January 16, 2025 • 56 mins
Jamieson and the Classy Alcoholic are back to discuss the upcoming matchup between Tank Davis and Lamont Roach and Naoya Inoue's next fight before their Pop Culture Pugilisim breakdown of the Jack Johnson bio, Unforgivable Blackness.
Remember to leave us a review and 5-star rating on whatever platform you use and drop us a question or topic at letters@mixedcompanypodcast.com. Also, follow the show on Twitter @MixedCoPodcast!
Remember to leave us a review and 5-star rating on whatever platform you use and drop us a question or topic at letters@mixedcompanypodcast.com. Also, follow the show on Twitter @MixedCoPodcast!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
In this corner standing it six foot five weight class
unknown hailing from Sin City, Las Vegas, Jamison Welsh and
in this corner standing it five foot nine, Wayne Town
with six wins.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Three losses, two arrests, four late.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Payments on student loans and two total bankruptcies.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
HiT's the Classy. I'll go home, Thank you. Welcome back
to another edition of the Mixed Company Podcast. Of course
I'm one of your hosts, Jamison Welsh and of course
another week joined by the classy Alcoholic Classy. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Man, it's your boy, the classy alcoholic ready to rock
in twenty twenty five, shout out to everybody doing dry January.
I am not doing that shit, but shout out to
y'all who have better in both control than me.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Ain't no way, what everything's way? Man, I'm gonna I'll
brick like that. But yeah, nah, more power to y'all
if you do it. So you know, yeah, I'm proud
of y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But yeah, we got a very special episode for y'all,
just like in the nineties when Erkele and Boy Meets
World used to do special episodes. But yeah, blest in
the past, Dyby, But first I want to jump into
some quick boxing news. What do you say, jameson you
want to check out the Boxing Gazette.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I mean there's been a lot going on lately. Like
if at the start of the year happened, then we
got all this stuff coming about. I think Tank confirm
his fight. I'm hearing Devin Haney and Ryan I see
a rematch talk. I'm hearing Crawford Canelo or Canel Crawford
getting you know, hearing a lot of different things, man,
which you want to cover first?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, it's just really quick. There are rumors in the
Twitter sphere, Yeah, that Canelo and Crawford might be on
for September. You know, it's not official, nothing's been really announced,
but you know, fingers crossed, man, I would be very
excited about it. It'd be a big deal. We've been
talking about it since the pilot episode. Don't and off.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
It's the boxing fight that has to be made. Even
the results are going to be the results, but that
is the fight that gets made, right, the money, the intrigue,
the legacies online. These are probably the two guys with
the profile they have that people really want to see. Hey,
if these two guys fight, what happens, So it has
(02:17):
to happen. But I'm glad we're hearing you talk of
it in January. It gives us hopefully eight months to
build up to the matchup, which is always good.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Right, and also rumors that Tank or sorry Tank Bud
Crawford will be back in the ring before that sometime
early this year. So let's see what happens there.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Nah, he shouldn't. Well, I'm not gonna tell him what
to do. He's far more accomplished and what he does.
But the only reason why I would advise against that
is because not because he would lose, because he wouldn't scheduling.
What he would lose to is more of the injury factor, Right.
You don't want to mess up a shoulder or a
hand or anything like that, and the next thing you know,
the September fights push back. You just never know how
(02:56):
thing's gonna happen. I think he'd be better off waiting
until sat terror By Again, I'm not you know, there's
more people involved in me, so we'll end up seeing
what's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Sure. The thing I'd be curious about is which weight
class if he does come back before that September fight, like,
who is he fighting somebody at his current class, somebody
closer to one sixty eight where Canelo is, Like, I don't.
I would be very curious to see what how that
would work out.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
That's a good point because last fight was that one
fifty four.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Right, Uh, yes, I believe. So that's the first time
he moved up to fight Israel Metamov.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yep, and it didn't look as domina as it looked
at previous fights when the weight was lower. So that's
a good point. That actually makes sense that he would
go to one sixty four, one sixty eight, see how
it goes, and then fight Canal, even though the Canalo
fight feels more like a cash out more than an
actual title fighter. That's a holder for discuss for a
(03:50):
different day.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Sure, sure, yeah, well yeah, well you know Figers Cross
it happens, We'll let you know when the official word
is out. So uh yeah, let's see what else he
got here in the gazette. Yeah, the fight between Tank
Davis and Lamont Roach appears to still be on for
March first, despite some weird thing that happened with Tank
posting on his Instagram story on Christmas Eve that the
fight was canceled. I don't think we ever got an
explanation as to what that was all about. It may
(04:12):
have been Tank just trolling. I don't know, but lamont
roach was immediate, like, hey, don't talk to me. I
didn't say that shit. I'm still preparing for the fight.
So I kind of want to throw this question off
spin off into this question, Well, how do you feel
about boxers talking shit and trolling on social media? I mean,
is it make it a little bit more exciting or
is it just too far? I don't know that. I
(04:34):
don't love it, but what do you think.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
It's just what they do now. This is the albume
that's available, So that's what they do. That's what they know.
Tank is from the social media era, so that's what
he knows. Like back in the day, you went to
the paper the TV because that's all that was. So
that's all it is. There may have been some contract
details he may not have agreed with, so he may
have said, hey, I'll go out and try to cancel
(04:57):
the fight before y'all do this, this and that. That's
just a leverage place some guys try to hold. Everybody
does things differently. Tank is a very emotional guy. We
both know that we've seen things in and out the
ring that have showcased that, so you know, I'm not
really surprised it's boxing anything and everything's possible. I would
never under any circumstances rule anything out, but I do
(05:18):
think that fight does happen in March. I feel like
that that's going to happen. I saw in an LERB
and Tank both basically confirmed yesterday or earlier in the
week that it was going to take place, So yeah,
it feels like it's a done deal.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, I think. I don't know. Maybe when there's a
fight on the line that's already scheduled, maybe guys shouldn't
get too mouthy on Instagram about things being canceled or
not happening, Like, stick with the damn plan, unless again,
there's like an injury or some very valid reason to
to not not make the fight happen. I mean, don't
don't don't jerk the fans around, is all I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
No, absolutely not. Tank is one of the few people
that people would travel well, I mean trally, either drive
more than four hours or fly to to go watch fight.
It's not a whole lot of casual slash average boxing
fans that would travel to go see someone. He's the
main guy outside of Canelo that people would actually travel
(06:12):
to and spend a weekend in the city to go
watch fight. He has to be active, he has to
he has to fight. If he does not fight, it's
not good for everybody involved.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Right, I think totally speaking, When I saw the Garcia
Tank fight at the Neighborhood downtown in Tucson, I was
actually surprised how many Tank fans were out. Yes, you
could tell when the introductions happened there were there was
more of a Garcia crowd, you know, Like I said,
a lot of Mexicans in Tucson, but there was a
pretty good amount of people there rooting for Tank, So
I myself included. Actually I was always rooty for Tank
(06:42):
for the d during that fight.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Now Tanks, I mean remember a lot of people watch
combat sport for the knockouts. They don't watch for the
technical side of them. Most people watch boxing for the
ko That's why some people prefer you have seen the boxing,
because you get you get knockouts early and often in
that sport. On boxing, there's people who love the KOs.
They want to see somebody get dropped, not see someone
(07:05):
to get out boxed, not to see someone get out technical.
They want to see somebody get dropped. So HENK does that.
He closed the show, and I think heard that and
from either hand too, so it's not like a one
trip ponent. He has equal power in both hands from
different angles, and I think that's what makes them special.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Agreed. Uh, speaking of fighters getting injured and knockout artists coincidentally, next,
I'm actually drinking a Supporo beer from Japan because I'm
excited that Friday, January twenty fourth is the return of
now Yeah in a way. A Japanese boxer nicknamed the
Monster you Know is you know? It's twenty eight to
oh with twenty five of those wins by knockout, so
(07:44):
like Tanka knockout artists. He was scheduled to fight a
a kriiky guy named Sam Goodman on Christmas Eve, but
that was pushed back to the Goodman being injured. Turns
out he can't make the fight at all, so he
was replaced with a Korean fighter named Yeay Jim Kim Jamison.
Are you familiar with now Yeah you know?
Speaker 3 (07:59):
And have you watched the name of his fights? Very
familiar with it. I don't watch them live. That's just
what I was gonna do at four am and five am.
I value my sleep. It's not a whole lot of things.
I wake up and that time of the day four
so I value my sleep. I don't watch them live.
I end up catching him a little later on that
day or something later that weekend. But I can't do
(08:20):
the three am call times. I can't do it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, I mean for our times that I think he
at four am for the main event, mind you, even
like the things before. Now, I'm with you. Depending on
daylight saving times, maybe in the East Coast central people
can catch you at six or seven, so if you're
an early bird, you can put on a coffee pot
watch the NU fight.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
But exactly that one's fine, that that could work. I
can't three am, bro nah that no, no, well.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I can't do the sixer. I probably would be more
likely to do the three or four if I'm already
awake drinking like from the night before. Honestly I might that,
but for you know, in a ways an excellent fighter
one of the four people who is undisputed in two
different weight classes. Boxing fanatics know him, but maybe more
casual fans don't, and I think it is because of
(09:08):
the time zone of the fights, to be quite honest
with you, So if y'all have ESPN Plus, you can
watch the replace and you should.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
You definitely should. Also the weight class as well. The
weight class that thing has something to do with it,
but it's mainly the time that his fights are on.
It's hard getting Americans to watch something outside of the
normal time slots. It's very difficult, right, Like you give people
to stay up late on regular nights to watch regular
(09:35):
programming is tough, let alone watching a boxer waking up
super early. We don't have to very tough thing to
do so. But your correct ESPN Plus does have all
the fights on there, so you could definitely watch it
at your leisure.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, and also be careful which fight you're watching because now, yeah,
Inoa has a brother named Takuma in Oa, and I
don't know anything about that guy, so make sure you're
watching the right the right in a way. But yeah,
definitely strong recom and on now you know his fights,
like the guy's The guy's great, and yeah, if you
like Ko's he is very unlikely to disappoint right, Leslie.
(10:10):
I don't really have much to say about the fact
that Tyson Fury said he's retiring again other than let's
see if he actually means it this time. Do you
have any opinions thoughts on this.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I believe he's done because he's made the money. I
don't think he wants to stay in boxing shape. You
can kind of tell by the fights how the last
two fights have looked. The conditioning was a factor in
both of those fights. You could tell that he doesn't
want to be in tip top shape to perform at
his best. Even when he was at his best at
times he was in the best shape. You can tell
(10:43):
that he's not interested in doing that anymore. He's made
his money, he has his legacy, and he's ready to
move on. You know, he had a good run. Very
odd guy, very odd when you think of you know, fighters,
very odd and different. But you know he did what
he did and his what of his the.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Trilogy with or Yeah, it was interesting because the first
one was a draw, right, could went either way, and
I was like six years ago, but I could went
either way.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
But the last two man man career career changing bouts
for both guys career changing and career finding bouts for both.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I think Fury Wilder three is probably the most recent
fight I saw that everybody knew about it, even if
you weren't like much of a boxing fan. It was everywhere.
Everybody played it. I saw it in the movie theater.
I mean I was. I was grilled that kind of
excitement for boxing was happening, and you know, I hope
that it continues with big fights like that. But yeah,
that was uh and it was a great fight. You know,
(11:46):
I would have preferred that Deontae took it, but I
think both of them they had their moments. Both of
them got knocked down and got back up throughout the fight,
so it was it was excellent.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I wish Wilder had a different corner and had different
training because he was so raw and his corners didn't
help him out a whole lot. Min fights like the
instruction with lot along with the training, always felt that
he was fighting just off for all talent. He didn't
have great management with him when it came to the
boxing part. It felt like they got to a certain level.
(12:17):
But if he ever fought somebody was just as talented,
it was never gonna work out, right, because the adjustments
were never there. He didn't have a great boxing feel. Obviously,
he had the nuclear weapon, which worked a lot in
his favor, but in terms of the actual boxing skill set,
it really wasn't quite there and it never got to
where it needed to be to fight elite, elite guys unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, I think this is a good demonstration of how
somebody can be a good fighter, not that great of
a boxer. There is a difference.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely, he's definitely one of those guys. However,
I will say for some of that started so late
in the game, because most boxers started as a child
or in their adolescent years. For something I started so late.
