Tommy Burns

Tommy Burns (born Noah Brusso; 17 June 188110 May 1955) was a Canadian professional boxer. He remains the only Canadian-born fighter to win the World Heavyweight Championship and is the shortest champion in the division's history. Starting out at welterweight, he is the lightest boxer to eventually become heavyweight champion, and he is one of only two heavyweight champions to have fought below middleweight; the other boxer to do so was Roy Jones Jr., who began at light middleweight. The first to travel the globe in defending his title, Burns made 13 title defences against 11 different boxers, despite often being smaller than his opponents.

Burns took on all challengers as Heavyweight Champion, leading to his legendary bout with the African-American Jack Johnson. According to his biographer, Burns insisted, "I will defend my title against all comers, none barred. By this I mean white, black, Mexican, Indian, or any other nationality. I propose to be the champion of the world, not the white, or the Canadian, or the American. If I am not the best man in the heavyweight division, I don't want the title."

Early life Noah Brusso was born in Normanby Township near Hanover, Ontario, as the twelfth of thirteen children of an impoverished German-Canadian family. His family lived in several locations around Ontario's Grey County and Bruce County before moving to Galt, Ontario. Noah grew up in difficult circumstances; five of his siblings died before reaching adulthood. Aged twenty, Brusso began his prizefighting career in January 1902 in Detroit, Michigan as a welterweight. In June 1903, he was discovered playing lacrosse under an assumed name for a Detroit team that was playing in Chatham, Ontario.

Boxing career

After starting his boxing career under his real name, in 1904 Brusso took the Scottish-sounding name of Tommy Burns. He was tall and about , but his relatively small size did not stop him from becoming the world heavyweight boxing champion. When Burns met Marvin Hart for the heavyweight championship of the world in Los Angeles on 23 February 1906, Burns was a 2–1 underdog and the betting was 10–7 that he would not last ten rounds. Burns won a twenty-round decision and went on to defend his title eleven times within a period of less than three years.

All previous gloved world champs had been European-American U.S. citizens (except for Robert Fitzsimmons, of the United Kingdom and New Zealand), who defended their titles only against other white opponents (although Fitzsimmons fought Jack Johnson after losing the title). Burns travelled the globe, beating the champions of England, Ireland, France and Australia. It is generally believed that Burns was the first heavyweight champion to fight with a Jewish challenger, defeating British boxer Joseph "Jewey" Smith, in a 1908 bout held in Paris. However, "Jewey" was a diminutive of Joseph, not a reference to Smith's religion.

Burns once defended his title twice in one night, although some historians refuse to accept those wins as title defences, insisting they were exhibition bouts. But in newspapers at the time, they were advertised as heavyweight title fights. If those defences are counted in his record, he successfully defended his title 13 times.

Burns-Johnson Fight

In December 1908, after months of delaying arranging the fight, Burns agreed to a bout with Jack Johnson and became the first fighter to hold to a heavyweight championship bout with an African American. He had refused to fight Johnson until Australian promoter Hugh D. McIntosh paid him $30,000 for the fight (Johnson received $5,000).

Internationally the press advertised the fight as a race war. Johnson, known as the "Galveston Giant", defied convention of the time by dressing lavishly, driving fancy cars, and breaking the taboo of dating white women. Sydney's Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News published an explicitly racist editorial, stating: "Citizens who have never prayed before are supplicating Providence to give the white man a strong arm with which to belt [Johnson, whom the newspaper called a racial slur] into oblivion." The Sydney Australian Star published a cartoon depicting the fighters in the ring, surrounded by an audience of white and black races. The caption under the cartoon read “This battle may in future be looked back upon as the first great battle of an inevitable race war … There is more in this fight to be considered than the mere title of pugilistic champion of the world.”

A crowd of twenty thousand fans gathered in the Sydney suburb stadium on Boxing Day to witness the fight. Burns entered the fight supposedly suffering from the effects from jaundice or influenza and weighed in at — lighter than his previous fight, and well below Johnson's . In the 14th of 20 three-minute rounds, Burns began to stagger as Johnson hammered him at will. The police rushed the ring, stopped the camera, and ended the fight to avoid the unpleasant spectacle of a white champion knocked out by a black fighter. The fight concluded with Burns failing to land a single punch. Burns later claimed the disruption was due to spectators' concern he had a broken jaw. He also stated numerous right uppercuts from Johnson led to swelling on his face and the request to stop the fight. Referee Hugh McIntosh awarded the decision and the title to Johnson.

Following the fight, the American novelist Jack London composed a front-page report for the Australian Star. London and his wife Charmian Kittredge had attended the fight, which he described a "hopeless slaughter."

In a filmed interview, Burns ranked Johnson as the second-best boxer up to his time, after James J. Jeffries. Johnson defeated Jeffries in 1910 when Jeffries, who had not fought for six years, came out of retirement to fight. It is said that Jeffries was grossly out of shape and had lost much of his muscle, but films of the fight show that Jeffries was in perfect condition on the day of the fight. It was ring rust, and the natural effects of age, that caused him to fight badly against Johnson.

