Jess Willard By Rob Snell

[Mofo2]

image

Jess Willard Bio

This moving tribute to Jess Willard was published on Dec 16, 1968

Former world champion Jess Willard, who won the title from Jack Johnson and lost it to Jack Dempsey in, two of the sport's most controversial fights, died Sunday of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 86. The end came, at 6:24 a.m.at Pacoima Memorial: Lutheran Hospital. With him was his wife,Hattie. He was admitted to the hospital Saturday after suffering a heart attack. He and his wife had lived quietly for many years in a modest and immaculate little cottage in suburban La Crescenta overlooking the Pasadena-Glendale area.

In April ,1966 a freeway project forced the Willards to sell the home and move to nearby Sunland. The..tragedy of Willard's life. and career in the ring was that proof of his true skill as a fighter did not emerge until some 45' years after he won the most wanted title in pugilism.

This came with the discovery of a print of the film of his fight with Johnson, and later the assembly of other old movies of his ring appearances, the fight with Dempsey, with Frank- Moran and others. Viewers of these films, most of them experts on boxing, agreed on two major factors: Willard was quite possibly the most underrated heavyweight champion of all time.

Willard was an excellent boxer who could also punch; he was not the big awkward giant he had for so long been pictured. "I'm glad some of these things finally came out, even if it was 45 years too late," the old fellow recently observed.

Jess, born Dec. 29, 1881, on a farm and raised in the Pottawatomie Indian land in Kansas, had 36 fights.But the two that remain indelibly imprinted in the annals of the game are, of course, the championship encounters with Johnson and Dempsey.

The movie of the Johnson fight on a torrid afternoon at the Havana, Cuba, race track- April 5, 1915, showed that it was . an. even contest for 20 rounds, with Willard amazing his erstwhile critics with his

footwork long straight left jab — he -had a reach of 84 inches — and ability to take Johnson's best punches.

The- fight lasted one hour and 44 minutes in weather well over 100 degrees. It was not until five years later — and Willard always stressed this point — that Johnson, broke, and-old, -and living in Paris, sold a magazine article in which he claimed he took a dive at. Havana.

"I always said," Willard remarked, "if; he was going to quit, -why did he wait 26 rounds, one-hour and, 44 minutes, under a sun that was 115 degrees hot, to quit . "Or wait five years to say he took a dive."

Johnson was in trouble with the U.S. Government, forcing him to flee the country, and a law was passed prohibiting interstate shipment of prizefight films. Thus, as the years passed and .the movie remained outlawed, the public was unable to see to determine for itself what had happened at Havana.

"What happened was I beat him fair and square and knocked him out with a right hand punch," .said Willard. Jess was 33 at. the time and weighed. 230. Johnson weighed 205.

"I had trained to go 45 rounds and I was ready for him," Jess recalled. "I made him fight my fight, come to me; not like he'd made; the other fellows fight. He was shrewd and cagey but he never once hurt me."

The Dempsey fight?

Again it was a. broiling afternoon at Toledo, Ohio, July 4, 1919. Willard came in at 245 and his 6-foot-7 frame towered over the shorter, tigerish, 187-pound Dempsey. Willard stabbed at the weaving Dempsey a few times, and then the carnage began. Jess had never been knocked off his feet. Dempsey floored him seven times in the first round. In moments the right side of Willard's' face was battered, bloody swollen. His cheek and jaw bones were fractured. His right eye was banged shut and he floundered around the ring,gamely getting up after each knockdown.

Films show that Dempsey stood over the fallen Jess and hit him before he could get to his' feet. "I'd say," commented Willard in an understatement, "the referee didn't exactly give me the best of it."

Curiously, Dempsey was unable to flatten Jess again in either the second or third rounds. Willard was physically unable to get off his stool in the fourth. Boxing men at ringside had nothing but praise for Willard's gameness under this terrible beating.

Mrs. Willard recalled that en route back to their home in California news drifted ahead of their train that Jess was aboard. At each station fans crowded the platform to cheer the old champ. "I never thought people would want to see me again,". Jess confided to his wife.