To get to where he got to it is a
huge plus. However, I felt that his corners, his his
(13:12):
team overall kind of let him down. It felt like
he was he built like a basketball player instead of
like a boxer. You shouldn't be six six to fifteen.
That ain't gonna work, bro, You're not here, You're not
three the guy in the NBA. You're not here shooting threes.
He needed to be able to. Now, his course would
have been a lot more stronger, and he could use
athleticism better in my eyes. But again, I'm just a fan.
(13:34):
I'm just an observer that knows a lot of people
who enjoyed boxing, like yourself. So who are we.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, definitely. So anyway, at the end of that, we wish,
we wish both Fury and Well do the best, and
uh I T Fury. I will not watch season of
that reality show if you go back to it. Sorry,
defintely definitely all right, So that's on the news for now.
You know, we always like to keep that short, but
we're gonna try something a little different for the rest
of this episode. You know, the goal of this show
(14:00):
was always to have barber shop style conversation about boxing,
and I don't think it always has to be timely.
You know, we don't discuss every single fight coming up
or review every single fight that happens. In between episodes,
if you've listened before, we usually have a segment called
pop Pugilism, where we discuss a movie or TV show
about boxing. So today I wanted to expand that into
a bigger discussion because we're talking about a documentary for
(14:21):
the first time in the show's history. It's called Unforgivable Blackness.
The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson from two thousand
and four, directed by Ken Burns. It's a two part
BBS documentary about another hometown hero of mine, Jack Johnson,
who was born in Galveston, Texas in eighteen seventy eight,
So I'm from Houston. The film is narrated beautifully by
Keith David Jack Johnson's war eight at eighteen? Did I
(14:47):
sa ninety seventy eight? Sorry? Sorry, sometimes I drink he
was born in eighteen seventy eight, but yeah, film narrated
by Keith David. Jack Johnson's own words are read by
Samuel L. Jackson, which rules heard several other voices I recognized,
like Jeffrey Wright and Harris and Alan Rickman mister McLean, quick,
(15:10):
quick thing. To get a started on this, Jack Johnson
was the first black man to win the world heavyweight championship,
and I think he's just not just an important figure
in boxing history but also American history. But before we
get into some more details about the men, jameson, did
you get a chance to watch the three hours and
forty minutes or so of this film?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So I did watch it. I've seen it before, so
that was the first that stuck out I did watch it. However, Man,
it feels like he's the first boxer that we actually
knew about, right. I know, they had a bunch of
guys in eighteen hundreds, I know the different rules and whatnot,
But it felt like he's the first box that kind
(15:47):
of fittle out of the stereotypes of boxers, Like he
likes women a lot, and he was liked cars, and
you know, he was very big on like getting as
much money as possible and whatnot. You know, he had
to go to different states to fight, like certain states
with Love and fight like California with London fight one time,
you know. So it was very interesting, Like it was
(16:07):
very fascinating. You see some of the stuff that happened
one hundred plus years later, it's like, ah, this is
where all started from. Man, It's it's tough because things
were so different back then, and he was obviously so
naturally talented and better than most, but boxing and sports
back then was so corrupt and so everything, So it
(16:29):
was so hard to kind of take note of what
everything was back then because it wasn't on the same scale.
It was a lot different back then. But I'm glad
they did at least focus on how great he was
when he had his run, right.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, I mean, definitely check out this this documentary. It's
a like I said, a PPS documentary. It is kind
of dry. It is split in two parts so you can,
you know, watch it at your leisure, but it's fascinating
and let's not miss words. Then, you know, this is
the time when black men were not allowed to fight
for the heavyweight title that was the domain of white men.
It wasn't a matter of you know, just of course
(17:08):
that white fighters and spectators didn't think that black fighters
were good enough, correct, But it's not just that, it's
that they didn't think they even deserve the right to
challenge for it. This is the heavyweight championship was one
of the most prominent championships in the world. Everybody knew
about it. Everybody knew that the heavyweight fighter at the
time the heavyweight champs. So this just wasn't anything that
(17:32):
black men were allowed to compete for. They were allowed
to fight another weight classes. But here's something for you,
maybe a little bit of a tangent. So I grew
up you know, Hulusa Chavs fan, and even as an adult,
you know, I focus on the little guys the lower
weight classes. But I've noticed that people really have they
put a lot of stock in the heavyweight championship, the
(17:53):
heavyweight division, especially if you grew up a Tyson fan.
Do you think personally, Jameson, that's sort of like a
different level of importance in the boxing world, the heavyweight
championship versus the other weight classes.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
So you mentioned about five minutes ago when you said
Fury wild or three, everybody knew about it. And the
reason why that is is because whoever the heavyweight champion
of the world is he was the baddest person on
the planet. That's why, because that if you're headweight's the
cream of the crop position with all our division, with
all due respect to all the divisions out there and
all of the fighters, there's an amazing heavyweight. That person
(18:28):
is getting all the clicks, all the views. He's the biggest,
He's the baddest person out there. If it has to
be knocked, folks out, if you have what that's dropping, folks,
you are the badst man on the planet and it's
your world and we're just living in it. That's just
how it goes. So that being said, like you mentioned
Starry with Jack Johnson, He's he was the first like
basically superstar type boxer of his era. Like when you
(18:50):
think about like that, they mentioned like people coming in
via light train and all that kind of stuff to
watch them fight and all that will depress and meet
all that for what that was in that era. Yeah,
like it was huge news and that just transferred to
all the other graids after that. That's just how it is.
But the heavweight division, unfortunately, we've gotten away from that
over the last really thirty years when you think about it.
(19:13):
But yeah, if we if we ever have an America
haveaweight again that can really throw punches and that can
really fight, watch out you will see box and get
a rebirth in this country like no other.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
That's fair. Yeah, going back to our history chat, Yeah,
this is the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Jack Johnson was born eighteen seventy eight, and I got
it right this time. Slavery had only just been a
busch in eighteen sixty five. His parents were slaves, so
it wasn't like today when white folks have to find
coded words to explain why they don't fuck with certain fighters,
like someone says, oh, they want to support the American fighters,
which is fine whatever, But all of a sudden there's
like a black American fighter against say, like a white
(19:53):
British dude, and they backed to the white guy because
the black fighter is quote arrogant or they don't like
his style. Right, No, nothing, nothing will make a patriot
turned against his own country fast and seeing it represented
by black or brown guy. But back then, yeah, they didn't.
They didn't have any coded words. They were straight up
saying in the papers, the jack doesn't winning the championship
(20:15):
would be detrimental to white supremacy. They did not want
this guy anywhere near a ring against the heavy way champ.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
All of you one better. They there was no pr
back then, there was no There was no soft language.
They fled out called them a negro and that's just
what it was. It wasn't no other and it wasn't
not no, it wasn't no African American black. He was
a Negro man. It was. It was worse than that.
So yeah, it was nothing. But also they made things
(20:42):
extremely difficult for him. Right. So it's one thing in
the fight and when that's fine, but everything else was difficult.
If he got into any kind of trouble. It was
like max sentences or he had to pay the max
fine himount, you know, all those kind of things. So
it was it was deeper than just the the the words.
It was the treatment, and it basically said, hey, if
(21:03):
you're going to fight, be everybody up, well we're going
to beat you up when we get a chance to.
And that's they did. So yeah, it was quite fascinating.
But also it's always good to see where boxers get
things from. Right, you can tell, Okay, this guy kind
of lives a life for what he was in that era.
You know, he felt himself he was the best, you know,
(21:25):
due to that era, and he lives it up as
much as he could. Even though the money was nowhere
near that it probably should have been.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
It was still way more than you expected any black
fighter to have.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, I mean he he did not give a fuck,
but anybody thought, you know, he he proved himself to
be the best. He fought his way up. He fought
every former heavyweight championship just to a champion, just to
kind of show I want to shot at the title
at the time. Let's see nineteen Oh oh, sorry, I
got a lot of notes in this guy because there's
(21:58):
a lot going on. Early nineteen hundreds, Jim Jeffers was
the champ refused to fight Jack Johnson said I would
rather retire like the coward he was than fight him. Eventually,
Jack Johnson followed a guy named Tommy Burns around the
world for two years, taunting him, calling him whatever the
nineteen hundreds equivalent of a bitch ass coward was for
not agreeing to fight him. So eventually Jack Johnsons showed
(22:23):
with pure skill like that he wasn't just like doing
this because he just wanted to shut He wanted to
be a contender. He proved that he was a bad ass.
Mfort don't know, way centser that because we're supposed to
a bad ass motherfucker. Eventually, Tommy Burns dig go ahead, good.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
No, he definitely was, And unfortunately he didn't have the
structure that we do today because obviously back then everything
was way different. There was no structure, and no one
was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
No one was really willing to make sure he got
the best offer possible. It was basically say here, take
this and live with it type of thing, instead of hey,
(23:03):
we're going to do whatever is possible for you to
make things better for you. So for his situation, it
kind of sucks because he doesn't get talked about as
much and his dominance and his his reign should be
celebrated a lot more than it actually gets brought up.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And that's that his style too. He was one of
the early people who adopted the modern style of boxing,
not just brawlin, not just throwing bombs. You know, he
was counterpunching, he was dodging, he was holding, you know,
things that we associated with box today. He was one
of the early fighters to do all that. And of course,
you know, the paper said that he he didn't actually
want to fight because he was lazy, because he because
(23:41):
he just was a coward, et cetera. You know, they
didn't give him any credit for being a smart, talented fighter.
It was always a negative and any thing he did
was a negative.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Right, yeah, and as well as it wasn't just he
was loud and arrogant too, So it's not like he's
he's talented. He lets you know what it was. He
wasn't really humble with his talents, and a lot of
people to this day cannot stand that.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I found what I screwed up earlier.
Jim Jeffries had the belt in eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Jack Johnson kept.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Challenging him, but he refused to find Johnson, so he
retired in nineteen o five, as I said, like a coward.
So that's gonna be relevant for a little bit later
in the discussion. But yeah, he finally fought Tommy Burns.
It was a match that was set up. Do you
know who set up this match? The name of the.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Guy who what was the name again.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Hugh Huge Deals macintosh. Oh wow, yeah, it's another another
cracky guy if his name is Hugh Donald McIntosh, but
his nickname was Huge Deals. So this man agreed to
put up thirty thousand dollars yep, yep, yeah to promote
the fight in Australia in nineteen oh eight for twenty rounds,
(24:56):
which is wild all right.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
So that was the part that got me watching it, right,
the amount of rounds that they used to fight back
and then like that was crazy. But also if you
look at the tapes of the footage that they had,
you didn't see a lot of movement either, right, So
you didn't see guy bouncing around the ring like we
do now. It was kind of just sit and then
punch or two here or there. It wasn't you know,
hit hit move, hit hit move. It was none of that.
(25:20):
But that's crazy. And they fought outside a lot. They
was fighting outdoors in the elements and in the heat,
like he was fighting Cuba and stuff like that, ain't it.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
That's the thing now? You know, you go, you can
join a boxing gym that's indoors. You know, if you're
a professional fighter, you're fighting in Vegas in an arena
like there's eight air conditioning.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
My god, even if you fighting that Carson a stub
hub or whatever it's called now, and they have a
tent over the ring, so you're not just in the elements.
They was literally the sun was beaming on them when
they fought outside like they was in the elements. I
cannot imagine that. I could imagine fighting outside in the hot,
(25:59):
hot heat, how that part of the day. And you
fight in a twenty plus round fight. That's crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah. The thing that got me that I found really
interesting is that fights were twenty rounds and that sometimes
the fighters would try to extend them so that the
fights could be replayed in movie theaters and then they
would get a portion of the profits. I thought that
was really interesting factor. I think we should get back
to more fights being played in movie theaters.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Honestly, you gotta be oh, that's the thing. You gotta
have the demand, and there's not like I've been asked
people since the news broke of Profert Canelo that there's
probably a fight. I was like, who else would you
literally make a trip to go see? And I'm not
gonna say you got a fly across the country. Most
of these people live either in Phoenix or in la
or somewhere in California. I'm like, hey, would you travel
(26:44):
an hour to go see such as something? They're like nope.
I ran off like five different box like nope, nope, nope.
