Boxing’s Greats of the States | Kansas: Jess Willard

Boxers come from every corner of the globe. Sometimes, fighters are products of their environment, favoring styles prevalent in the country or state from which they hail. Various regions of the United States are considered factories for great fighters, though that certainly is not the case with each state. In this weekly Sherdog.com series, the spotlight will shine on the best boxer of all-time from each of the 50 states. Fighters do not necessarily need to be born in a given state to represent it; they simply need to be associated with it. For example, heavyweight legend Joe Louis was born in Alabama, but he is identified almost universally with Detroit. ***
Boxing was once on par with baseball as America’s No. 1 sport. At the turn of the 20th Century, it was commonplace for prizefighters to have well over 100 sanctioned bouts and many more that were off the books. Before Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson ruled the heavyweight division, Jack Johnson was the king.

On April 5, 1915, the 6-foot-6 Jess Willard dethroned Johnson when he knocked him out in the 26th round at Oriental Park Racetrack in Havana, Cuba. It would go down as the only significant victory of the St. Clere, Kansas, native’s career. The “Pottawatomie Giant” went on to lose to Dempsey four years later and retired from boxing in 1923.

Willard finished with a career with a 26-6-1 record and 20 knockouts, but his unlikely victory over Johnson is the stuff of which legends are made. The fact that he did not start boxing professionally until the age of 29 makes his upset over Johnson all the more impressive. Willard, who died in 1968, was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2003.

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