliating and painful beating to the undersize champion, Jack London telegraphed a story for the New York Herald that described how Johnson had verbally taunted the hopelessly outclassed Burns throughout the fight, smiling broadly to reveal his gold-capped teeth as he punched away with impunity. London concluded his report with the oft-quoted message to the retired former champion, the undefeated Jim Jeffries: “But one thing now remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you. The White Man must be rescued.”3 Throughout much of 1909, the boxing world was consumed by a search for the Great White Hope, a white pugilist who could dethrone the black champion. When he arrived back in North America in March 1909, Johnson was accompanied by Hattie McClay, a white woman who had been his companion for two years after leaving the life of an upscale New York City prostitute. She accompanied him down the gangplank in Vancouver, British Columbia, arm in arm, adorned in a stylish plumed hat and a full-length fur coat. Although McClay had remained out of public view until after Johnson had dethroned Burns, she was now put on full public display. “Dressed in silk and furs,” Roberts writes, “she seemed as prized a possession of Johnson’s as his gold-capped teeth.”4 She was but one of many white women with whom Johnson was seen (and photographed) in public, and his open defiance of a fundamental component of America’s unwritten racial code contributed to the urgency of the search for a white savior. The Search for the GreatWhite Hope Devoted to a life of extravagance and excess, Johnson spent his money as fast as he earned it. He once claimed to have burned sixty thousand dollars on luxuries in one week. He was especially taken with fast, expensive automobiles. After returning from Australia, he overturned a snazzy Thomas Flyer while driving hell-bent between Chicago and South Bend. It was the first of many automobile crashes in his life. (In 1946 he would die on a country road in North Carolina when he smacked his Lincoln Zephyr into a tree). To support his expensive lifestyle, he fought five times in 1909 against inferior opponents, all of them white. In October 1909 in Colma, California, near San Francisco, he met the formidable middleweight champion popularly 64   The Main Event known as “the Assassin.” Stan Ketchel had a well-deserved reputation for savagery both in and out of the ring. “He would pound and rip his opponent’s eyes, nose and mouth in a clinch,” one reporter wrote. “He couldn’t get enough blood.”5 Although Stan Ketchel was reputed to be...