And that's the problem. We got to get to the
point where we got big fights that the masses want
to see. Until then we're gonna be stuck with ESPN
plus links.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
You know. Let's see, I got a little note for
a producer here. Thirty thousand dollars in nineteen o eight
was worth one seven hundred and eighty one dollars and
fifty two cents. You can't forget about the two cents today,
And that's what the hell would somebody even do with
a million dollars back then, when like everything was a nickel,
(27:20):
like a meal was a quarter.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
My god, I mean so you, I mean, if you
have that kind of money, you was able to build
whatever you wanted to build, right, You could have built
a stadium, you could have built a bunch of houses,
you could have bought a franchise back then, all that
kind of stuff. You could have showed whatever you wanted
to what. It was just such back then there was
no middle class. You're either really rich or you were
really poor. There was no in between.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Well, Jack don't spend his money on fast cars, and
he liked building cars and uh fixing them up, So
that's where a lot of that money went. And women, Yes,
to see, I love the company of.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Now they are white women for the most parts. So yeah, he.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Loved the company of not just not just women, also prostitutes,
also white women, which is you could.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Was that white women which were also prostituted also Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, supposedly he was married twice to black women, but
there was no documentation, like there's no actual record anywhere.
So he had three documented marriages to white women, and
he specifically said his experiences with those first two or
the reason why he would only seek the company of
white women after that. But because you can imagine, at
the time, this drove you know, the the racist white
(28:29):
population fucking nuts. He was, you know, made to look
at to be made to be a villain and you know,
vile person and this culture of you know, white supremacy
that he was. You know, he was stealing white women,
et cetera. And people were not shy about this. Like
I said, back then, don't think they were. In this
modern time where people got to be a little sneaky
(28:50):
about it. People put that shit out there very clearly,
newspapers and the press everything.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, no, it was no games people, man,
Look at people still deal with problems like that today.
They start issued back today. So imagine one hundred and
twenty five years ago what it was. Yeah, you know
what I mean. So yeah, and he's also a big
black dude knocking white dudes out. So it's not like, oh,
he's beating up up but no, he's destroying other white
(29:19):
guys in the ring in front of thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Right going back to his fight in Australia against Tommy
Burns Kraky Country. The fight was scheduled for twenty rounds.
The fight was stopped by the cops in fourteen rounds
when it was clear that Johnson was trouncing Burns. The
cops even forcibly stopped the cameras from filming the fight
so there wouldn't exist film of white man being knocked
out by a black man.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
So right, and oh that don't know a history Australia
was worse than the US back Yeah he'll oun great now,
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but true.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Despite the fighting stuff, he did get the heavyweight belt
from a Hugh huge deals McIntosh, who was the referee
for the fight. Because I guess that's what thirty k
buys you. You know what, if we don't see a
modern fight refereed by that Saudi royal dude turkela chic,
I wanna be so disappointed in him.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Man.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Honestly, we need to spend more time on that cat.
That's a whole different thing. I'm very curiously how that
plays out. Gets a lot of money in play, but
it feels like it could be better allocated instead of
chasing the big fights. I think we should have better cards. Right,
So obviously the Sheik is throwing a bunch of money around,
which is fine, it's good. But I'd rather have more
(30:35):
balanced weeknight or weekends than just having one great car
every six months or every single I'd rather have once
every three weeks a really solid card with a lot
of dope boxing rather than you know, just oh, we
got a surprise every six months.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
I'm with you, and we talked about that before. I
think we can say that's like an official stance of
this show is more fights, not necessarily a big name
yet every three months, four months, et cetera. Just get
more people involved than like I said before, the kids.
You got to get the kids involved.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Kids. We also got get the average person, the average adult,
to tune in. When you mentioned Wilder Fury three, you
were absolutely correct. The average person was like, oh, I've
heard of this before, I've checked even the second fight.
The second fight was huge, Saconde was huge. What people
(31:29):
checked in because it was talked about it was heavyweight.
How to fight you had an American versus a foreigner.
There's a lot of different avenues that went. You had
black and white, so there's a lot there, But again,
we need more of that and until we get more
consistent fights, so the autprosos could learn these fighters, we're
kind of kind of in the same boat.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, So back to history, as you can imagine. You know,
white people weren't very happy with Jack Johnson when he
beat Tommy Burns. If y'all went to school, you may
know the writer Jack Lennon who wrote the book White Fang,
Emphasis on the White He was a racist piece of shit,
just straight up. He had solidarity with the working class,
but only if they were white. He referred to Asian
immigration as the yellow peril. He was the supporter of eugenics.
(32:14):
He was the person who said a quote great white
hope was needed to defeat Jack Johnson because and I
quote again, the white man must be rescued. Again. They
weren't shy about this stuff. There's I got right here.
I got my notes. A quote from the New York Times.
If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his
ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to
(32:36):
much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors,
which is to say, you know, these folks are gonna
get really cocky and think that, you know, yeah, this
guy's physically equal to another fighter, but they might get
it in their heads that they're equal as well to
other white people, and we can't have that right, not back.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Then, Jesus, Once you fear someone, you will make up
anything in your mind to justify that fear. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
I think, honestly, I think this idea of a great
white home in boxing lives to this day. It really does.
To this day. People really don't like the white sorry,
white sport fans really don't like the idea of black champions,
and I think they still have that that mindset of,
you know, there's got to be a white guy to
take over the championship, the big fights. You know, maybe sure,
(33:30):
maybe not with all of them. I'm not going to
say that, but that exists to this day.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Isn't that why Rocky was created?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
It's absolutely Uh do you do you know actually who
Rocky was based on?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, it is a does a guy named Chuck Webner?
Does that sound familiar? Uh? No, I'm sure yeah, I'm
sure all the listeners are like, oh, Chuck Webinar. Everybody
everybody knows that guy. Yeah, so so Rocky fights Paula Creed,
who is very clearly based on Muhammad a later right,
and but Rocky himself was based on Chuck Weptter, who
(34:04):
his claim to fame was he fought Muhammad Muhammad Ali
in nineteen seventy five, knocked Alee down once in the
ninth round, then got totally out boxed by Ali for
the rest of the fight. Right Wepner almost finished all
fifteen rounds, almost Ali knocked him out with nineteen seconds left.
And apparently that dude who almost finished the fight was
what inspired Stallone to write his movie. There was actually
(34:26):
a movie in twenty sixteen about this guy called Chuck,
and another movie in twenty nineteen about him called The Brawler.
Why the fuck would this guy have? Technically three movies
had a documentary about him.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Said it, We've been chasing the great white hype, great
white hope forever. We've been chasing that forever. That's just
how it is. But also the amount of money that
goes into that, if you have a successful American boxer,
the amount of marketing dollars, the amount of things that
all with that is on parallel. So that's the reason why, however,
(34:55):
you don't have a lot of white boxers anymore. It
just doesn't quite happened. They moved to the UFC area.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Right I think?
Speaker 3 (35:05):
So.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Well, just one more thing about Rocky. You know, look,
it is a good movie. I still hold that it's
not good enough to have the reputation in popularity that
it does, and it does because it's mostly about a
white fighter who's the underdog against uh Muhammed Ali type character.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
You know, the Rocky statue in Philly before they had
a joke Fraser.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
One that guy isn't even real. I went to Philly
and I refused to go see it also because I
didn't want to go to that museum. What was it,
like the Museum of ardor or something like that. Yeah, no,
it's yeah. They people wanted this great white hope so bad,
even in the era of when Rocky came out, that
they made this, you know, the biggest thing in the
(35:49):
world based on some guy who almost finished a fight
against Ali. You know, all of this just LEDs up
to the to the racial resentment. You know, this still
exists in combat sports today. And yeah, you said it.
People moved to UFC because there's there's a lot of
white guys there who have their claim to fame in UFC.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
And they feel that they have a better chance. Right,
there's more things involved. There's wrestling, there's jiu jitsu, there's
still boxing involved in UC, but there's more things in
corporate that they feel have that chance at. But the
wide American boxer is kind of gone, like it's not
it's not really prevalent anymore. Like even fifteen years ago,
(36:29):
we had a couple here and there, but the wide
American eye that just boxes Nah.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
No, yeah, I mean growing up, I saw boxing as
a black and brown sport and it didn't even like
I didn't think twice about it. It's just kind of
what that was to me, right, And.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
And they try to sell Ricky Hatten to us. They
try to act like that guy was the next coming
and man.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Never how did that turn out? Sorry? Had Ricky hadn't
turned out for Oh?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
It was it was lived, it was grand opening, grand closing.
He fought Floyd, got dropped, fought pak Yao, and it
was over, like he didn't care anymore. Then he was
retired X champ in like two years after that. So
you know he comes to boxing, you know then sitting
in good seats talking about x X, you know, middleweight
champ or ultimweight champ.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Right, Yeah, I mean I think every every few years
they're sort of like trying to say, this is the
next guy, this is the next guy. And you know,
Tyson Fury was their guy for a long time and
he actually he walked the walk in a lot of
uh in a lot of respects. But yeah, I mean,
and here's the thing, I don't know, Big Company is
kind of kind of relative. So I was rooting for
(37:46):
Ukrainian Alexander Russik versus British Tyson Fury, both of them
white guys. But then also we'll talk more about this
than maybe the next episode, but Ukrainian Dennis Barnchek is
fighting black American Keishan Davis, and you know, I'm all
for Keyshot. So I don't know. I mean, what's gonna happen.
Is everybody gonna like rally around who sick? I mean,
(38:07):
he's got the skills, he does, but is it because
they really believe he's got the skills or because he's
another white guy?
Speaker 3 (38:15):
We know how it works out.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
That is a rhetorical question, but you know, we don't.
We don't try again shy away from the difficult conversations
here on the show. You know, and this is stuff
the really it's baked into history. You know, we're talking
about this guy who lived, you know, the Hunt over
one hundred years ago, and boxing became a black and
brown sport despite you know what white fans, white audiences,
(38:39):
and white fighters wanted. They would have stopped it if
they absolutely could have.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Well, also a big part of it is poverty. Right
when you're poor and you don't have very many options,
whatever options you do have, you're gonna go all and
with it. Like the boxers that made it, they made it.
There's a lot of guys who tried boxing that it
didn't work for and they had to get five and
else to do. But most of the time you go
a box because your chances, you know, you don't have
(39:05):
much else to do. That's your only hope in a
lot of cases.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
What I've always said, the most dangerous fighter is the
fighter that has something to prove and has to show
that they are the baddest because they grew up with nothing.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
They're not trying to go back like they're trying to steak.
You're not trying to go.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Back they're going back to the government cheese that's white.
And then in black letters.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Better you like to do? You like to drink a
little bit. Once you have premium alcohol, you're not going
back to nothing else. And then I'll give you one
last one. Once you have premium women, if that's what
you choose to partake in, you know, but partaking that,
some do other stuff when I'm talking about that, But
the ones that partake in women, once you get used
(39:49):
to a certain amount of women, you're not trying to
go back to what you was used to before. It's
not not happening.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, I mean to me, with everything stacked up against
Jack Johnson and black fighters general, it's amazing to me
that so many of them now black and brown fighters
became so prominent in boxing today. Like it's it's just unreal.
You know.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's focus and actually fall through what their gifts. A
lot of guys can't stay focused end up crashing out.
But for the ones that can, it's it's really good
to see. Right, continuing on to sorry about Jack Johnson.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, the fight his fights were Attempts were made to
ban the fights that he won against white people, yep.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Literally, and.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
After he won the heavyweight championship from Tommy Burns. A
bunch of fights after that were billed as Jack Johnson
versus the Great White Hope, and of course he washed
all opponents, and people started screaming, begging for Jim Jeffries
to unretire, to beat this man. You know, we talked
about him earlier. He's back in the story.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Baby.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
He retired for six years, and Jack Lennon was the
one that said, you know, the white man must be rescued,
and it's got to be done by Jim Jefferies. And
it took forty thousand dollars to lure Jim Jeffries back
into the ring. So July fourth, nineteen ten and reno,
they called it the fight of the century. Twenty thousand
(41:11):
people were there, scheduled for twenty rounds, and so people
were so racist they still thought this fat Grandpa Jim
Jeffries had what it took to defeat Johnson, who was
still in excellent shape. So you know, I we all
know how the song goes, We all know the lyrics.
Jack beat the shit out of him. Jeffries got knocked
down twice, his corners threw in the towel in the
(41:32):
fifteen round, so he wouldn't actually get slept and race
rights broke out. Black people were literally murdered in response
to this fight.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, that's how it was, man, And I'll put it
this way. Back then, all bets were off because how
race relations were. And also there's no protection right, So
for Jack Johnson, he can win the fight, but he
eventually lose the war. There's no war, there's no there's
(42:01):
no civil rights, there's no and you know, there was
no help. He was basically on his own. And if
you were black and you were caught celebrated, you were
your life was in jeopardy too. So it was a real, real,
real tough situation all the way around. However, he did
make a lot of people scared and a lot of
people mad, And I like that. I like when our
(42:21):
fighters and our athletes pissed the majority of the people off.