In 1909 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Johnson told a crowd of people that Burns deserved credit as the only white heavyweight who ever gave a black man a chance to win the title. He said, "Let me say of Mr. Burns, a Canadian and one of yourselves, that he has done what no one else ever did, he gave a black man a chance for the championship. He was beaten, but he was game."

Aftermath of Title Loss Burns continued to box occasionally after dropping the title. During the Great War he joined the Canadian army, serving as a physical fitness instructor for troops in Canada. In 1920, one month after his 39th birthday, Burns challenged British champion Joe Beckett. Burns was stopped in the seventh round when, after suffering two knockdowns, his corner threw in the towel to end the fight.

Life after boxing

After retirement, Burns promoted some boxing shows. In 1917, Burns purchased the Huntington Inn, a three-story hotel located at Eighth Street and Ocean Avenue (later renamed Pacific Coast Highway) in Huntington Beach. At this location he established the Burns Health Farm, which advertised treatment of various ailments "without the aid of drugs or the surgeon's knife". In 1928, Burns moved to New York City where he ran a speakeasy in an extravagantly furnished apartment he allegedly owned on the second floor of 53 West 72nd Street. On October 17, 1930, Burns was one of three men arrested by prohibition agents at this address in connection with illegal possession and distribution of alcohol. Although he was wealthy at the end of his boxing career, the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression wiped out his fortune. Burns went to work as an insurance salesman and security guard, among other jobs.

In 1948, Burns was ordained as a minister. At the time of his death, he was an evangelist living in Coalinga, California.

He died while visiting a church friend in Vancouver, British Columbia, suffering a heart attack at age 73. Four people attended his burial at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, British Columbia. He was interred in an unmarked pauper's grave. In 1961, a Vancouver sports writer raised funds to commission a memorial plaque for Burns's grave.

Legacy

Burns is best remembered today as the man whom Jack Johnson beat to become the first black heavyweight champion. Burns was also the first truly international heavyweight champion, defending his title in America, England, Ireland, France and Australia. His 1907 title defence against Gunner Moir in London was the first World Heavyweight championship fight of the gloved era to be held outside of the United States. Standing at just 5'7", Burns is the shortest heavyweight champion in history, while only Bob Fitzsimmons weighed less in a world heavyweight title fight than Burns's 168½ lbs when losing the championship to Jack Johnson. During his championship reign, Burns typically weighed between 170 and 180 lbs. His reach was 74", three inches longer than Mike Tyson's.

Burns's eight consecutive title defences by knockout or stoppage is equalled only by Larry Holmes and remains a record for the heavyweight division. Burns was the first World Heavyweight champion to win the title on points. Although physically over-matched against Johnson, who handed him his first stoppage loss, Burns did not lose inside the distance again until the final fight of his career, at the age of 39. However, some sources record the result as Johnson having won the title on points after the bout was stopped by the police. The filming of the fight was stopped due to the one-sided nature of the contest, however, and regardless of the official ruling, is generally considered by historians to be a stoppage victory for Johnson.

Burns's reign as heavyweight champion lasted for two years, ten months and three days, the 19th-longest reign in heavyweight history. His eleven consecutive successful title defences is the joint-fourth highest total in heavyweight history, alongside Vitali Klitschko and behind Wladimir Klitschko (18 defences), Larry Holmes (20 defences) and Joe Louis (25 defences). Many of Burns's title challengers, however, were not of World Championship quality, as he frequently defended against the best available local heavyweights while touring the world. In Burns's first defense of the title, for instance, he knocked out James J. Walker in the first round. Walker's record going into the bout was 1–5 and he had lost by stoppage in five of his previous six bouts prior to challenging Burns.

Burns also defended the title three times against Bill Squires. Squires, the Australian heavyweight champion, was actually a 10–9 favourite to defeat Burns, yet lost in the first round. Nevertheless, Squires obtained two further shots at Burns's title, despite losing two of his next three fights following their first bout. His trilogy with Burns is notable, however, as their title fights took place across three different continents (America, Europe and Australia). This remains the only instance in history where two boxers have fought three times for a World title with each fight taking place on a different continent. Burns's best win as champion was a 20-round points decision over Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, who two years previously had stopped Bob Fitzsimmons to claim the World light-Heavyweight championship.

Footage of his 1907 title defence against Bill Lang shows Burns to have been an aggressive counter-puncher, who was strong on the inside and a good finisher.

Although Trevor Berbick and Bermane Stiverne have also won a version of the World Heavyweight Championship while Canadian citizens, Burns remains the only Canadian-born heavyweight champion in history. (Berbick and Stiverne were born in Jamaica and Haiti respectively.)

Honours Australian boxer and Welterweight champion Geoffrey Mostyn Murphy would fight under the ring name "Tommy Burns", in honour of his Canadian namesake.

Burns has since been posthumously inducted into the following sporting institutions: the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1955, the International Boxing Hall of Fame on 9 June 1996, and the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.

Professional boxing record