Boxer Who Endured 49 Rounds to Get His Due

When heavyweight fighters Sam McVey and Joe Jeannette stepped into a Paris boxing ring on April 17, 1909, they had no idea that they were about to make history.

Billed as a fight to the finish, the rules of engagement were simple: There would be no decision, no technical knockout, no draw and no time limit.

McVey vs. Jeannette lasted 49 brutal rounds and remains the longest boxing match of the century. This past weekend marked the 90th anniversary of the storied fight, which featured 38 knockdowns and ended only after McVey was unable to answer the bell for the 50th round.

“That had to be one of the greatest knockdown, drag-out fights in the history of boxing,” said Bert Randolph Sugar, a noted boxing historian. “I don’t think anybody wanted their money back after that fight. This was a cliffhanger, every round.”

On June 13, McVey, a black boxer who began his boxing career in Oxnard, will join the likes of Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano and other ring legends when he is inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in a ceremony in Canastota, N.Y.

Inductees are selected by a panel of 150-plus boxing historians, experts and writers from the U.S. and a dozen foreign countries. McVey is one of 17 inductees this year.

“In the history of boxing, his name is one of those great names,” said Jeff Brophy, director of the Hall of Fame.

The boxing world may have never come to know of Sam McVey had it not been for an Oxnard businessman and entrepreneur by the name of William Aloysious “Billy” Roche.

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Roche operated a livery stable, and it was there that he apparently discovered McVey.

“Mac had secured a job as a buggy washer, and once in a while in the evenings the men about the stable would box,” according to one newspaper account at the time. “Roche matched him in a couple of events and then signed him up in a five-year contract.”

Little is known of McVey before he arrived in Oxnard.

He told Roche he was born in Texas on May 17, 1883, but had spent most of his life in California.

McVey’s first recorded bout was against a white boxer named George Sullivan at Oxnard Auditorium on April 12, 1902. McVey knocked him out in the sixth round.

Standing 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighing 200 pounds, McVey went on to knock out his next three opponents, including top heavyweight contender Fred Russell.

Oxnard had a star on its hands.

A Shot at the Title, Defeat and a New Plan

After two more knockout victories, Roche decided McVey was ready to step in the ring with the great Jack Johnson.

The first McVey-Johnson bout, held on Feb. 26, 1903, at Hazard’s Pavilion in Los Angeles, was for “The Negro Heavyweight Title.”

But McVey was no match for his opponent. Johnson hit McVey with frightening ease and sent the 19-year-old McVey back to Oxnard bruised and defeated.

“The Oxnard Wonder,” as he was called, recovered to score knockouts over highly regarded black boxers Kid Carter (11 rounds) and Denver Ed Martin (one round). A rematch with Johnson was arranged for Oct. 27, 1903, again at Hazard’s Pavilion.

This time, Roche and friends were certain, McVey would win. Roche’s hopes were also buoyed by a story in the San Francisco Bulletin that world heavyweight champion James Jefferies was shopping for an opponent.

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This was big news indeed since world heavyweight champions tended to stay away from black opponents.

But in order for McVey to have a shot at fighting Jefferies, he first needed to beat Johnson. Roche spent $250 out of his own pocket to have a jeweled championship belt made, so confident was he that McVey would be the one wearing it after the fight, according to The Times’ coverage of the fight.

McVey vs. Johnson II, however, was much like the first, only worse. Johnson knocked McVey down three times in a decisive 20-round victory.

“Johnson had the better of the fight from the very first minute to the end of the last round,” according to The Times’ story. “He punished McVey severely and escaped without marks to show he had engaged in one of the hardest fights of his career.”

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The outcome devastated Roche, who told The Times, “We were beaten fairly. McVey never had a chance from the first round. I consider it no disgrace for him to have been whipped by such a man as Johnson, for barring the champion, Jefferies, I consider Johnson the best man in the world.”

Their dreams dashed, Roche and McVey went their separate ways. Roche moved to San Diego, where he became manager of the National Boxing Club.

McVey moved to San Francisco, and later to New York, where he began his celebrated rivalry with Jeannette.

The two fought to a 10-round no-decision on April 5, 1907, in New York before taking off to France, where black boxers were well received. While McVey’s chances at ever fighting for a world heavyweight title were already slim, they were eliminated altogether on Dec. 26, 1908.

