BOXING’S GREATEST WARS, PART II: PANDEMONIUM IN PARIS
IN 1909, TWO GREAT BLACK HEAVYWEIGHTS ENDURED THREE HOURS OF RING WARFARE IN A LEGENDARY FIGHT TO THE FINISH.
by Kenneth Bridgham
For this series, I will be looking back at the most trying battles in ring history, picking one for each decade of the gloved era, beginning in the 1890s.
To read my first entry on the 1899 Jeffries-Sharkey rematch, click below:
April 17, 1909
Cirque de Paris. Paris, France
Sam McVey and Joe Jeannette were two of the best heavyweights in the world circa 1909, but because they were Black men, neither one would get a shot at the championship of the world. The reigning champion, Jack Johnson was the first African American to win the title, and he knew that racist America would pay nothing to watch him defend it against another Black man, whereas he could cash in by taking on a string of overmatched “white hopes.” It didn’t help the case of either Jeannette or McVey that they were talented, dangerous fighters; Johnson was looking for easier pickings.
Twenty-four-year-old Sam McVey (sometimes spelled McVea) was born in Texas but raised in California and spent his early years as a farm laborer before turning to prizefighting in 1902. He had tussled with Johnson three times, all losses. But he had been a novice in those matchups with Jack and had improved a great deal in the years since. An aggressive brawler, McVey stood 5' 10 1/2" tall. What he lacked in boxing technique, he made up for with a will to win and inordinate physical strength. Because of his aggressive style, very dark skin, and African features, the racist American press routinely described Sam in bestial terms. He had made Paris his home over the proceeding two years, finding France less discriminatory than the State. having gone undefeated in eighteen bouts since arriving. Since his arrival, he had gone undefeated in eighteen bouts and had become sensationally popular.
A blacksmith’s son, New Jersey’s Joe Jeannette (sometimes spelled Jennette or Jeanette) had been fighting professionally for less than five years. He too had already met Johnson in the ring early on — seven times! He went 1–1–1 against the future champ, with the rest of their meetings ending in no-decision results (in some states, boxing decisions were illegal at the time). A half-inch shorter than McVey, he was a clever, versatile fighter, equally at home boxing on the outside or shortening his punches on the inside. His light skin, more traditionally handsome (read, ‘white’) features, and impressive build, had some describing him as “a black Adonis.” Joe’s best weapon was thought to be his left hook. Intrigued by McVey’s success abroad, Jeannette arrived in Paris around the beginning of 1909. To that point, he had not lost since last facing Johnson in November 1906.
The French capital was not big enough for two stellar heavyweight stars, and a clash was inevitible. One paper recorded that “challenges have been hurled right and left by both men while they raked down the money in the music halls.”
Since Jeannette, McVey, and their Black contemporary Sam Langford remained locked out of the world championship picture by virtue of their skin color, they were left to fight each other dozens of times over the coming years, often for the so-called “colored heavyweight championship of the world.” On February 20, 1909, that recognition was on the line when McVey beat Jeannette over twenty rounds in Paris, scoring three knockdowns in the process. The action was so tame that many derided the fight as a sham orchestrated by the two fighters and their camps. The defeat was Jeannette’s first in two and a half years and eighteen bouts, but some were already talking of relegating him to the “discard pile.”
A rematch was arranged and held in the same location, the Cirque du Paris, on April 17. Scheduled as a “fight to the finish” (the rounds were unlimited, and the bout would not end until someone was knocked out or disqualified), it would be a titanic clash that would establish both men as ring immortals, championship or not. Sources differ as to who was the betting favorite.
Promoters must have been disappointed by the comparatively dismal turnout of roughly 2,500 persons, about half the venue’s capacity. The rumors of a fix surrounding their prior encounter had kept many away for the second go. As the fight got underway, McVey’s aggression gave him the upper hand. Perhaps too cautious to start, Jeannette kept at a distance that backfired; he was missing more than his opponent. In round five, a combination of a left hook followed by a right cross dropped Jeannette. After barely surviving the rest of the round, Joe gradually found his range and worked his way into the fight. By round nine, he was landing hard combinations that rocked McVey. Sam’s nose bled profusely, and his left eye was swelling.