I love it. So for me, he's a hero. But
with all that being said, it sucks that he didn't
get to class, get to used his skills in a
different time or a different era, because he would have
been much better appreciated and we would have saw a
lot more had better stories than we do with the
current ones we.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Have now sure, and I think that even though we
look back, you know, everybody knows Muhammada Leave and if
you're not into boxing, you know, maybe some people do
they really know Joe Louis kind of sort of. But
I think even the people that know the history of
boxing still don't give Jack Johnson enough credit for you know,
what he did for the sport, honestly losing recipe.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
We don't talk about old boxing anymore else, remember, Like
I mean, Tyson's the oldest most kids know about. And
that's kind of just by the antics. That's not the
boxing like we really I mean, we be honest, we're
talking about like Floyd Trinidad Oscar Era, like mid nineties,
(43:20):
and that's like the start for a lot of people,
you know what I mean. So it's we were kind
of losing recipes on the seventies and before, like it's
just not there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Well in Tyson's yea, I've been in the Zeitgach like
you said, for you know, he's kids who grew up.
Kids would watch The Hangover. They knew who Tyson was,
and maybe they did a little research and if they
didn't know what fighter he was, maybe that kind of
led them down a rabbit hole. He had. You know,
there's memes, you know, he's he had that adult swim
cartoon that I never saw where he's.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Like Edibulls and the Weed. Now, like he's he's known
for more non boxing than boxing, and you know, that
is what it is. That's kind of how it went.
But but yeah, man, it's a different situation all way around.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Sure, but also yes, he's known more for not boxing.
But I think still people know that he was a
boxer and a.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Great no no doubt, no doubt, He's definitely known from that.
It's just that over the last twenty five to thirty
years it's been non boxing things that he's known for
rather than boxing. And I'm saying that's the problem with
when them out boxers outside of like like Roy Jones,
Floyd Oscar, those three guys in the mid ninety early
(44:27):
to mid nineties, I think that's what the majority of
people start. You're not gonna go hold with that goal
before that, their knowledge is very limited before that.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Right, I mean, this, this documentary and other stuff about
Jack Johnson is easily available. You know, we're doing a
lot of history recap. I think it's nice to do
a little bit of a mix of history and then
you know our thoughts on the legacy of that. But
when we're not a history podcast and we're not the podcast,
it just sits in Rich Reads Wikipedia. But but I think,
like I said, I think this is important. I think
(44:57):
even if you're not a boxing fan at all, if
you're a fan of history, if you're just a fan
of like you know, stories about people, big, big characters
in history, you know, doing wild shit, I think you
should learn more about Jack Johnson. You know, watch that documentary.
At the very least, you know, google some articles about him.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
My god, well, read a book. Y'all need to read
read a book. It would help because and this do
all wanted to have speed to go buy faster. But no,
I definitely think he does. He's one of our first
American superstars, and we don't have a lot of those anymore.
Why we took those. We don't have a lot of
American athletes that are superstars. We got stars. We got
guys that are celebrities because they're content creators. We don't
(45:37):
have a lot of superstars because they're dope in their sport,
don't have a whole lot of those anymore. He was
like one of our first.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah no, it's in his lacy rings through today. Just
a couple more things to finish up with this very
very brief bio. We said that he liked the company
of prostitutes who are also white women. So in nineteen ten,
there was a law called the Man Act pass.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
It was.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
The reason it was passed to stop the transporting of
white women, sorry, this transporting of women across state lines
quote for moral purposes. So it was for you know,
stop sex trafficking, which we all agree is a good idea,
but it was used to target Jack Johnson because the
government was trying to find whatever they could to lock
him up and stop him from being the figure, the
(46:21):
black figure in the sport anyway that they could, so
they arrested him for it. He skipped bail, left for Montreal,
lived in exile in Europe, which totally support him skipping bail,
by the way. That's fucking bad ass. He moved to Mexico.
He actually said that Mexico was cool and encourage other
black people to move there. You know that the racial
relations there were a lot better. My people have a
(46:42):
lot of problems but somehow they were less racist in
the early nineteen hundreds, and you know, the US was
toward toward black people. But yeah, he finally lost his
heavyweight title in Havanah in nineteen fifty to a guy
named Jessa lost. Yeah, this fight was scheduled for forty
five rounds right in the sun. I goddamn rounds. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(47:07):
Jack Johnson got knocked down in the twenty sixth round.
You know, he didn't get back up.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
He was sure his eyes with the gloves to make
sure the sun was in his thighs. The fight was thrown.
It was fixed to make sure that. I believe he
had to get back to the States. So his mom
was sick and some things, and yeah, that fight was
thrown though it wasn't, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
He thought he could negotiate with the governments to look,
I lose this fight if I do this, if I
do that. You know, he tried whatever he could. He
missed being home, and yeah, he couldn't make it back
to visit his mom or to visit his home after
his mom died. Eventually, he returned to the US in
nineteen twenty to serve out ascendence for of a year
for the arrest under the Man Act. And yeah, he
died at sixty eight years old because he flipped one
(47:48):
of his fancy sports cars because the man loved going fast.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
So right, it's.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
A wild story like this is one of the wildest stories,
like in boxing history, like I said, but also in
American I.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Mean, we still have the same things that happened today.
I mean one of our bright stars unfortunately flipped a
car within the last several years. I mean it happened.
You know, all the stuff that he went through still
goes on to this day.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Right exactly. So you know, please check out this documentary
learn more about Jack Johnson. You know, I strongly encourage it. Again,
if you're just the kind of history you don't have
to care about sports. There's a lot of I have
somebodies who just do not care about sports, but they
like good stories. Yeah, listen to an audiobook, I said,
Jameson said, you know, you don't have to read it.
Listening into an audiobook is perfectly valuable. I think it's
(48:35):
a great way to if you're running around driving for
work or anything like that, it's a great way to
get that. So please check it out, download the Libby app,
get a library card, you get the liby app, you
get ebooks, you get audiobooks. You know, we gotta we
gotta encourage people to learn more about about history these days,
because because we're gonna lose it. So but yeah, final
thoughts on Jack Johnson on this documentary. It's kind of weird.
(48:57):
We usually rate movies or shows of four gloves, but
I feel it's kind of weird to rate a documentary
about this guy that.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
Really you can't really rate a documentary like that one. Yeah,
I mean it was done well, you know, I think
we get to say that it served the purpose. We
can't really rate rate a light back and it wasn't
made for that purpose.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's yes, it's kind of
for entertainment, but it's also educational. I guess how about this,
let's rate Jack Johnson as a fighter four gloves. He
downe with that.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Oh he's four out of four?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
What's up?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
He's four out of four? He's still four to four.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yes, we're rating him as a fighter as a figure
four to four gloves, So please check it out. It's
called Unforgivable Blackness. So last segment got a mailback question here.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
You ready for this one, of course? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
This one comes from a listener named j D. His
question is, if y'all had a DeLorean, which fight would
you go back to see if you could.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Oh that's a good question, oh man, a lot of
good options out there. Yeah, Like, that's not really fair.
That should be like a an error question, right, So
like a fight from the seventies, fight from the eighties,
fight from the nineties, fight from the two thousands, fight
from the twenty tens, fight from the twenty twenties, Like
(50:13):
it should be based on that, because that's not I
mean one five minutes of so many great fights.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I'm guessing you wouldn't go back to watch Jack Johnson
the early nineteen hundred. No, no, no, no, you just taking
like nineteen eighty and Forge.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
I mean going to the seventies and Shaky Man. Yeah,
like going to the Massonsquare Garden to see you know,
Ali Fraser one is like, you know, even though there's
so much that went all with that fight and how
important that was, like that one is probably it, But
I don't want to go back that far because we
were treated terribly back then. Man, there's so many good fights.
(50:50):
Uh yeah, Hagwin hearns, Yeah, there's I mean, yes, sure, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
It's hard, it's it's a hard question. It's hard to
pin down.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
I think I was be aerror based. It'd have to
be air based. It can't just be one. That's not fair.
But I had to pick one, it would be Ali
Fraser one in New York because so much happened during
that fight, the way it was covered out, like the
first major production, and you know, so I would probably
pick that up that one if I had to. But again,
I think it should be air based because there's fights
(51:26):
in the two thousands that I would have loved to
go on to and unfortunately we didn't get Packy on
Mayweather until it was too late. But if we'd have
got that in eight, that probably would have been the
one because that was like literally the fight that everybody
wanted to see.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I guess there's nothing says that you can't take the
Delian back and hang out for like a year, a
couple of years in a watch.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's just so many different moments.
I mean, I would have loved to be in MGM
for Tyson Holyfield one I would have loved being arena
just for that, all the craziness that ensued. IM sorry,
sorry for all the crazy that ensued. But tis Holyfield
one was an upset by the book standard. So yeah, yeah,
(52:07):
it's a good question. It's a very very good question,
to be honest with you. Yeah, that's that's fascinating, it
really is. But I would probably say Ali Fraser one.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Also, just to make it clear for the audience who
don't know off hand, Holyfield versus Ticson too, what fight
was that.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yeah, that's the nearbino one. That's the one I would
have probably would have went to see. The first one
was interesting because it was marketed very well and holy
Field beat Tyson at that time, which was an upset,
even though looking back at things it probably wasn't. But
that's a whole different conversation for a wholely different day.
But I don't know if I want to go back
for that fight particularly. I think the eighties was probably
(52:44):
the gold standard of fighting. There's just so many great
middleweights and worlds of wades that fought, and they actually
fought each other. It wasn't a whole lot of ducking.
And I don't want to fight because they weren't making
that much. But they weren't making money. These guys were
making they had to fight regularly. So Ramp Sugar, Ray
Haggler hearns you have there's so many great, great fights.
(53:06):
But yeah, if I had a fight, one choose one
to probably Ali Fraser one.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Okay, okay, I got maybe a stranger, weird one. But
I would go back to see Hulu su Chavis fight,
but specifically the nineteen ninety four fight against Frankie Randall
or Julia First lost. And I'll tell you why. So
Chevis is my goat. He's the reason I'm into boxing
to this day, to this type. But the thing I
love about the sport is how I'm predicciple. It can be.
Any little thing can change the tight of a fight.
(53:31):
And while I hate the thought of seeing my guy lose,
I would love to feel the vibe in the venue,
you know, the emotions during the fight and at the results.
That fight was the first time Cheves was knocked down
in his career. I believe it was knocked down. I'm
pretty sure it was the first time in his career.
And we all know the feeling of seeing your guy
in trouble in the ring, right, So yeah, that's something
I've never felt or connected with for any like NBA
(53:53):
team and felt team. Nothing against the sport, it's just
not what I've you know, that doesn't bring down.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
That much nothing. There's no other feeling you could equate
it to. Neither. There's no when you when you're a
guy or somebody you root for or bet on kids
are dropped.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
It's swoof, man. It's very few things are worse than
that feeling, especially at an upset. You know, Frankie Randall
was the underdog, and you know the upsets gonna happen
all the time. So yeah, just the roar of the crowd,
the shock, the gas, like all that shit. I want
to experience that. I want to see what it was like.
And and then I would go to Houston and leave
(54:31):
a note for my eight year old self telling me
not to get fat. I'd be like, just because you're
skinny now and we'll be skinny for a decade and
a half, doesn't mean you're gonna stay that way. Stupid,
So that's what I would do. In nineteen ninety four, Jamison,
where can people find you on social media?
Speaker 3 (54:48):
At the Jamison on Twitter, The Jamison on Instagram. Yeah,
you know, we got some box stuff coming up. I
think there's gonna be some announcements soon. By the time
we got on next next show, I think we'll have
some more talk about in terms of upcoming fights, and
we'll we'll break some stuff down and have some fun. Excellent.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah, and I'm very excited about what this year is
gonna bring. You can follow me the Classy Alcoholic on
Instagram and Blue Sky. The podcast has its own Twitter
account at Mixed co Podcast. Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
and Amazon Music. Leave us a five star review. It
only takes a minute and it helps more than you
can possibly imagine. We have an official show email adress.