Willard contended all his life that Jack's gloves — or at least the left one which did all the damage — contained something other than the usual padding. He blamed Dempsey's manager, the late Jack Kearns, for any alleged illegality, and Kearns once, in joking off the accusation, told The Associated Press: "Naw, I didn't use plaster of Paris on the bandages. It was cement."

Jess told his story about why he went into boxing. “Johnson was the champion, a Negro, .and everyone was looking for what in those days they called a White Hope." Willard had been breaking horses, running a wagon train and farming.

"One day I saw some fellows straining to lift a bale of cotton. It must of 'weighted 500 pounds. I lifted it up on the wagon and they said, 'With your size and strength, why don't you take up fight?'"

Willard related that he sold his wagons and went to Oklahoma City to begin training. "I never had a glove on until I was 28," he said. Thus began his colorful career in the ring, which also included a tour with the old Sells Floto Circus, and another circus which he eventually bought, and a brief career in silent movies.he was one cowboy didn't need a double because he could ride a horse and fight.

Jess used to say he didn't enjoy boxing — "I didn't want to hurt anyone" — but in his 10-round match after the Johnson fight with Frank Moran in New York's old Madison Square Garden, it was obvious that Jess enjoyed the action.

Moran, who had lasted 20 rounds' with Johnson previously, was fast "and yet didn't have to scare him out of the bushes," as Jess put it. Willard, again displaying beautiful boxing skill, was credited with outpointing Moran.

En route to his title chance Willard boxed against such leading contenders as Arthur Pelky and Luther McCarthy. In 1913 at Vernon, Calif., Bull Young died of injuries suffered in an llth-round knockout by Willard. Jess never cared to discuss this incident.

His last two fights were in New York in 1923 when Jess was 43. He stopped a rising young heavyweight, Floyd Johnson, in 11 rounds, and was knocked out in the eighth round by huge Luis Firpo, Argentina's

Bull of the Pampas.

Jess had 35 fights, all main events billed for 10 or more rounds. He scored 20 knockouts, won four by decision, lost three by decision, lost one on an un- intentional foul, had four no-decision matches, one draw and was stopped twice — by Dempsey and Firpo.

Willard made and lost a lot of money. There were unlucky investments in oil and real estate and a market — said to be the first super market in the nation — in Hollywood. However, Jess and Hattie salvaged

their home and some rental property. As he often said:

"We live comfortably, not beyond our needs, and our needs are modest. "We're not on the way to poor house."

Jess frequently referred to himself as just a Kansas farm boy. But for an untutored man, he did make money. He received nothing :— in fact, it cost him several thousand — for the Johnson match. "That

was all right with me, I just wanted a chance to win the title,'' he recalled.

But as the champion and ex champion Jess received the following purses for these fights: Dempsey, $100,000; Frank Moran, $47,500; Floyd Johnson $25,000, and Firpo, $125,000.

He toured for two seasons at a guarantee of $1,000 a day with Col. Zack Miller's 101 Ranch circus but misfortune stepped in. World War I came along and the government, in need of his riding stock, bought

him out, ending that source of big revenue.

Among Jess's treasured souvenirs to the end were the 5-ounce gloves he wore to whip Johnson, and the brown saddle of his circus days. Old timers well recall that the champion Willard was an imposing figure astride a horse as the star of the circus.

Through the years Willard's mental reactions were as sharp as a razor. His memory of the distant past was vivid- But he kept abreast of current events in all fields. In his last years he suffered from chronic heart trouble. He had been hospitalized, and released, earlier in the week. Willard never sought fame and was reluctant in later years to make public appearances. But he was a proud man and his circle of intimate friends was intensely loyal.

During World War II old Jess emerged from semi seclusion to join groups of boxing people on visits to military camps. These were the last of the old champ's bows to the public. The Willards had two sons,

Jess Jr. and Alan, who live with their families in the metropolitan Los Angeles area.