Читать книгу Sporting Blood. Tales from the Dark Side of Boxing онлайн

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—Muhammad Ali

April 5, 1915—Down, at last, in the twenty-sixth round of a bout fought under a blistering sun before thousands of hecklers, even there, in Havana, more than three hundred miles away from American bedrock. Down, and at the feet of “The Pottawatomie Giant,” Jess Willard, a cowpuncher who lumbered out of the Great Plains, shucking spurs, lassos, chaps, all the way to the heavyweight championship of the world.

From the moment he lost his title to a primitive “White Hope” in an equally primitive ring set up in Cuba, Jack Johnson—renegade, dandy, scourge of America (where, to his everlasting misfortune, interracial marriage was banned in several states)—was a burnt-out case. Even before losing to Willard and relinquishing his status as “The Black Avenger,” Johnson had sent a telegram to his mother in Chicago that read in part: “I AM TIRED OF KNOCKING AROUND.”

Oh, yes, Johnson has been wandering, through fugitive days, for years, ever since fleeing Chicago in 1913 after being convicted of violating the Mann Act, a federal law meant to curb prostitution but that was occasionally used to enforce Bible Belt virtue by prosecuting celebrities with libertine tastes. (Indeed, Johnson was not even the most famous celebrity tripped up by the Mann Act; that distinction goes to Charlie Chaplin, acquitted in 1944, or perhaps rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry, who spent nearly two years in prison after being convicted of transporting a fourteen-year-old across state lines for immoral purposes.) And Johnson was a staunch devotee of lowlife: Although he ran a lavish club in Chicago, his preferred milieu was brothels. And his preferred company? Prostitutes, usually more than one at a time, and, to the dread of most Americans, white prostitutes.