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

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On April 23, 1916, Johnson and Cravan squared off at the Plaza de Toros Monumental in Barcelona. Over the years, the events surrounding the Johnson–Cravan fight have been embellished to the point of being fictionalized. This, in part, is because so many chroniclers have relied on the memoirs of Blaise Cendrars, a poet and eccentric who elevated the imagination above all else. His recollections of the Barcelona affair are as reliable as the war reminiscences of Baron Munchausen.

In his whimsical account of the fight, Cendrars claimed that Johnson kayoed Cravan in the first round and that the crowd erupted into a riot, rushed the ring, and set the arena on fire, forcing officials to throw Johnson into jail overnight for his own protection. None of this was true. With pioneering Spanish film director Ricardo de Baños on site to record the events, Johnson and Cravan were prepared to extend their travesty for as long as possible in hopes of cashing in on theater replays. There would be no first-round knockout. But what was meant as a profitable lark turned into a full-fledged hoax when D. Felix Suarez Inclan, the local magistrate, informed the participants that prizefighting in Barcelona, while tolerated, was unauthorized. As such, Johnson and Cravan were advised to go easy, and the police were ordered to intervene at first blood.