Every Joe Gans Lightweight Title Fight – Part 9: Jimmy Britt

There is no difference between a white man and a colored man when they are in a ring. If a man acts wrongfully his color will not prejudice me in his favor.  – Referee Eddie Graney, Nov. 1, 1904.

On October the sixth, 1904, on the back page of the San Francisco Chronicle, an article appeared regarding the next lightweight world championship title fight to be contested by reigning world champion Joe Gans that to modern eyes seems strange.

“Unless Al Herford balks at the terms demanded by the Britts, there is now every prospect of a fight between Joe Gans and Jimmy Britt within the next thirty days. Last night Manager Willie Britt gave Herford his ultimatum in the matter of terms, and to-night the two will meet in the office of the Yosemite club to make further negotiations.”

It is hard, first, to imagine two superstars of the modern fight game agreeing to fight and then doing so within the month, but more than that, the arrangement seems backwards. It is Jimmy Britt, the challenger, who makes demands of the champion’s manager; it is Gans, not Britt, who is expected to accept these edicts.

Uncomfortably we know that this is because Gans was black and Britt, who had sworn never to cross the colour-line but nevertheless began to name himself “champion”, was white. This also made him the draw.

“[Britt] demands that the purse be split as follows,” continued the Chronicle. “75 percent to Britt if he wins…50 percent if he loses.  The weight stipulated is 133lbs.”

Herford’s statement the following day was short: “The terms proposed by Britt are acceptable. I am ready to sign the articles.”

“He is willing to get the fight on almost any terms,” said one San Francisco newspaper of Herford.  They may as well have been speaking of Gans.

Gans had wanted Britt for his entire reign, but it is notable that he became much more insistent after Britt began calling himself the “white champion.” Herford may have known what that meant for his bottom line, but for all that Gans conducted himself as a gentleman in public, he must have felt the bristle of the true king suffering another champion in his division. Seen properly, Britt at the very least represented the clear number one contender to Joe’s title and so Joe was determined to meet him. That he was on the short end of the money boxing in San Francisco, his challenger’s hometown, and had to make weight ten minutes before the gong seemed small matters by comparison.

“If this pair get into the ring,” as the San Francisco Examiner put it, “one of the greatest ring battles the world has ever seen will surely come to pass…the fistic world is agog…for two years the followers of the game have been waiting for the two men to come together and now their wishes to see the white man and [Gans] in the same ring are to be gratified.”

Thoughts turned now to how the technical matters of the affair might play.

“Britt has a wicked left to the body that has won for him all of his fights. No one has ever been able to block it. Gans is a great fighter on the defensive and the way he handled Walcott’s swings to the body in their fight opened the eyes of Britt as well as those who follow the game closely.”

Yes, Walcott.

Barbados Joe Walcott, “The Barbados Demon” remains one of the greatest fighters ever to have laced on a pair of boots. Whether he was cutting weight to the absolute limit of what was possible for the late 19^th century to match the era’s best lightweights, or eating his way to within spitting distance of the middleweight limit to fight the 6’3” 215lb heavyweight Sandy Ferguson, Walcott was a fighter who sought the company of the most difficult challenges boxing could provide. Joe Gans was one of them.

As we saw in Parts Seven and Eight, a certain restlessness at the 135lb limit seemed to plague Gans and it was perhaps no coincidence that his performances at the weight were beginning to suffer. When he was matched in September of 1904 with Walcott, Gans, perhaps, had reason to focus.

It is rare that two of the greatest fighters in divisional history meet and rarer still that two of the very greatest fighters in history meet. Walcott and Gans absolutely qualify and in stepping up to welterweight to match the great man, Gans was responsible for staging a legitimate superfight.  For all that Walcott was no longer the machine of 1902 he was a terrifying opponent for a smaller man, especially one with a fight as big as Gans-Britt on the horizon. Nevertheless, four weeks before the bell for one of the biggest fights in lightweight history, the gong sounded for an even bigger fight.

The fight was a strange mix of thrills and disappointments. Gans was clearly the better man; Walcott hurt his wrist on Joe’s elbow in the third perhaps detaching or tearing a ligament, a debilitating injury for a prize-fighter. Named “spectacular” and including “cleverness of the highest order,” Walcott boring in, Gans tattooing him with punches that had dispatched a slew of lightweights but made little impression upon what remains one of the sport’s great chins.

In the sixteenth, Gans drove home a sizzling right-hand just as the referee stepped in to separate the two and absorbed a serious punch; Gans was mortified and spent much of the minute between rounds apologising to the referee. There were those present who believed the punch may have been the key in deciding the outcome.

“My decision was a just one,” referee and sole judge Jack Welch said of his drawn verdict. “Gans had a shade the better of the fight, but Walcott made up for it by his aggressive tactics…both men were on their feet and fighting hard at the end of the twentieth round…I know many people believe I gave a bad decision, but my conscience does not trouble me, as I am sure I acted properly. Gans may have shown greater cleverness than Walcott but his lead was not sufficient to earn him the decision…Walcott led as much as Gans.”

Gans did not agree.

“I don’t like to criticise the referee’s decision but I think I should have had it…there is now only one man in the world I want to fight and that is Jimmy Britt.”

Ten days later, twenty days before that fight, betting began in earnest at even money. Gans set up training camp at San Rafael, early for him, and on the same day Britt set up at Seal Rock on the west side of San Francisco. As the two entered training in earnest a hint as to the source of Britt’s reluctance to cross the colour-line emerged when comments his father made to a Chicago newspaperman began to emerge in the local press. Britt Senior had reportedly said that he would prefer to see his son dead than “to see him fight Gans or any other colored man.” Such was Britt Senior’s influence that there was some speculation as to whether the fight would go ahead. Upon his return to San Francisco though, he once again expressed his disgust but insisted he would not interfere. “Gans,” noted the Oakland Tribute, “is certainly the equal of any white fighter as a gentleman.”

Now two weeks from bell, the fight was being balanced as the champion’s generalship versus Britt’s left hand to the body and his relative comfort at 133lbs. Less discussed: as well as selecting the fight site, the poundage, that the fight should begin ten minutes after the weights were taken, and the purse split, the challenger had also insisted upon a local referee. This was to be a matter of some import. Eddie Graney, a San Francisco man, was the choice.

“There are no ethics in the prize-fighting business,” was a quote attributed to Britt on an unrelated matter, but certainly these words were fit to describe his conduct in dictating terms. Graney felt differently, as shall be seen.

Gans, meanwhile, seemed relaxed about the weight. He observed the Lord’s Day on the sixteenth and wrote his wife, who “had to have a letter every day.” He also chatted with newspapermen, something of a rarity for Joe.

“I never aim to hurt a man more than I have to,” offered Gans, a shocking admission for one of the most successful fighters in history, among the hardest hitting punchers of his generation, by now one of the best finishers of any. “I feel around for two or three rounds, size up the enemy and when I have the problem figured out I say to myself, ‘I’ll let this last eight or ten rounds to give the public an exhibition and then I’ll get this fellow.’ I have made mistakes. I have miscalculated and some times a fight has gone twenty rounds with the decision a draw when I have had it all figured out that I was the winner.”

Asked if he had the Walcott fight in mind with this last, Gans demurred. “I ain’t specifying.”

Hearing an elite fighter talk so openly and honestly about himself and his strategies and his shortfalls and his terrifying confidence in his abilities is quite something. It was abnormal for this era and it has remained so for the next 117 years.

Britt agreed with him on the point of weight.

“I am satisfied that Gans will be as strong at the weight as he is at any other, only he will not weigh a pond more than I do…I realize that in Gans I am meeting the hardest man of my career. He is a wonderfully stiff puncher and is an artist at the game, but I figure that by carrying the fight to him I can beat him down.”

Those words are prevalent, “I can beat him down.”

Joe Gans, meanwhile, had adopted “the sandman” from the James Jeffries camp to augment his indoor work. Vaguely manlike in appearance this sparring partner filled with sand allowed Gans to shift any stubborn weight while strengthening his stance and grappling skills, and is arguably a key point in his training methods. Britt worked more traditionally, running, walking, swimming in the sea before boxing and working with weights. Special emphasis was placed upon strengthening the wrist. Eleven days out Britt weighed just over 135lbs and claimed he had “never felt stronger.” Gans did twelve miles on the road that same day and ten the next, top end of what was normal for him but on the twentieth, Gans weighed 136lbs, well in sight of the weight. The next day, he weighed in just under 135lbs and took a day off roadwork, a little too near to be happy.

On the twenty-third both men sparred publicly. Britt appeared in glorious shape and his fast workout was called early after a sluicing left cut his opponent’s right eye. Gans, too, impressed, most of all with the news that he was within “a few ounces” of the required poundage. Still pressmen seemed obsessed with the question for it seemed to many the one that would decide the fight: what would Gans have left at 133lbs?

“There is nothing more to be stripped from his frame,” wrote WW Naughton for the Examiner on the twenty-sixth. “When I saw him yesterday after an interval of a few days the change in his appearance was striking. His features sharpened…his face seemed to have narrowed…his body looks as though the low water mark has been reached.”

There was a two-column piece on the front of the Chronicle’s sports pages the following day reporting that Joe Gans had eaten a chicken. Related or not, his weight reached over 136lbs the following day.

Britt stopped boxing on the twenty-seventh with three days remaining before the gong. “No more,” he told reporters, “I don’t need it. I am thoroughly loosened up and haven’t a stiff joint or sore spot about me. My hands are in particularly fine shape and it would be foolish to take risks.”