The momentum had changed once again by round twelve when McVey found a second wind and resumed his aggression. He had Jeannette in trouble with several hard blows, but an excess of the resin used on the ring floor caused the lunging McVey to repeatedly slip to the floor in Jeannette’s corner, allowing Jeannette time to escape the round on his feet. Jeannette tumbled down once as well. For several rounds following, McVey dominated while Jeannette’s blows struggled to find their target. Both fighters appeared to be either tired or saving their energy for the later rounds.
Jeannette turned aggressive at the start of round nineteen, but McVey dodged the incoming fire and retaliated with an explosive left hook that put Joe down for a second time. Pleased by the surprise after several slow rounds, the crowd roared its approval. After Jeannette rose, McVey clobbered him down twice more before the round was out. Joe’s cornermen splashed water on his face to awaken him while he lay on the canvas, a tactic that Sam shouted down as unfair.
Between subsequent rounds, Jeanette’s handlers administered oxygen to their fighter from a tank on hand, believing it would help energize him. A new technique only recently introduced during a boxing match in England had been a subject of controversy of late but had yet to be banned. Incidentally, modern physicians insist that administering oxygen in a boxing match (or NFL sidelines, for that matter) has no positive effect on athletic performance outside of a placebo effect.
McVey’s corner also used oxygen during the fight, but they mixed it with nitrogen, and sprayed the mix on a cut around Sam’s eye, believing it would freeze his bleeding. It was likely a painful procedure for their fighter to endure and one that probably worsened the swelling even as it stemmed the bleeding.
As the rounds dragged on, the fight was not so much an action-packed slugfest as a brutal, slogging war of attrition reminiscent of the old-style bare-knuckle boxers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A New York Times article praised it as “the greatest fight witnessed in France since [bare-knuckle legends] John L. Sullivan and Charley Mitchell fought their 30-round draw at Chantilly in 1888.”
In round twenty-six, a right hand pummeled Jeannette to the floor for a fifth time. Only the bell saved him from a knockout defeat. But the fighters were clearly slowing, clinching, and wrestling more than punching. Two rounds later, Jeannette was down again and survived McVey’s subsequent desperate assault. As exhaustion set in, the fighters began slipping again, and the effort of rising only tired them out more.
As the fight approached round forty, a half-blind, badly winded, and blood-spattered McVey looked ready to go. He was stumbling around the ring in pursuit of his opponent, and his punches were pathetically sloppy. Having suffered six knockdowns and multiple other falls, Jeannette seemed to have too little left in his tank to take advantage of Sam’s vulnerable state. The fortieth round went by. The forty-fifth, too. By round forty-eight, McVey had nothing left. Joe landed multiple uppercuts on the inside, but they lacked the energy to take out the iron-jawed McVey.
Once the bell starting round forty-nine rang, Sam McVey crossed the ring and offered a handshake to his rival, conceding defeat. A ringside reporter wrote that the battered McVey “no longer has a human face.” After roughly three-and-a-half hours of hard effort and punishment, he could take no more. “Sam McVea, crowned by Parisians as the king of boxing, falls from his pedestal… Poor Sam!” wrote a French reporter at ringside.
Jeannette’s elated cornermen carried him around the ring as the crowd applauded his grueling come-from-behind victory. He had endured at least seven knockdowns (possibly more) and forty-eight rounds of Hell to emerge victorious.
Decades later, historian and publisher Nat Fleischer would claim that Jeannette and McVey rose from a total of thirty-eight knockdowns between them, but he never named his source for this claim. Subsequent writers adopted the “print the legend” approach to this and have perpetuated what is almost certainly a myth.
The hours-long trial needed no exaggeration to endure as a clash and testament to the greatness of its two participants. In Fleischer’s own magazine, The Ring, Jeannette’s cornerman called the match “the most grueling fight I’ve ever seen,” years later. “It laster forty-nine rounds, and what a brawl!” he continued. “There were so many knockdowns, I lost count.”
Sadly, neither man would get their more than deserved shot at the championship. In all, the duo would face each on five occasions, McVey winning one, Jeannette winning one, two ending in a draw, and one ending in a no-decision result. Championship or not, both men were deservedly inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the 1990s.
Sources:
“Jeannette Beat McVey.” New York Times. April 18, 1909.
“M’Vey Had Plenty at End of 49th.” Buffalo Courier, April 18, 1909.
“New Contestant Out for Johnson’s Place.” Leavenworth Times. April 18, 1909.
Pierpaoli, Alexander. “Joe Jennette and Sam McVey: Colored Heavyweight Champions.” The First Black Boxing Champions. MCFarland, 2011.
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