(55:26):
If you have any questions for the mail bag, fun
stories about watching boxing and Mixed Company, or hate mail,
send it all to letters at mixedcopodcast dot com. That's
letters at mixedcopodcast dot com. Don't forget. Episodes drop every
other Thursday. So thank you very much for listening, thank
you for joining us in this very special episode in
the style of Rkle and Fraser and all those shows
(55:47):
in the nineties. And we will be back in two
weeks with mas fuego, good night, and salut
In this corner standing it six foot five weight class
unknown hailing from Sin City, Las Vegas, Jamison Welsh and
in this corner standing it five foot nine, Wayne Town
with six wins.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Three losses, two arrests, four late.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Payments on student loans and two total bankruptcies.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
HiT's the Classy. I'll go home, Thank you. Welcome back
to another edition of the Mixed Company Podcast. Of course
I'm one of your hosts, Jamison Welsh and of course
another week joined by the classy Alcoholic Classy. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Man, it's your boy, the classy alcoholic ready to rock
in twenty twenty five, shout out to everybody doing dry January.
I am not doing that shit, but shout out to
y'all who have better in both control than me.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Ain't no way, what everything's way? Man, I'm gonna I'll
brick like that. But yeah, nah, more power to y'all
if you do it. So you know, yeah, I'm proud
of y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But yeah, we got a very special episode for y'all,
just like in the nineties when Erkele and Boy Meets
World used to do special episodes. But yeah, blest in
the past, Dyby, But first I want to jump into
some quick boxing news. What do you say, jameson you
want to check out the Boxing Gazette.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I mean there's been a lot going on lately. Like
if at the start of the year happened, then we
got all this stuff coming about. I think Tank confirm
his fight. I'm hearing Devin Haney and Ryan I see
a rematch talk. I'm hearing Crawford Canelo or Canel Crawford
getting you know, hearing a lot of different things, man,
which you want to cover first?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, it's just really quick. There are rumors in the
Twitter sphere, Yeah, that Canelo and Crawford might be on
for September. You know, it's not official, nothing's been really announced,
but you know, fingers crossed, man, I would be very
excited about it. It'd be a big deal. We've been
talking about it since the pilot episode. Don't and off.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
It's the boxing fight that has to be made. Even
the results are going to be the results, but that
is the fight that gets made, right, the money, the intrigue,
the legacies online. These are probably the two guys with
the profile they have that people really want to see. Hey,
if these two guys fight, what happens, So it has
(02:17):
to happen. But I'm glad we're hearing you talk of
it in January. It gives us hopefully eight months to
build up to the matchup, which is always good.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Right, and also rumors that Tank or sorry Tank Bud
Crawford will be back in the ring before that sometime
early this year. So let's see what happens there.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Nah, he shouldn't. Well, I'm not gonna tell him what
to do. He's far more accomplished and what he does.
But the only reason why I would advise against that
is because not because he would lose, because he wouldn't scheduling.
What he would lose to is more of the injury factor, Right.
You don't want to mess up a shoulder or a
hand or anything like that, and the next thing you know,
the September fights push back. You just never know how
(02:56):
thing's gonna happen. I think he'd be better off waiting
until sat terror By Again, I'm not you know, there's
more people involved in me, so we'll end up seeing
what's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Sure. The thing I'd be curious about is which weight
class if he does come back before that September fight, like,
who is he fighting somebody at his current class, somebody
closer to one sixty eight where Canelo is, Like, I don't.
I would be very curious to see what how that
would work out.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
That's a good point because last fight was that one
fifty four.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Right, Uh, yes, I believe. So that's the first time
he moved up to fight Israel Metamov.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yep, and it didn't look as domina as it looked
at previous fights when the weight was lower. So that's
a good point. That actually makes sense that he would
go to one sixty four, one sixty eight, see how
it goes, and then fight Canal, even though the Canalo
fight feels more like a cash out more than an
actual title fighter. That's a holder for discuss for a
(03:50):
different day.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Sure, sure, yeah, well yeah, well you know Figers Cross
it happens, We'll let you know when the official word
is out. So uh yeah, let's see what else he
got here in the gazette. Yeah, the fight between Tank
Davis and Lamont Roach appears to still be on for
March first, despite some weird thing that happened with Tank
posting on his Instagram story on Christmas Eve that the
fight was canceled. I don't think we ever got an
explanation as to what that was all about. It may
(04:12):
have been Tank just trolling. I don't know, but lamont
roach was immediate, like, hey, don't talk to me. I
didn't say that shit. I'm still preparing for the fight.
So I kind of want to throw this question off
spin off into this question, Well, how do you feel
about boxers talking shit and trolling on social media? I mean,
is it make it a little bit more exciting or
is it just too far? I don't know that. I
(04:34):
don't love it, but what do you think.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
It's just what they do now. This is the albume
that's available, So that's what they do. That's what they know.
Tank is from the social media era, so that's what
he knows. Like back in the day, you went to
the paper the TV because that's all that was. So
that's all it is. There may have been some contract
details he may not have agreed with, so he may
have said, hey, I'll go out and try to cancel
(04:57):
the fight before y'all do this, this and that. That's
just a leverage place some guys try to hold. Everybody
does things differently. Tank is a very emotional guy. We
both know that we've seen things in and out the
ring that have showcased that, so you know, I'm not
really surprised it's boxing anything and everything's possible. I would
never under any circumstances rule anything out, but I do
(05:18):
think that fight does happen in March. I feel like
that that's going to happen. I saw in an LERB
and Tank both basically confirmed yesterday or earlier in the
week that it was going to take place, So yeah,
it feels like it's a done deal.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, I think. I don't know. Maybe when there's a
fight on the line that's already scheduled, maybe guys shouldn't
get too mouthy on Instagram about things being canceled or
not happening, Like, stick with the damn plan, unless again,
there's like an injury or some very valid reason to
to not not make the fight happen. I mean, don't
don't don't jerk the fans around, is all I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
No, absolutely not. Tank is one of the few people
that people would travel well, I mean trally, either drive
more than four hours or fly to to go watch fight.
It's not a whole lot of casual slash average boxing
fans that would travel to go see someone. He's the
main guy outside of Canelo that people would actually travel
(06:12):
to and spend a weekend in the city to go
watch fight. He has to be active, he has to
he has to fight. If he does not fight, it's
not good for everybody involved.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Right, I think totally speaking, When I saw the Garcia
Tank fight at the Neighborhood downtown in Tucson, I was
actually surprised how many Tank fans were out. Yes, you
could tell when the introductions happened there were there was
more of a Garcia crowd, you know, Like I said,
a lot of Mexicans in Tucson, but there was a
pretty good amount of people there rooting for Tank, So
I myself included. Actually I was always rooty for Tank
(06:42):
for the d during that fight.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Now Tanks, I mean remember a lot of people watch
combat sport for the knockouts. They don't watch for the
technical side of them. Most people watch boxing for the
ko That's why some people prefer you have seen the boxing,
because you get you get knockouts early and often in
that sport. On boxing, there's people who love the KOs.
They want to see somebody get dropped, not see someone
(07:05):
to get out boxed, not to see someone get out technical.
They want to see somebody get dropped. So HENK does that.
He closed the show, and I think heard that and
from either hand too, so it's not like a one
trip ponent. He has equal power in both hands from
different angles, and I think that's what makes them special.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Agreed. Uh, speaking of fighters getting injured and knockout artists coincidentally, next,
I'm actually drinking a Supporo beer from Japan because I'm
excited that Friday, January twenty fourth is the return of
now Yeah in a way. A Japanese boxer nicknamed the
Monster you Know is you know? It's twenty eight to
oh with twenty five of those wins by knockout, so
(07:44):
like Tanka knockout artists. He was scheduled to fight a
a kriiky guy named Sam Goodman on Christmas Eve, but
that was pushed back to the Goodman being injured. Turns
out he can't make the fight at all, so he
was replaced with a Korean fighter named Yeay Jim Kim Jamison.
Are you familiar with now Yeah you know?
Speaker 3 (07:59):
And have you watched the name of his fights? Very
familiar with it. I don't watch them live. That's just
what I was gonna do at four am and five am.
I value my sleep. It's not a whole lot of things.
I wake up and that time of the day four
so I value my sleep. I don't watch them live.
I end up catching him a little later on that
day or something later that weekend. But I can't do
(08:20):
the three am call times. I can't do it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, I mean for our times that I think he
at four am for the main event, mind you, even
like the things before. Now, I'm with you. Depending on
daylight saving times, maybe in the East Coast central people
can catch you at six or seven, so if you're
an early bird, you can put on a coffee pot
watch the NU fight.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
But exactly that one's fine, that that could work. I
can't three am, bro nah that no, no, well.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I can't do the sixer. I probably would be more
likely to do the three or four if I'm already
awake drinking like from the night before. Honestly I might that,
but for you know, in a ways an excellent fighter
one of the four people who is undisputed in two
different weight classes. Boxing fanatics know him, but maybe more
casual fans don't, and I think it is because of
(09:08):
the time zone of the fights, to be quite honest
with you, So if y'all have ESPN Plus, you can
watch the replace and you should.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
You definitely should. Also the weight class as well. The
weight class that thing has something to do with it,
but it's mainly the time that his fights are on.
It's hard getting Americans to watch something outside of the
normal time slots. It's very difficult, right, Like you give people
to stay up late on regular nights to watch regular
(09:35):
programming is tough, let alone watching a boxer waking up
super early. We don't have to very tough thing to
do so. But your correct ESPN Plus does have all
the fights on there, so you could definitely watch it
at your leisure.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, and also be careful which fight you're watching because now, yeah,
Inoa has a brother named Takuma in Oa, and I
don't know anything about that guy, so make sure you're
watching the right the right in a way. But yeah,
definitely strong recom and on now you know his fights,
like the guy's The guy's great, and yeah, if you
like Ko's he is very unlikely to disappoint right, Leslie.
(10:10):
I don't really have much to say about the fact
that Tyson Fury said he's retiring again other than let's
see if he actually means it this time. Do you
have any opinions thoughts on this.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I believe he's done because he's made the money. I
don't think he wants to stay in boxing shape. You
can kind of tell by the fights how the last
two fights have looked. The conditioning was a factor in
both of those fights. You could tell that he doesn't
want to be in tip top shape to perform at
his best. Even when he was at his best at
times he was in the best shape. You can tell
(10:43):
that he's not interested in doing that anymore. He's made
his money, he has his legacy, and he's ready to
move on. You know, he had a good run. Very
odd guy, very odd when you think of you know, fighters,
very odd and different. But you know he did what
he did and his what of his the.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Trilogy with or Yeah, it was interesting because the first
one was a draw, right, could went either way, and
I was like six years ago, but I could went
either way.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
But the last two man man career career changing bouts
for both guys career changing and career finding bouts for both.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I think Fury Wilder three is probably the most recent
fight I saw that everybody knew about it, even if
you weren't like much of a boxing fan. It was everywhere.
Everybody played it. I saw it in the movie theater.
I mean I was. I was grilled that kind of
excitement for boxing was happening, and you know, I hope
that it continues with big fights like that. But yeah,
that was uh and it was a great fight. You know,
(11:46):
I would have preferred that Deontae took it, but I
think both of them they had their moments. Both of
them got knocked down and got back up throughout the fight,
so it was it was excellent.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
I wish Wilder had a different corner and had different
training because he was so raw and his corners didn't
help him out a whole lot. Min fights like the
instruction with lot along with the training, always felt that
he was fighting just off for all talent. He didn't
have great management with him when it came to the
boxing part. It felt like they got to a certain level.
(12:17):
But if he ever fought somebody was just as talented,
it was never gonna work out, right, because the adjustments
were never there. He didn't have a great boxing feel. Obviously,
he had the nuclear weapon, which worked a lot in
his favor, but in terms of the actual boxing skill set,
it really wasn't quite there and it never got to
where it needed to be to fight elite, elite guys unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, I think this is a good demonstration of how
somebody can be a good fighter, not that great of
a boxer. There is a difference.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely, he's definitely one of those guys. However,
I will say for some of that started so late
in the game, because most boxers started as a child
or in their adolescent years. For something I started so late.
To get to where he got to it is a
huge plus. However, I felt that his corners, his his
(13:12):
team overall kind of let him down. It felt like
he was he built like a basketball player instead of
like a boxer. You shouldn't be six six to fifteen.
That ain't gonna work, bro, You're not here, You're not
three the guy in the NBA. You're not here shooting threes.
He needed to be able to. Now, his course would
have been a lot more stronger, and he could use
athleticism better in my eyes. But again, I'm just a fan.