Superficially, the two camps were relaxed, but on the twenty-ninth with mere hours to go, tempers spilled over at a meeting between the two management teams and the press, the subject, once again, the champion’s weight. Rumours had been swirling that Britt would withdraw if Gans was overweight and Al Herford stoked these fires in a face-to-face meeting with Willie Britt where he claimed that the challenger wanted to “wriggle out” of the fight and would walk away “if Joe were half a pound over.” This was loose talk on the part of Herford, talk that could hurt the gate and was considered then, even more than now, bad form.  The language with which Willie exploded in turn though was something, Gans once again labelled a “coon” by a man named Britt. He then demanded that the forfeit for making weight – already colossal at $2500 – be doubled. Then trebled.

“The sentiment from both sides,” noted The Chronicle, “was significant.”

Battling Nelson arrived in town with money to wager on Britt. “He’s struggling to make weight,” was his opinion, one that seemed to be found on every street corner and in every newspaper. Herford seethed. In nothing less than a decree he informed press that “From now until the time Joe Gans steps on the scales at the ringside Monday night his weight must remain a mystery to all save himself, his trainer and his manager.”

“Britt is the man I’ve always wanted to fight,” said Gans the day before the contest. A claim made by many pugilists on the eve of many fights across the century, it is nothing but the truth when spoken by Joe. This was so often the case. “Now that the chance has come my way I’m not going to kick because I have to work pretty hard to make the weight. I don’t’ want to run Britt down but I can’t see how he figures on winning…I’ll be able to knock him down in ten rounds. It may go longer but that’s the way it’ll end.”

“I never was in better shape in my life,” claimed Britt. “I am stronger and bigger and know more about fighting than I ever did.  I expect to win…I intend to fight no waiting battle. I will rough it with Gans and will try to knock him out early – perhaps about the seventh or eighth round. He will have to do some talk footwork to get out of my way.”

Gans could not get out of Britt’s way, and he placed the blame squarely upon the weight.

“I was too weak to do myself justice,” he said immediately after the fight. “After I went to my corner in the second round I knew it. I would like to fight Britt again but I would not do it at 133lbs ringside.  It is the first time I did it in my life. I will fight Britt at 133 pounds weigh in at 3 o’clock or 135 ringside.”

Nevertheless, Gans remained the champion, though few title fights have been decided amid such total chaos.

Gans boxed his typical first, the first he described to pressmen two Sunday’s prior, watching, learning and measuring while Britt forced the fight. In the second, matters revealed themselves and the two went to war, slugging “like tigers” although already, according to the San Francisco Call, Gans seemed unlike himself. Slugging continued through the third and Britt began to find Gans to the body, shots that seemingly troubled him; in the fourth we have our first major divergence of accounts.

According to the Call, Gans took a knee in the fourth to escape punishment, clearly troubled by bodyshots but not so troubled as to go down involuntary. Britt himself agreed; Gans was falling “without a glove” being laid upon him. Gans, contrarily, stated that he was hit and hurt by bodyshots throughout and especially in the fourth. The Chronicle, meanwhile, states the first fall was a clear slip, but the second, third and fourth were dishonest, an escape of pressure, the Chronicle politely referring to as “generalship.” The Examiner has Gans being hit with a right hand to the heart for the first knockdown, and taking the second, third and fourth as rest.

The third and fourth of these though must be framed through what happened after the second.  Britt blasted Gans with a right hand as he kneeled upon the canvas. Referee Graney at this point was clear, and according to the Examiner reporter, who was in earshot, he told Britt: “If you do that once more, I will disqualify you.” That rejoinder “once more” may lend credence to the Examiner’s report that Britt struck Gans while down not once but twice.

The fourth then, ended in uproar, but things got significantly worse in the fifth.

According to the Call, Britt “sailed into Gans,” throwing caution to the wind and many punches with it. Gans was bowled to the canvas once more. The Call did not like it and makes a point of framing Gans as stalling once more; the Chronicle describes a right hand to the heart as the direct cause of knockdown and the Examiner saw the same punch: “a right-hand blow…caught [Gans] on the left side.”

Britt then attacked Gans once more as he kneeled, striking him at least twice with left then right and possibly three times.  Immediately Referee Graney followed through on his promise from the fourth round and waved the contest off, signalling Gans the winner by disqualification. Immediately, Britt drew back his right and smashed the referee in the face. Britt and Graney fell to the canvas, wrestling. The police stormed the ring and separated the two. Graney tore his tuxedo jacket from his frame as he was lifted and tried once again to attack Britt while gamblers rushed the ring demanding that all bets be cancelled – or honoured, depending upon where they had their money.

It was a weary, weary Gans that watched all this from his corner. There is no way to know for sure but based upon his own testimony of his weakened state and the bloodlust that was upon Britt, it seems that only one winner was possible. Either way, even as he watched Britt wrestle with the referee, Gans must have known that this fight would have consequences and he would be proven right – consequences for his reputation; for his grasp upon the lightweight title; even for his tomb.

Next time we will look in detail at the fallout from the Britt fiasco and at the long cold winter of the Joe Gans title reign, 1905.

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