On that day, his nemesis Johnson wrested the crown from champion Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia. A search for “The Great White Hope” ensued.

Dubbed the “Black Menace,” Johnson made a lot of money fighting weaker white opponents. So while Johnson battered a succession of white challengers such as Stanley Ketchel, “Fireman” Jimmy Flynn and former champion Jefferies, McVey and the other great black heavyweights--Jeannette, Sam Langford, “Battling” Jim Johnson and Harry Wills--had no choice but to fight each other.

McVey went on to fight Jeannette four times, Jim Johnson seven times, and Langford 15 times.

“The color issue prevented him from getting the big fights and the great fights and being quote-unquote champion,” historian Sugar said in a telephone interview last week from his home in New York. “The color line was not only drawn on him, it was manacled on him.”

Opponent Saved by a Bucket of Water

Boxing was the craze in France in the years before World War I, with members of Paris society considering it fashionable to be at ringside for all the big fights. McVey and Jeannette became crowd favorites.

On Feb. 20, 1909, however, the two went 20 lackluster rounds, with McVey declared the winner. In his book, “The 100 Greatest Boxers of All Time,” Sugar, based on accounts from the fight, wrote: “To say it was an unpopular call would do the word a disservice in any language, as a storm of protest broke out after the decision was announced.”

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Stung by criticism of their performance, McVey and Jeannette agreed to a fight to the finish to prove their previous bout was “on the square.”

Two thousand boxing fans got their money’s worth.

“Shooting out of their corners, the two men joined together in the middle of the ring like bull moose in unyielding combat for their turf,” Sugar wrote.

McVey struck the first big blow minutes into the bout, a left that knocked Jeannette down. McVey knocked Jeannette down again, and again.

But again and again, Jeannette rose. Finally, near the end of the 16th round, a devastating right from McVey to the jaw sent Jeannette crashing to the canvas, this time for an apparent knockout.

But, at the count of eight, Jeannette was saved by the bell. “Dragged to his corner like a piece of raw meat, Jeannette somehow found his way out for the seventeenth, there to meet the gloves of McVey, who, now fed by his momentum, gave Jeannette an unmerciful beating, finally driving him to the floor at the bell, the twenty-first trip he had made to the well-worn canvas,” Sugar wrote.

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At that point, Jeannette was saved by the clever gamesmanship of his trainer, Willie Lewis.

Lewis ran up the steps with a bucket and poured water on Jeannette.

McVey’s domination continued, but the turning point came between the 19th and 20th rounds when Lewis turned to the private physician he posted at ringside and had him administer Jeannette a bag of oxygen.

“Then, as the bell rang,” Sugar wrote, “Lewis hollered in Jeannette’s ear, ‘Now, Joe, now--go to the head.’ ”

Jeannette did just that. Now it was McVey visiting the canvas on a regular basis.

“The ring,” Sugar wrote, “was now merely a laboratory for proving Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory.”

The 42nd round saw McVey go down seven times. But, as Jeannette had done 27 times himself, McVey kept getting up.

The beating continued until, Sugar wrote, “finally, his knees melting, his eyes of no mortal use, and his nose unworkable, McVey sat on his stool in his corner after the forty-ninth round and moaned that he couldn’t go on.”

Three hours and 15 minutes after it began, the fight was over.

A Brief Comeback and a Penniless Death

McVey’s career, however, was far from finished. Incredibly, he returned to the ring a scant two months later and won 22 of his next 24 bouts--17 by knockout. He captured the Australian heavyweight championship on Sept. 30, 1911, defeating Jack Lester in Sydney, and defended the title four times.

McVey also helped train Jack Johnson for his 1915 title fight against Jess Willard, and in 1920 served as a sparring partner for Jack Dempsey when the new heavyweight champ was in New York.

McVey’s last fight was on March 15, 1921, a five-rounder against Jack Thompson in Detroit that was ruled a no-decision.

Washed up and penniless, McVey died of pneumonia at Harlem Hospital on Dec. 23, 1921, at the age of 37. Jack Johnson paid his funeral expenses.

McVey’s induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame this summer is well deserved and will help ensure McVey’s place in history, Sugar said.

“He’s one of those forgotten men,” Sugar said. “In his own generation, he was a giant, and I think that’s what he’s been voted in on.”