(13:34):
I'm just an observer that knows a lot of people
who enjoyed boxing, like yourself. So who are we.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, definitely. So anyway, at the end of that, we wish,
we wish both Fury and Well do the best, and
uh I T Fury. I will not watch season of
that reality show if you go back to it. Sorry,
defintely definitely all right, So that's on the news for now.
You know, we always like to keep that short, but
we're gonna try something a little different for the rest
of this episode. You know, the goal of this show
(14:00):
was always to have barber shop style conversation about boxing,
and I don't think it always has to be timely.
You know, we don't discuss every single fight coming up
or review every single fight that happens. In between episodes,
if you've listened before, we usually have a segment called
pop Pugilism, where we discuss a movie or TV show
about boxing. So today I wanted to expand that into
a bigger discussion because we're talking about a documentary for
(14:21):
the first time in the show's history. It's called Unforgivable Blackness.
The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson from two thousand
and four, directed by Ken Burns. It's a two part
BBS documentary about another hometown hero of mine, Jack Johnson,
who was born in Galveston, Texas in eighteen seventy eight,
So I'm from Houston. The film is narrated beautifully by
Keith David Jack Johnson's war eight at eighteen? Did I
(14:47):
sa ninety seventy eight? Sorry? Sorry, sometimes I drink he
was born in eighteen seventy eight, but yeah, film narrated
by Keith David. Jack Johnson's own words are read by
Samuel L. Jackson, which rules heard several other voices I recognized,
like Jeffrey Wright and Harris and Alan Rickman mister McLean, quick,
(15:10):
quick thing. To get a started on this, Jack Johnson
was the first black man to win the world heavyweight championship,
and I think he's just not just an important figure
in boxing history but also American history. But before we
get into some more details about the men, jameson, did
you get a chance to watch the three hours and
forty minutes or so of this film?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So I did watch it. I've seen it before, so
that was the first that stuck out I did watch it. However, Man,
it feels like he's the first boxer that we actually
knew about, right. I know, they had a bunch of
guys in eighteen hundreds, I know the different rules and whatnot,
But it felt like he's the first box that kind
(15:47):
of fittle out of the stereotypes of boxers, Like he
likes women a lot, and he was liked cars, and
you know, he was very big on like getting as
much money as possible and whatnot. You know, he had
to go to different states to fight, like certain states
with Love and fight like California with London fight one time,
you know. So it was very interesting, Like it was
(16:07):
very fascinating. You see some of the stuff that happened
one hundred plus years later, it's like, ah, this is
where all started from. Man, It's it's tough because things
were so different back then, and he was obviously so
naturally talented and better than most, but boxing and sports
back then was so corrupt and so everything, So it
(16:29):
was so hard to kind of take note of what
everything was back then because it wasn't on the same scale.
It was a lot different back then. But I'm glad
they did at least focus on how great he was
when he had his run, right.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, I mean, definitely check out this this documentary. It's
a like I said, a PPS documentary. It is kind
of dry. It is split in two parts so you can,
you know, watch it at your leisure, but it's fascinating
and let's not miss words. Then, you know, this is
the time when black men were not allowed to fight
for the heavyweight title that was the domain of white men.
It wasn't a matter of you know, just of course
(17:08):
that white fighters and spectators didn't think that black fighters
were good enough, correct, But it's not just that, it's
that they didn't think they even deserve the right to
challenge for it. This is the heavyweight championship was one
of the most prominent championships in the world. Everybody knew
about it. Everybody knew that the heavyweight fighter at the
time the heavyweight champs. So this just wasn't anything that
(17:32):
black men were allowed to compete for. They were allowed
to fight another weight classes. But here's something for you,
maybe a little bit of a tangent. So I grew
up you know, Hulusa Chavs fan, and even as an adult,
you know, I focus on the little guys the lower
weight classes. But I've noticed that people really have they
put a lot of stock in the heavyweight championship, the
(17:53):
heavyweight division, especially if you grew up a Tyson fan.
Do you think personally, Jameson, that's sort of like a
different level of importance in the boxing world, the heavyweight
championship versus the other weight classes.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
So you mentioned about five minutes ago when you said
Fury wild or three, everybody knew about it. And the
reason why that is is because whoever the heavyweight champion
of the world is he was the baddest person on
the planet. That's why, because that if you're headweight's the
cream of the crop position with all our division, with
all due respect to all the divisions out there and
all of the fighters, there's an amazing heavyweight. That person
(18:28):
is getting all the clicks, all the views. He's the biggest,
He's the baddest person out there. If it has to
be knocked, folks out, if you have what that's dropping, folks,
you are the badst man on the planet and it's
your world and we're just living in it. That's just
how it goes. So that being said, like you mentioned
Starry with Jack Johnson, He's he was the first like
basically superstar type boxer of his era. Like when you
(18:50):
think about like that, they mentioned like people coming in
via light train and all that kind of stuff to
watch them fight and all that will depress and meet
all that for what that was in that era. Yeah,
like it was huge news and that just transferred to
all the other graids after that. That's just how it is.
But the heavweight division, unfortunately, we've gotten away from that
over the last really thirty years when you think about it.
(19:13):
But yeah, if we if we ever have an America
haveaweight again that can really throw punches and that can
really fight, watch out you will see box and get
a rebirth in this country like no other.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
That's fair. Yeah, going back to our history chat, Yeah,
this is the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Jack Johnson was born eighteen seventy eight, and I got
it right this time. Slavery had only just been a
busch in eighteen sixty five. His parents were slaves, so
it wasn't like today when white folks have to find
coded words to explain why they don't fuck with certain fighters,
like someone says, oh, they want to support the American fighters,
which is fine whatever, But all of a sudden there's
like a black American fighter against say, like a white
(19:53):
British dude, and they backed to the white guy because
the black fighter is quote arrogant or they don't like
his style. Right, No, nothing, nothing will make a patriot
turned against his own country fast and seeing it represented
by black or brown guy. But back then, yeah, they didn't.
They didn't have any coded words. They were straight up
saying in the papers, the jack doesn't winning the championship
(20:15):
would be detrimental to white supremacy. They did not want
this guy anywhere near a ring against the heavy way champ.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
All of you one better. They there was no pr
back then, there was no There was no soft language.
They fled out called them a negro and that's just
what it was. It wasn't no other and it wasn't
not no, it wasn't no African American black. He was
a Negro man. It was. It was worse than that.
So yeah, it was nothing. But also they made things
(20:42):
extremely difficult for him. Right. So it's one thing in
the fight and when that's fine, but everything else was difficult.
If he got into any kind of trouble. It was
like max sentences or he had to pay the max
fine himount, you know, all those kind of things. So
it was it was deeper than just the the the words.
It was the treatment, and it basically said, hey, if
(21:03):
you're going to fight, be everybody up, well we're going
to beat you up when we get a chance to.
And that's they did. So yeah, it was quite fascinating.
But also it's always good to see where boxers get
things from. Right, you can tell, Okay, this guy kind
of lives a life for what he was in that era.
You know, he felt himself he was the best, you know,
(21:25):
due to that era, and he lives it up as
much as he could. Even though the money was nowhere
near that it probably should have been.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
It was still way more than you expected any black
fighter to have.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, I mean he he did not give a fuck,
but anybody thought, you know, he he proved himself to
be the best. He fought his way up. He fought
every former heavyweight championship just to a champion, just to
kind of show I want to shot at the title
at the time. Let's see nineteen Oh oh, sorry, I
got a lot of notes in this guy because there's
(21:58):
a lot going on. Early nineteen hundreds, Jim Jeffers was
the champ refused to fight Jack Johnson said I would
rather retire like the coward he was than fight him. Eventually,
Jack Johnson followed a guy named Tommy Burns around the
world for two years, taunting him, calling him whatever the
nineteen hundreds equivalent of a bitch ass coward was for
not agreeing to fight him. So eventually Jack Johnsons showed
(22:23):
with pure skill like that he wasn't just like doing
this because he just wanted to shut He wanted to
be a contender. He proved that he was a bad ass.
Mfort don't know, way centser that because we're supposed to
a bad ass motherfucker. Eventually, Tommy Burns dig go ahead, good.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
No, he definitely was, And unfortunately he didn't have the
structure that we do today because obviously back then everything
was way different. There was no structure, and no one
was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
No one was really willing to make sure he got
the best offer possible. It was basically say here, take
this and live with it type of thing, instead of hey,
(23:03):
we're going to do whatever is possible for you to
make things better for you. So for his situation, it
kind of sucks because he doesn't get talked about as
much and his dominance and his his reign should be
celebrated a lot more than it actually gets brought up.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And that's that his style too. He was one of
the early people who adopted the modern style of boxing,
not just brawlin, not just throwing bombs. You know, he
was counterpunching, he was dodging, he was holding, you know,
things that we associated with box today. He was one
of the early fighters to do all that. And of course,
you know, the paper said that he he didn't actually
want to fight because he was lazy, because he because
(23:41):
he just was a coward, et cetera. You know, they
didn't give him any credit for being a smart, talented fighter.
It was always a negative and any thing he did
was a negative.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Right, yeah, and as well as it wasn't just he
was loud and arrogant too, So it's not like he's
he's talented. He lets you know what it was. He
wasn't really humble with his talents, and a lot of
people to this day cannot stand that.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I found what I screwed up earlier.
Jim Jeffries had the belt in eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Jack Johnson kept.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Challenging him, but he refused to find Johnson, so he
retired in nineteen o five, as I said, like a coward.
So that's gonna be relevant for a little bit later
in the discussion. But yeah, he finally fought Tommy Burns.
It was a match that was set up. Do you
know who set up this match? The name of the.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Guy who what was the name again.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Hugh Huge Deals macintosh. Oh wow, yeah, it's another another
cracky guy if his name is Hugh Donald McIntosh, but
his nickname was Huge Deals. So this man agreed to
put up thirty thousand dollars yep, yep, yeah to promote
the fight in Australia in nineteen oh eight for twenty rounds,
(24:56):
which is wild all right.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
So that was the part that got me watching it, right,
the amount of rounds that they used to fight back
and then like that was crazy. But also if you
look at the tapes of the footage that they had,
you didn't see a lot of movement either, right, So
you didn't see guy bouncing around the ring like we
do now. It was kind of just sit and then
punch or two here or there. It wasn't you know,
hit hit move, hit hit move. It was none of that.
(25:20):
But that's crazy. And they fought outside a lot. They
was fighting outdoors in the elements and in the heat,
like he was fighting Cuba and stuff like that, ain't it.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
That's the thing now? You know, you go, you can
join a boxing gym that's indoors. You know, if you're
a professional fighter, you're fighting in Vegas in an arena
like there's eight air conditioning.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
My god, even if you fighting that Carson a stub
hub or whatever it's called now, and they have a
tent over the ring, so you're not just in the elements.
They was literally the sun was beaming on them when
they fought outside like they was in the elements. I
cannot imagine that. I could imagine fighting outside in the hot,
(25:59):
hot heat, how that part of the day. And you
fight in a twenty plus round fight. That's crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah. The thing that got me that I found really
interesting is that fights were twenty rounds and that sometimes
the fighters would try to extend them so that the
fights could be replayed in movie theaters and then they
would get a portion of the profits. I thought that
was really interesting factor. I think we should get back
to more fights being played in movie theaters.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Honestly, you gotta be oh, that's the thing. You gotta
have the demand, and there's not like I've been asked
people since the news broke of Profert Canelo that there's
probably a fight. I was like, who else would you
literally make a trip to go see? And I'm not
gonna say you got a fly across the country. Most
of these people live either in Phoenix or in la
or somewhere in California. I'm like, hey, would you travel
(26:44):
an hour to go see such as something? They're like nope.
I ran off like five different box like nope, nope, nope.
And that's the problem. We got to get to the
point where we got big fights that the masses want
to see. Until then we're gonna be stuck with ESPN
plus links.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
You know. Let's see, I got a little note for
a producer here. Thirty thousand dollars in nineteen o eight
was worth one seven hundred and eighty one dollars and
fifty two cents. You can't forget about the two cents today,
And that's what the hell would somebody even do with
a million dollars back then, when like everything was a nickel,
(27:20):
like a meal was a quarter.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
My god, I mean so you, I mean, if you
have that kind of money, you was able to build
whatever you wanted to build, right, You could have built
a stadium, you could have built a bunch of houses,
you could have bought a franchise back then, all that
kind of stuff. You could have showed whatever you wanted
to what. It was just such back then there was
no middle class. You're either really rich or you were
really poor. There was no in between.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Well, Jack don't spend his money on fast cars, and
he liked building cars and uh fixing them up, So
that's where a lot of that money went. And women, Yes,
to see, I love the company of.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Now they are white women for the most parts. So yeah, he.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Loved the company of not just not just women, also prostitutes,
also white women, which is you could.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Was that white women which were also prostituted also Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah, supposedly he was married twice to black women, but
there was no documentation, like there's no actual record anywhere.
