Jack Johnson The Boxer

Talkin' Boxing with Kevin “Kingpin” Johnson

By Scoop Malinowski

Is Kevin “Kingpin” Johnson the best American heavyweight today? What was so hard about boxing Vitali? What does Kevin think legends like Norton, Holmes, Louis and Jack Johnson think when they see the current American heavyweights? Read on for what this talented and colorful heavyweight contender has to say about a wide range of subjects…

BoxingInsider:  Kevin Johnson, the man with one of the, if not THE best jab in boxing today.

Kevin Johnson:  ”Always, always, always, got one of the best jabs. One of the best boxers in the sport, one of the best boxers in the division. If I take my time getting back to the top, watching fights like (Arreola-Ahunanya). You got Chris Arreola out there, claiming he’s the best American heavyweight. He’s not the best American heavyweight. I am. I am one of the greats and will be heavyweight champion of the world. Regardless of how long the Klitschkos stay in there. I will let you know I can beat him, hands down, dollars up, I can beat him. David Haye talked his ass off. $20 million payday which he knows his ass couldn’t cash. Me, I don’t talk my way to the payday. When I got in there I fought and I lost. And I took my loss as a man. But there’s one thing about Kevin Johnson – can’t nobody stop me again. For fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world again. Nobody. I got my way there. Me and my brother. We walked our way there. Now again we’re working our way to it again. It’s less than a couple months short. This time I want top opposition. It’s messed up what they call top opposition. And they’re calling Seth Mitchell top opposition. Hopefully we can get a deal worked out between Seth Mitchell and Arreola where I can bust their ass.”

BoxingInsider: Did Mitchell respond to your famous $1 offer to fight him?

Kevin Johnson:  ”He ain’t gonna say nothing. You know why? Because the offer is like a dollar and a dream. He dreamin right now. I’m that dollar. He don’t want to wake up from that dream. This is real. I’ll bust his ass for that dollar purse. You can pay me later. It’s like an IOU. If I lose, you take that dollar. When I win, pay me my damn purse. I’ll bust his ass anytime. I want the same deal for Arreola. I’ll take the same bet for Arreola. One dollar. I bet you I bust his ass. He’s not a boxer, he’s not artistic. Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson – they’re at home crying with guys like that in the ring.

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The Pussycat of Prizefighting: Tiger Flowers and the Politics of Black Celebrity Compare Price

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The Pussycat of Prizefighting: Tiger Flowers and the Politics of Black Celebrity Overview

In 1926 Theodore “Tiger” Flowers became the first African American boxer to win the world middleweight title. The next year he was dead, the victim of surgery gone wrong. His funeral in Atlanta drew tens of thousands of mourners, black and white. Atlantans would not grieve again in comparable numbers until Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.

Flowers, whose career was sandwiched between those of the better-known black boxers Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, was not America’s first successful black athlete. He was, however, the first to generate widespread goodwill among whites, especially in the South, where he became known as “the whitest black man in the ring.”

The Pussycat of Prizefighting is more than an account of Flowers’s remarkable achievements—-it is a penetrating analysis of the cultural and historical currents that defined the terms of Flowers’s success as both a man and an athlete. As we discover the sources of Flowers’s immense popularity, Andrew Kaye also helps us to understand more deeply the pressures and dilemmas facing African Americans in the public eye.

We read, for instance, how boxing reinforced fans’ notions of masculinity and ethnic pride; how whites rationalized the physical superiority of a black sportsman; and how blacks debated the value of athletes as racial role models. Kaye shows how Flowers, mindful that the ring was a testing ground for much more than his punching ability, carefully negotiated the mass media and celebrity culture. He crafted an uncontroversial public persona—-that of a religious man who prayed before each match, was deferential to whites, and exuded an aura of middleclass respectability.

Through the prism of prizefighting, this book reveals the personal cost to African Americans as they attempted to earn black respect while escaping white hostility. Andrew Kaye gives us much to ponder about our own hopes and prejudices—-and how we often burden our athletes and celebrities with them.

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