Big Jim

When James Jackson Jeffries was in his prime, no man in the world could stand against him. His father was a street-corner evangelist, his mother a peaceful Bible-reading woman, but Big Jim was born for combat. At 16, he was working as a boilermaker in East Los Angeles. At 21, he stood 6 ft. 1 1/2 in., weighed 212 Ibs., could high-jump 6 ft. and run 100 yds. in eleven seconds. He could hit like a jackhammer and, in the words of Gentleman Jim Corbett, "couldn't be hurt with an ax." In 1899, when he was 24, he knocked out Bob Fitzsimmons in a fight at Coney Island and was the heavyweight champion of the world.

Big Jim ran 14 miles a day, pickled his face and hands in beef brine, and became a symbol of invincibility around the world. He fought from a crouch--the "Jeffries crouch"--his bullet head and meaty body low, his left outthrust, his right cocked to mete out instant doom. He beat Joe Choynski, Tom Sharkey, Gus Ruhlin, beat Fitzsimmons again, knocked out Jim Corbett twice. In 1905, at 29, he ran out of opponents and retired, wealthy and undefeated, to raise cattle and prize dogs on his ranch at Burbank, Calif, and enjoy the plaudits due a superman.

The Hope of the Gentry. But fate was simply fattening Big Jim for the kill. A Galveston Negro, Jack ("Li'l Arthur") Johnson, won the championship from Tommy Burns at Sydney, Australia in 1908, and millions of ring fans were suddenly seized with the idea that civilization itself was threatened by the "Black Man who wore the belt." Johnson, who was disconcertingly tough and disconcertingly outspoken, openly intimated that he was as good, or better than any man who ever lived, and the hysteria grew. Saloon orators cried that Li'l Arthur had a skull an inch thick and drank beer through a straw. What worse could be said of a man?

Overnight, Jim Jeffries became the first of a series of "white hopes," toward whom the prizefight gentry looked to uphold the "superiority of the Caucasian race."

Jeffries was far from eager; he had quit training, was long past his peak and weighed 285 Ibs. But he was hounded endlessly, both by Promoter Tex Rickard and the public. He went to Europe to relax and was startled one day when Britain's King Edward VII stepped out of a shop in Carlsbad and accosted him. The King, who had been picking out silver foxes for a lady friend, wanted to know when he would beat Johnson. Jeffries came home, and on Oct. 29, 1909 signed to fight Li'l Arthur 45 rounds or to a finish. There was jubilation from coast to coast.

The Unbelievable. Big Jim Jeffries half killed himself working off 65 Ibs. The night before the fight, which was held in Reno on July 4, 1910, he was in such bad shape that a contingent of public-spirited citizens tried to bribe Johnson to take a dive. Johnson politely replied: "Tell Mister Jim that we are going to do the best we know." In the 15th round the next day, before 16,000 unbelieving customers, Jim Jeffries sank soddenly to the canvas, his once awesome right draped over the lower rope of the ring. He was not counted out--nobody ever counted Big Jim out --but he would have been if his seconds hadn't thrown in the towel.

In the decades that followed, Jeffries led a good life. He was canny with money, never wanted, and during the Depression supported from 30 to 40 needy men on his California ranch. He was an honored citizen of Burbank, and as he grew older, liked to get his vast bulk into a Santa Claus suit before Christmas and entertain children at a local department store. He never lacked whisky to sip, nor friends with whom to mull over the "great old days." He was 77 last week when he suffered a heart attack in his chair, asked his niece to call a doctor. He was dead when the doctor got there.

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