So he had three documented marriages to white women, and
he specifically said his experiences with those first two or
the reason why he would only seek the company of
white women after that. But because you can imagine, at
the time, this drove you know, the the racist white
(28:29):
population fucking nuts. He was, you know, made to look
at to be made to be a villain and you know,
vile person and this culture of you know, white supremacy
that he was. You know, he was stealing white women,
et cetera. And people were not shy about this. Like
I said, back then, don't think they were. In this
modern time where people got to be a little sneaky
(28:50):
about it. People put that shit out there very clearly,
newspapers and the press everything.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, no, it was no games people, man,
Look at people still deal with problems like that today.
They start issued back today. So imagine one hundred and
twenty five years ago what it was. Yeah, you know
what I mean. So yeah, and he's also a big
black dude knocking white dudes out. So it's not like, oh,
he's beating up up but no, he's destroying other white
(29:19):
guys in the ring in front of thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Right going back to his fight in Australia against Tommy
Burns Kraky Country. The fight was scheduled for twenty rounds.
The fight was stopped by the cops in fourteen rounds
when it was clear that Johnson was trouncing Burns. The
cops even forcibly stopped the cameras from filming the fight
so there wouldn't exist film of white man being knocked
out by a black man.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
So right, and oh that don't know a history Australia
was worse than the US back Yeah he'll oun great now,
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but true.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Despite the fighting stuff, he did get the heavyweight belt
from a Hugh huge deals McIntosh, who was the referee
for the fight. Because I guess that's what thirty k
buys you. You know what, if we don't see a
modern fight refereed by that Saudi royal dude turkela chic,
I wanna be so disappointed in him.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Man.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Honestly, we need to spend more time on that cat.
That's a whole different thing. I'm very curiously how that
plays out. Gets a lot of money in play, but
it feels like it could be better allocated instead of
chasing the big fights. I think we should have better cards. Right,
So obviously the Sheik is throwing a bunch of money around,
which is fine, it's good. But I'd rather have more
(30:35):
balanced weeknight or weekends than just having one great car
every six months or every single I'd rather have once
every three weeks a really solid card with a lot
of dope boxing rather than you know, just oh, we
got a surprise every six months.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
I'm with you, and we talked about that before. I
think we can say that's like an official stance of
this show is more fights, not necessarily a big name
yet every three months, four months, et cetera. Just get
more people involved than like I said before, the kids.
You got to get the kids involved.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Kids. We also got get the average person, the average adult,
to tune in. When you mentioned Wilder Fury three, you
were absolutely correct. The average person was like, oh, I've
heard of this before, I've checked even the second fight.
The second fight was huge, Saconde was huge. What people
(31:29):
checked in because it was talked about it was heavyweight.
How to fight you had an American versus a foreigner.
There's a lot of different avenues that went. You had
black and white, so there's a lot there, But again,
we need more of that and until we get more
consistent fights, so the autprosos could learn these fighters, we're
kind of kind of in the same boat.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, So back to history, as you can imagine. You know,
white people weren't very happy with Jack Johnson when he
beat Tommy Burns. If y'all went to school, you may
know the writer Jack Lennon who wrote the book White Fang,
Emphasis on the White He was a racist piece of shit,
just straight up. He had solidarity with the working class,
but only if they were white. He referred to Asian
immigration as the yellow peril. He was the supporter of eugenics.
(32:14):
He was the person who said a quote great white
hope was needed to defeat Jack Johnson because and I
quote again, the white man must be rescued. Again. They
weren't shy about this stuff. There's I got right here.
I got my notes. A quote from the New York Times.
If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his
ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to
(32:36):
much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors,
which is to say, you know, these folks are gonna
get really cocky and think that, you know, yeah, this
guy's physically equal to another fighter, but they might get
it in their heads that they're equal as well to
other white people, and we can't have that right, not back.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Then, Jesus, Once you fear someone, you will make up
anything in your mind to justify that fear. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
I think, honestly, I think this idea of a great
white home in boxing lives to this day. It really does.
To this day. People really don't like the white sorry,
white sport fans really don't like the idea of black champions,
and I think they still have that that mindset of,
you know, there's got to be a white guy to
take over the championship, the big fights. You know, maybe sure,
(33:30):
maybe not with all of them. I'm not going to
say that, but that exists to this day.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Isn't that why Rocky was created?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
It's absolutely Uh do you do you know actually who
Rocky was based on?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, it is a does a guy named Chuck Webner?
Does that sound familiar? Uh? No, I'm sure yeah, I'm
sure all the listeners are like, oh, Chuck Webinar. Everybody
everybody knows that guy. Yeah, so so Rocky fights Paula Creed,
who is very clearly based on Muhammad a later right,
and but Rocky himself was based on Chuck Weptter, who
(34:04):
his claim to fame was he fought Muhammad Muhammad Ali
in nineteen seventy five, knocked Alee down once in the
ninth round, then got totally out boxed by Ali for
the rest of the fight. Right Wepner almost finished all
fifteen rounds, almost Ali knocked him out with nineteen seconds left.
And apparently that dude who almost finished the fight was
what inspired Stallone to write his movie. There was actually
(34:26):
a movie in twenty sixteen about this guy called Chuck,
and another movie in twenty nineteen about him called The Brawler.
Why the fuck would this guy have? Technically three movies
had a documentary about him.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Said it, We've been chasing the great white hype, great
white hope forever. We've been chasing that forever. That's just
how it is. But also the amount of money that
goes into that, if you have a successful American boxer,
the amount of marketing dollars, the amount of things that
all with that is on parallel. So that's the reason why, however,
(34:55):
you don't have a lot of white boxers anymore. It
just doesn't quite happened. They moved to the UFC area.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Right I think?
Speaker 3 (35:05):
So.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Well, just one more thing about Rocky. You know, look,
it is a good movie. I still hold that it's
not good enough to have the reputation in popularity that
it does, and it does because it's mostly about a
white fighter who's the underdog against uh Muhammed Ali type character.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
You know, the Rocky statue in Philly before they had
a joke Fraser.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
One that guy isn't even real. I went to Philly
and I refused to go see it also because I
didn't want to go to that museum. What was it,
like the Museum of ardor or something like that. Yeah, no,
it's yeah. They people wanted this great white hope so bad,
even in the era of when Rocky came out, that
they made this, you know, the biggest thing in the
(35:49):
world based on some guy who almost finished a fight
against Ali. You know, all of this just LEDs up
to the to the racial resentment. You know, this still
exists in combat sports today. And yeah, you said it.
People moved to UFC because there's there's a lot of
white guys there who have their claim to fame in UFC.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
And they feel that they have a better chance. Right,
there's more things involved. There's wrestling, there's jiu jitsu, there's
still boxing involved in UC, but there's more things in
corporate that they feel have that chance at. But the
wide American boxer is kind of gone, like it's not
it's not really prevalent anymore. Like even fifteen years ago,
(36:29):
we had a couple here and there, but the wide
American eye that just boxes Nah.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
No, yeah, I mean growing up, I saw boxing as
a black and brown sport and it didn't even like
I didn't think twice about it. It's just kind of
what that was to me, right, And.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
And they try to sell Ricky Hatten to us. They
try to act like that guy was the next coming
and man.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Never how did that turn out? Sorry? Had Ricky hadn't
turned out for Oh?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
It was it was lived, it was grand opening, grand closing.
He fought Floyd, got dropped, fought pak Yao, and it
was over, like he didn't care anymore. Then he was
retired X champ in like two years after that. So
you know he comes to boxing, you know then sitting
in good seats talking about x X, you know, middleweight
champ or ultimweight champ.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Right, Yeah, I mean I think every every few years
they're sort of like trying to say, this is the
next guy, this is the next guy. And you know,
Tyson Fury was their guy for a long time and
he actually he walked the walk in a lot of
uh in a lot of respects. But yeah, I mean,
and here's the thing, I don't know, Big Company is
kind of kind of relative. So I was rooting for
(37:46):
Ukrainian Alexander Russik versus British Tyson Fury, both of them
white guys. But then also we'll talk more about this
than maybe the next episode, but Ukrainian Dennis Barnchek is
fighting black American Keishan Davis, and you know, I'm all
for Keyshot. So I don't know. I mean, what's gonna happen.
Is everybody gonna like rally around who sick? I mean,
(38:07):
he's got the skills, he does, but is it because
they really believe he's got the skills or because he's
another white guy?
Speaker 3 (38:15):
We know how it works out.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
That is a rhetorical question, but you know, we don't.
We don't try again shy away from the difficult conversations
here on the show. You know, and this is stuff
the really it's baked into history. You know, we're talking
about this guy who lived, you know, the Hunt over
one hundred years ago, and boxing became a black and
brown sport despite you know what white fans, white audiences,
(38:39):
and white fighters wanted. They would have stopped it if
they absolutely could have.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Well, also a big part of it is poverty. Right
when you're poor and you don't have very many options,
whatever options you do have, you're gonna go all and
with it. Like the boxers that made it, they made it.
There's a lot of guys who tried boxing that it
didn't work for and they had to get five and
else to do. But most of the time you go
a box because your chances, you know, you don't have
(39:05):
much else to do. That's your only hope in a
lot of cases.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
What I've always said, the most dangerous fighter is the
fighter that has something to prove and has to show
that they are the baddest because they grew up with nothing.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
They're not trying to go back like they're trying to steak.
You're not trying to go.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Back they're going back to the government cheese that's white.
And then in black letters.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Better you like to do? You like to drink a
little bit. Once you have premium alcohol, you're not going
back to nothing else. And then I'll give you one
last one. Once you have premium women, if that's what
you choose to partake in, you know, but partaking that,
some do other stuff when I'm talking about that, But
the ones that partake in women, once you get used
(39:49):
to a certain amount of women, you're not trying to
go back to what you was used to before. It's
not not happening.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, I mean to me, with everything stacked up against
Jack Johnson and black fighters general, it's amazing to me
that so many of them now black and brown fighters
became so prominent in boxing today. Like it's it's just unreal.
You know.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's focus and actually fall through what their gifts. A
lot of guys can't stay focused end up crashing out.
But for the ones that can, it's it's really good
to see. Right, continuing on to sorry about Jack Johnson.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, the fight his fights were Attempts were made to
ban the fights that he won against white people, yep.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Literally, and.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
After he won the heavyweight championship from Tommy Burns. A
bunch of fights after that were billed as Jack Johnson
versus the Great White Hope, and of course he washed
all opponents, and people started screaming, begging for Jim Jeffries
to unretire, to beat this man. You know, we talked
about him earlier. He's back in the story.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Baby.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
He retired for six years, and Jack Lennon was the
one that said, you know, the white man must be rescued,
and it's got to be done by Jim Jefferies. And
it took forty thousand dollars to lure Jim Jeffries back
into the ring. So July fourth, nineteen ten and reno,
they called it the fight of the century. Twenty thousand
(41:11):
people were there, scheduled for twenty rounds, and so people
were so racist they still thought this fat Grandpa Jim
Jeffries had what it took to defeat Johnson, who was
still in excellent shape. So you know, I we all
know how the song goes, We all know the lyrics.
Jack beat the shit out of him. Jeffries got knocked
down twice, his corners threw in the towel in the
(41:32):
fifteen round, so he wouldn't actually get slept and race
rights broke out. Black people were literally murdered in response
to this fight.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, that's how it was, man, And I'll put it
this way. Back then, all bets were off because how
race relations were. And also there's no protection right, So
for Jack Johnson, he can win the fight, but he
eventually lose the war. There's no war, there's no there's
(42:01):
no civil rights, there's no and you know, there was
no help. He was basically on his own. And if
you were black and you were caught celebrated, you were
your life was in jeopardy too. So it was a real, real,
real tough situation all the way around. However, he did
make a lot of people scared and a lot of
people mad, And I like that. I like when our
(42:21):
fighters and our athletes pissed the majority of the people off.
