One hundred and ten years ago yesterday, one of the most famous, celebrated and resented men in America stepped between the ropes of a ring that had been erected in Havana’s Oriental Park racetrack to defend the heavyweight championship of the world.

Jack Johnson had won the title six and a half years earlier, in December 1908, but had had to travel to Australia to beat a Canadian in order to ascend to the throne for which he had been the clear and undisputed heir for at least two years. 

No sooner had Johnson defeated Tommy Burns to win the heavyweight championship than white America began its desperate search for a “great white hope” to bring him down.

After former light heavyweight champ Philadelphia Jack O’Brien and ex-middleweight kingpin Stanley Ketchel failed to wrest the crown away, faith was placed in the capable fists of James Jeffries, who had been heavyweight champion for virtually the entirety of Johnson’s career before retiring without defending against him.

The racism that drove the desire for Jeffries to put Johnson in his place was not exactly subtle. Writer Jack London proclaimed Jeffries “the chosen representative of the white race, and this time the greatest of them,” while the New York Times declared that “If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors.” Jeffries was hardly a passive participant in all this, stating that, “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” 

But Jeffries had been retired for more than five years when he took on Johnson; by the time he entered the ring on July 4, 1910, he was 35 years old and had had to lose 100 pounds to get himself into something approximating fighting shape. To his credit, however, after Johnson had knocked him out in the 15th of a scheduled 45 rounds, Jeffries acknowledged that, “I could never have whipped Johnson at my best. I couldn't have hit him. No, I couldn't have reached him in 1,000 years.”

With Jeffries dispatched, faith in the emergence of a great white hope diminished. Certainly, few imagined that it would come in the form of the hulking Jess Willard.

Born in Kansas in 1881, Willard did not take up boxing until he was 27. He did so because he had not had much of an education and he figured that, at 6ft 6in and 245lbs, his massive physical presence would allow him to have some success. The problem was that Willard was a gentle giant who didn’t like hurting people; accordingly, despite his size, he fought as a counterpuncher, reasoning to himself that he could more easily justify hitting someone if they hit him first. 

Given Willard’s nature, he must have found it particularly distressing when opponent Bull Young died after Willard knocked him out in the 11th round of a contest in 1913. He was  charged with second-degree murder and California, where the fight took place, banned professional bouts longer than four rounds.

But while he was unquestionably immense and immensely strong, he was not considered especially skillful and few anticipated he would be the one to bring Johnson’s reign to an end on that hot Havana day.

And indeed, initially, it appeared that Johnson was on his way to a clear and dominant victory. He was faster, considerably more skilled, and very much  in control, at times even taunting Willard for his lack of ability. In the seventh, he pinned the giant in a corner and unloaded for the bulk of the round in pursuit of a knockout. He did not succeed, but he kept driving forward, all but sweeping the opening 20 rounds.

Thereafter, however, he hit the wall; after refusing to yield, now Willard was able to turn the tables. In the 25th, he uncorked a right hand to the chest that appeared to knock the remaining fight out of Johnson; at the end of that round, the champion reportedly told his corner to “Take my wife away … Tell her I’m awful weak and I want her to leave.”

Johnson emerged for the 26th frame wearily. Willard backed him up and then landed a right hand to the chin that dropped the champion to his back, where he lay as referee Jack Welch counted him out.

In the immediate aftermath, Johnson reacted with grace to Willard’s victory; but over time, the defeat appeared to eat away at him until, no longer able to handle the reality of the situation, he claimed he had thrown the fight.

In an essay he wrote for The Ring, he asserted that his wife’s departure from ringside was the signal that she had received an agreed $50,000 bribe, at which point, he asserted, he took the dive.

Johnson was almost certainly lying.

For one thing, if the fight was fixed, why did he try so hard to win it? 

As Welch observed afterward, “Johnson put up a wonderful fight to the twentieth round, but age stepped in then and defeated him.” Welch also claimed he witnessed Johnson laying a bet on himself to win, hardly suggesting he was planning to take the loss.

As Willard quipped: “If Johnson throwed that fight, I wished he’d throwed it sooner. It was hotter than hell down there.”

In fact, there was no need for conspiracy theories to explain Willard’s victory. The roots of it lay in the aftermath of Johnson’s defeat of the comebacking Jeffries. 

White society was enraged by Johnson not just because he beat up white men but because he dared to enjoy the trappings of his success, buying fast cars and, most unforgivably of all, entertaining white women. If Jeffries couldn’t stop him, there had to be another way; and in 1912, Johnson’s enemies found one.

That summer, Johnson met and began a relationship with Lucille Cameron, an 18-year-old prostitute, who would become his second wife; on October 18, Johnson was arrested on the grounds that his relationship with Cameron violated the newly-passed Mann Act, adopted to protect against “transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes.” 

When Cameron refused to play along, prosecutors found another alleged prostitute, Belle Schreiber, with whom Johnson had been involved in 1909 and 1910 and who was willing to testify against him. Not concerning themselves with such niceties as the fact that Johnson’s involvement with Schreiber finished before the Mann Act was passed, an all-white jury convicted him and sentenced him to a year and a day in prison.

Uninterested in incarceration, Johnson skipped bail and fled to France via Montreal. He remained there for seven years. While in Paris, Johnson continued to enjoy night life and high life, but he did very little in the way of boxing. Between his 1910 defeat of Jeffries and his 1915 loss to Willard, he fought just three times for a total of 39 rounds.

Add to that the fact that he had just turned 37 and was, by his standards, flabby and out of shape, the temperature in the ring was in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and he spent more than 20 rounds trying to defeat a 245lbs giant who was renowned for his stamina and fought in an energy-saving manner, and there is no need to resort to claims of fight-fixing to explain away Willard’s win.

Johnson’s complaints did serve, however, to diminish the legitimacy of Willard’s victory and, thus, his heavyweight reign. Willard made just one official defense over the next four years, before meeting Jack Dempsey in Toledo, Ohio, on July 4, 1919.

Dempsey knocked down Willard seven times in the first round and became world champion when Willard couldn’t come out for the fourth. Years later, Willard would claim that Dempsey’s gloves had been loaded.

Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcast about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He presently co-hosts the “Fighter Health Podcast” with Dr. Margaret Goodman. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.