The gong went. Johnson slid lithely from his seat and attacked with the ferocity of a hungry tiger. Bobbing and weaving before the huge Willard, the whites of Jack’s eyes showed as he looked for an opening. Twice he threw shuddering left hooks, but Jess was fighting according to instructions and caught the blows on his arms, slowly backing away all the time. Jack feinted with a left and crossed with a right, and the punch smashed home on his rival’s jaw. Jess quivered for a moment, then backed up. He stabbed long lefts, but Johnson brushed these aside and continued his attack. The bell rang, and Jess had weathered the opening round. From the second round onward, Johnson cut loose with cold, savage fury that punished Jess despite his strategy. Willard’s defense was good, but he didn’t do too much on the attack until well past half the fight. He was following O’Rourke’s instructions to let Johnson wear himself out. Several times it appeared that Johnson would score a knockout as the giant Negro kept tossing his punches accurately and to vital points. Near the end of the seventh round, a shattering blow to the jaw sent Jess to his corner in a noticeably unsteady condition. He quickly recovered, but Johnson, still sensing an early kill, went after his man with added fury in the eighth round. Savagely mauled, Jess fought on, though his face was gory and his body red. Yet his heart, like that of the black duck that had flown from the Florida coast upheld him. Like that black duck, he aimed toward his goal. Johnson tried hard for the knockout through the next few rounds, but without success. After the sixteenth, the pattern of the fight began to change. Jack started to slow down, while Jess kept climbing—again, like the duck reaching for heights after striking the heavy sea waves. From the eighteenth round on, I felt certain that Johnson knew his title had gone. It was then that Willard went on the offensive. In the twentieth round, O’Rourke told Jess to go in for the kill. “You’ve got him licked,” the trainer urged. “He’s tiring. Keep at him. Don’t give him any rest.” The tables were now completely turned. Willard bore down on the champion, battering him with both hands. But Johnson’s defense was superb. Even when he was at the end of his tether, and Jess couldn’t miss, he continued to make a fight of it. In the twenty-sixth round, Johnson dropped his guard momentarily, and Jess shot a right-hander under the heart. Johnson winced. His mouth opened, his arms twitched upwards convulsively, and he started sinking to the canvas when a left to the jaw hurried him on his losing fall. There was no need for the second blow. The right-hander to the heart had done the job. Jess was the new heavyweight champion of the world—the first white man to hold the title for nearly seven years. And it was at that moment, as Johnson took the count, that one of the greatest controversies in the fight game began.