I love it. So for me, he's a hero. But
with all that being said, it sucks that he didn't
get to class, get to used his skills in a
different time or a different era, because he would have
been much better appreciated and we would have saw a
lot more had better stories than we do with the
current ones we.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Have now sure, and I think that even though we
look back, you know, everybody knows Muhammada Leave and if
you're not into boxing, you know, maybe some people do
they really know Joe Louis kind of sort of. But
I think even the people that know the history of
boxing still don't give Jack Johnson enough credit for you know,
what he did for the sport, honestly losing recipe.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
We don't talk about old boxing anymore else, remember, Like
I mean, Tyson's the oldest most kids know about. And
that's kind of just by the antics. That's not the
boxing like we really I mean, we be honest, we're
talking about like Floyd Trinidad Oscar Era, like mid nineties,
(43:20):
and that's like the start for a lot of people,
you know what I mean. So it's we were kind
of losing recipes on the seventies and before, like it's
just not there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Well in Tyson's yea, I've been in the Zeitgach like
you said, for you know, he's kids who grew up.
Kids would watch The Hangover. They knew who Tyson was,
and maybe they did a little research and if they
didn't know what fighter he was, maybe that kind of
led them down a rabbit hole. He had. You know,
there's memes, you know, he's he had that adult swim
cartoon that I never saw where he's.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Like Edibulls and the Weed. Now, like he's he's known
for more non boxing than boxing, and you know, that
is what it is. That's kind of how it went.
But but yeah, man, it's a different situation all way around.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Sure, but also yes, he's known more for not boxing.
But I think still people know that he was a
boxer and a.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Great no no doubt, no doubt, He's definitely known from that.
It's just that over the last twenty five to thirty
years it's been non boxing things that he's known for
rather than boxing. And I'm saying that's the problem with
when them out boxers outside of like like Roy Jones,
Floyd Oscar, those three guys in the mid ninety early
(44:27):
to mid nineties, I think that's what the majority of
people start. You're not gonna go hold with that goal
before that, their knowledge is very limited before that.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Right, I mean, this, this documentary and other stuff about
Jack Johnson is easily available. You know, we're doing a
lot of history recap. I think it's nice to do
a little bit of a mix of history and then
you know our thoughts on the legacy of that. But
when we're not a history podcast and we're not the podcast,
it just sits in Rich Reads Wikipedia. But but I think,
like I said, I think this is important. I think
(44:57):
even if you're not a boxing fan at all, if
you're a fan of history, if you're just a fan
of like you know, stories about people, big, big characters
in history, you know, doing wild shit, I think you
should learn more about Jack Johnson. You know, watch that documentary.
At the very least, you know, google some articles about him.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
My god, well, read a book. Y'all need to read
read a book. It would help because and this do
all wanted to have speed to go buy faster. But no,
I definitely think he does. He's one of our first
American superstars, and we don't have a lot of those anymore.
Why we took those. We don't have a lot of
American athletes that are superstars. We got stars. We got
guys that are celebrities because they're content creators. We don't
(45:37):
have a lot of superstars because they're dope in their sport,
don't have a whole lot of those anymore. He was
like one of our first.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah no, it's in his lacy rings through today. Just
a couple more things to finish up with this very
very brief bio. We said that he liked the company
of prostitutes who are also white women. So in nineteen ten,
there was a law called the Man Act pass.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
It was.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
The reason it was passed to stop the transporting of
white women, sorry, this transporting of women across state lines
quote for moral purposes. So it was for you know,
stop sex trafficking, which we all agree is a good idea,
but it was used to target Jack Johnson because the
government was trying to find whatever they could to lock
him up and stop him from being the figure, the
(46:21):
black figure in the sport anyway that they could, so
they arrested him for it. He skipped bail, left for Montreal,
lived in exile in Europe, which totally support him skipping bail,
by the way. That's fucking bad ass. He moved to Mexico.
He actually said that Mexico was cool and encourage other
black people to move there. You know that the racial
relations there were a lot better. My people have a
(46:42):
lot of problems but somehow they were less racist in
the early nineteen hundreds, and you know, the US was
toward toward black people. But yeah, he finally lost his
heavyweight title in Havanah in nineteen fifty to a guy
named Jessa lost. Yeah, this fight was scheduled for forty
five rounds right in the sun. I goddamn rounds. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(47:07):
Jack Johnson got knocked down in the twenty sixth round.
You know, he didn't get back up.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
He was sure his eyes with the gloves to make
sure the sun was in his thighs. The fight was thrown.
It was fixed to make sure that. I believe he
had to get back to the States. So his mom
was sick and some things, and yeah, that fight was
thrown though it wasn't, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
He thought he could negotiate with the governments to look,
I lose this fight if I do this, if I
do that. You know, he tried whatever he could. He
missed being home, and yeah, he couldn't make it back
to visit his mom or to visit his home after
his mom died. Eventually, he returned to the US in
nineteen twenty to serve out ascendence for of a year
for the arrest under the Man Act. And yeah, he
died at sixty eight years old because he flipped one
(47:48):
of his fancy sports cars because the man loved going fast.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
So right, it's.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
A wild story like this is one of the wildest stories,
like in boxing history, like I said, but also in
American I.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Mean, we still have the same things that happened today.
I mean one of our bright stars unfortunately flipped a
car within the last several years. I mean it happened.
You know, all the stuff that he went through still
goes on to this day.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Right exactly. So you know, please check out this documentary
learn more about Jack Johnson. You know, I strongly encourage it. Again,
if you're just the kind of history you don't have
to care about sports. There's a lot of I have
somebodies who just do not care about sports, but they
like good stories. Yeah, listen to an audiobook, I said,
Jameson said, you know, you don't have to read it.
Listening into an audiobook is perfectly valuable. I think it's
(48:35):
a great way to if you're running around driving for
work or anything like that, it's a great way to
get that. So please check it out, download the Libby app,
get a library card, you get the liby app, you
get ebooks, you get audiobooks. You know, we gotta we
gotta encourage people to learn more about about history these days,
because because we're gonna lose it. So but yeah, final
thoughts on Jack Johnson on this documentary. It's kind of weird.
(48:57):
We usually rate movies or shows of four gloves, but
I feel it's kind of weird to rate a documentary
about this guy that.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
Really you can't really rate a documentary like that one. Yeah,
I mean it was done well, you know, I think
we get to say that it served the purpose. We
can't really rate rate a light back and it wasn't
made for that purpose.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's yes, it's kind of
for entertainment, but it's also educational. I guess how about this,
let's rate Jack Johnson as a fighter four gloves. He
downe with that.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Oh he's four out of four?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
What's up?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
He's four out of four? He's still four to four.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yes, we're rating him as a fighter as a figure
four to four gloves, So please check it out. It's
called Unforgivable Blackness. So last segment got a mailback question here.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
You ready for this one, of course? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
This one comes from a listener named j D. His
question is, if y'all had a DeLorean, which fight would
you go back to see if you could.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Oh that's a good question, oh man, a lot of
good options out there. Yeah, Like, that's not really fair.
That should be like a an error question, right, So
like a fight from the seventies, fight from the eighties,
fight from the nineties, fight from the two thousands, fight
from the twenty tens, fight from the twenty twenties, Like
(50:13):
it should be based on that, because that's not I
mean one five minutes of so many great fights.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I'm guessing you wouldn't go back to watch Jack Johnson
the early nineteen hundred. No, no, no, no, you just taking
like nineteen eighty and Forge.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
I mean going to the seventies and Shaky Man. Yeah,
like going to the Massonsquare Garden to see you know,
Ali Fraser one is like, you know, even though there's
so much that went all with that fight and how
important that was, like that one is probably it, But
I don't want to go back that far because we
were treated terribly back then. Man, there's so many good fights.
(50:50):
Uh yeah, Hagwin hearns, Yeah, there's I mean, yes, sure, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
It's hard, it's it's a hard question. It's hard to
pin down.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
I think I was be aerror based. It'd have to
be air based. It can't just be one. That's not fair.
But I had to pick one, it would be Ali
Fraser one in New York because so much happened during
that fight, the way it was covered out, like the
first major production, and you know, so I would probably
pick that up that one if I had to. But again,
I think it should be air based because there's fights
(51:26):
in the two thousands that I would have loved to
go on to and unfortunately we didn't get Packy on
Mayweather until it was too late. But if we'd have
got that in eight, that probably would have been the
one because that was like literally the fight that everybody
wanted to see.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I guess there's nothing says that you can't take the
Delian back and hang out for like a year, a
couple of years in a watch.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's just so many different moments.
I mean, I would have loved to be in MGM
for Tyson Holyfield one I would have loved being arena
just for that, all the craziness that ensued. IM sorry,
sorry for all the crazy that ensued. But tis Holyfield
one was an upset by the book standard. So yeah, yeah,
(52:07):
it's a good question. It's a very very good question,
to be honest with you. Yeah, that's that's fascinating, it
really is. But I would probably say Ali Fraser one.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Also, just to make it clear for the audience who
don't know off hand, Holyfield versus Ticson too, what fight
was that.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yeah, that's the nearbino one. That's the one I would
have probably would have went to see. The first one
was interesting because it was marketed very well and holy
Field beat Tyson at that time, which was an upset,
even though looking back at things it probably wasn't. But
that's a whole different conversation for a wholely different day.
But I don't know if I want to go back
for that fight particularly. I think the eighties was probably
(52:44):
the gold standard of fighting. There's just so many great
middleweights and worlds of wades that fought, and they actually
fought each other. It wasn't a whole lot of ducking.
And I don't want to fight because they weren't making
that much. But they weren't making money. These guys were
making they had to fight regularly. So Ramp Sugar, Ray
Haggler hearns you have there's so many great, great fights.
(53:06):
But yeah, if I had a fight, one choose one
to probably Ali Fraser one.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Okay, okay, I got maybe a stranger, weird one. But
I would go back to see Hulu su Chavis fight,
but specifically the nineteen ninety four fight against Frankie Randall
or Julia First lost. And I'll tell you why. So
Chevis is my goat. He's the reason I'm into boxing
to this day, to this type. But the thing I
love about the sport is how I'm predicciple. It can be.
Any little thing can change the tight of a fight.
(53:31):
And while I hate the thought of seeing my guy lose,
I would love to feel the vibe in the venue,
you know, the emotions during the fight and at the results.
That fight was the first time Cheves was knocked down
in his career. I believe it was knocked down. I'm
pretty sure it was the first time in his career.
And we all know the feeling of seeing your guy
in trouble in the ring, right, So yeah, that's something
I've never felt or connected with for any like NBA
(53:53):
team and felt team. Nothing against the sport, it's just
not what I've you know, that doesn't bring down.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
That much nothing. There's no other feeling you could equate
it to. Neither. There's no when you when you're a
guy or somebody you root for or bet on kids
are dropped.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
It's swoof, man. It's very few things are worse than
that feeling, especially at an upset. You know, Frankie Randall
was the underdog, and you know the upsets gonna happen
all the time. So yeah, just the roar of the crowd,
the shock, the gas, like all that shit. I want
to experience that. I want to see what it was like.
And and then I would go to Houston and leave
(54:31):
a note for my eight year old self telling me
not to get fat. I'd be like, just because you're
skinny now and we'll be skinny for a decade and
a half, doesn't mean you're gonna stay that way. Stupid,
So that's what I would do. In nineteen ninety four, Jamison,
where can people find you on social media?
Speaker 3 (54:48):
At the Jamison on Twitter, The Jamison on Instagram. Yeah,
you know, we got some box stuff coming up. I
think there's gonna be some announcements soon. By the time
we got on next next show, I think we'll have
some more talk about in terms of upcoming fights, and
we'll we'll break some stuff down and have some fun. Excellent.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah, and I'm very excited about what this year is
gonna bring. You can follow me the Classy Alcoholic on
Instagram and Blue Sky. The podcast has its own Twitter
account at Mixed co Podcast. Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
and Amazon Music. Leave us a five star review. It
only takes a minute and it helps more than you
can possibly imagine. We have an official show email adress.
(55:26):
If you have any questions for the mail bag, fun
stories about watching boxing and Mixed Company, or hate mail,
send it all to letters at mixedcopodcast dot com. That's
letters at mixedcopodcast dot com. Don't forget. Episodes drop every
other Thursday. So thank you very much for listening, thank
you for joining us in this very special episode in
the style of Rkle and Fraser and all those shows
(55:47):
in the nineties. And we will be back in two
weeks with mas fuego, good night, and salut
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