Jack Johnson is one of the four great black "ogres"Â of anti-White boxing propaganda - the other three being Tom Molineaux (whose surname is spelled variously), Cassius Clay ("dat be a slave name, an' I ain't no slave!"Â) and Mike Tyson. Johnson, Clay and Tyson are posited as the ultimate fighters of their eras and their names are virtual synonyms for the pinnacle of devastating, unparalleled boxing excellence, the latter two in popular culture, and the former in more specialised circles.
Tom Molineaux, the Virginian ex-slave, is a special case, for he personifies the image of the naturally superior black fighter who was cheated of his rightful victory by jealous, bigoted Whites - he is a metaphor for the idea that if only they were permitted to compete on an equal footing, blacks would have
always dominated boxing and, by extension, other sports.
Molineaux lost both of his celebrated bareknuckle bouts with the famous English Regency era champion Tom Cribb, yet the tendentious accounts of these events and the subsequent mythology which arose around them provided an eerie precursor to the anti-White boxing journalism of the twentieth and early twenty first century.
The first Cribb-Molineaux fight took place in torrential rain in early December 1810. Despite the fact that Cribb won, the "popular opinion"Â was that Molineaux had been "robbed"Â and had technically defeated his White opponent, who supposedly only managed to come up to scratch after members of the crowd invaded the ring, shouting "racist abuse"Â and possibly breaking one of the black's fingers. Cribb's seconds then accused Molineaux of having bullets concealed in his hands, thus allowing the champion additional time to recover. As things went, the purportedly superior Molineaux was beaten about twenty five minutes later.
This was the first in a long line of excuses made for the defeats of "megastar"Â black boxers - many accounts cite both the crowd disturbance and the weather conditions as reasons for Molineaux's failure to beat Cribb. Modern works revel in referring to the black as the "legitimate"Â champion who was denied the title because of the colour of skin. Molineaux always receives more than his fair share of paragraphs in histories of pugilism, with all of the accompanying implications of dishonourable White conduct which prevented a black from taking his "rightful" place as champion - yet the solid fact remains that he
lost...
Funnily enough, the second Cribb-Molineaux fight a year later receives far less attention and analysis, for Cribb knocked the black out cold with a huge left hander, breaking Molineaux's jaw in two places. The unconscious negro paladin was ignominiously carried from the ring like a huge sack of spuds and, upon examination, was found to have also suffered several busted ribs as a result of Cribb's unrelenting barrage of punishing body shots.
The references to Johnson "deliberately"Â losing to Willard are similar examples of the meticulous long-standing maintenance of the "black boxing myth"Â. They also provide an insight into the black mind - as the black's entire ego is buttressed by his "athletic prowess", he
must convince others, and especially
himself, that he did not actually lose legitimately.
I guess that if things continue the way they are, future boxing annals shall insinuate that most of the Klitschko brothers' black opponents were threatened or bribed to lose bya "racist boxing elite". I'm sure that
these photographs won't turn up in the said annals:
