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

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Trying to convince a crowd that the inept Cravan could last a few rounds against even an aging and flabby Johnson was no easy task, and the bout dragged on, marred by clinching and posing until Johnson mercifully put an end to the hoax with a single blow that legitimately dropped Cravan on his face in the sixth round. It was such a dreadful fight that Johnson was unable to profit from it as he had hoped. The film footage was useless, and word-of-mouth forced Johnson to enter the ring under similar but less remunerative circumstances across Spain. In an interview with El Nuevo Mundo dated March 15, 1918, Johnson was asked how much of his money he had saved during his storied career. He replied, with aplomb, “Not a cent. With the same ease that it came, it went, and the same hands that won it lost it.”

Once a clotheshorse who changed lavish outfits twice a day, Johnson was now night-crawling through the winding streets of Madrid looking especially threadbare for a dandy who had, years earlier, been compared to Beau Brummell. For Johnson, keeping solvent meant hustling from day to day. Because Spain had little interest in boxing—its national idols were superstar toreros Juan Belmonte and Joselito—Johnson saw his money-making prospects dwindle.