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Johnson became the first black World Heavyweight champion in 1908 which made him unpopular with the predominantly white American boxing audiences. Jeffries, a former heavyweight champion came out of retirement to fight Johnson and was nicknamed the "Great White Hope".
Writer Jack London coined the phrase "Great White Hope" to describe Jeffries in his attempt to win the heavyweight crown from African-American world champion Jack Johnson in 1910. [3] Jeffries came out of retirement for the fight, urged on by London and many others who wished to see a white man once again reign as heavyweight champion. [4]
Muhammad Ali vs. Chuck Wepner was a professional boxing match contested on March 24, 1975, for the undisputed heavyweight championship. [1] Ali won the fight after he knocked out Wepner in the fifteenth round. The fight is notable for being among the four fights in which Ali was officially knocked down in the ring, and for inspiring the 1976 ...
As title holder, Johnson thus had to face a series of fighters each billed by boxing promoters as a "great white hope", often in exhibition matches. In 1909, he beat Tony Ross, Al Kaufman, and the middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel. Ketchel and Johnson were friends.
Cooney appeared past his prime and Spinks, boxing carefully with constant sharp counters, knocked him out in round 5. Cooney's last fight was in 1990. He was knocked out in a match-up of power-punching veterans in two rounds by former world champion George Foreman. Cooney did stagger Foreman in the first round, but he was over-matched, and ...
The Fight of the Century or the Johnson–Jeffries Prize Fight was a boxing match between the first African American world heavyweight champion of boxing Jack Johnson and the previously undefeated world heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries on July 4, 1910, U.S. Independence Day.
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004) Picture Muhammad Ali at the turn of the 20th century, a Black man who slept with white women and lived like a rock star.
When "The Great White Hope" Jess Willard beat Jack Johnson for the world heavyweight title on 5 April 1915, the world white heavyweight crown became defunct. No heavyweight champ would offer a title shot to a black heavyweight challenger for 22 years, until James J. Braddock lost his title to Joe Louis in 1937.