The Alaska citizen., 1910-09-05
BY IRWIN s. COBB.

BY IRWIN |I'Il bet he never was a fighter by choice: he is a fighter by chance And while we're on the subject. I'll predict this much more. l don't think he will ever fight another champion ship battle. and if he does and should meet a real fighter. do believe white supremacy will come back into it's own again. l don't think he is made of the stuff of which cham pionS are made Accidental champion Yes Regular champion? No Not ir eleven million regulation length years For they tell me that in the long run it is not boxing that makes champions. but fighting. And John son is not fighter by instinct or by nature He's too good-natured, if I'm any judge He'd rather grin than frown. rather play the bull fiddle than change the plans and specified tions of a fellow beings front ia cade
 Has Neither of Two Essentials. To be really great priZe-tighter 1 an Alexander the Great of the ring understand that a man must eith CT have the mentality that won't let him quit. and that makes him win on grit alone when everything else is gone. or else he has to be very much of brute. am very sure this | large. dark person hasgn't the undy ing fighting spark hidden anywhere in his Timber, long frame, and l am | equally sure that he's not a brute Hes a good deal of an animal, but not brutal or deliberately cruel, I'm very sure.
 Not a Yellow Streak.
 don't believe either that it's a | yellow streak which shines out through Johnson's polished hide and | gives to his outer casing the almost opaque luminous effect of some kind of a rare. well-oiled old hardwood.
 But after seeing him close up and after catching the pearls of wisdom that drop from his lips. you could readily understand how il was when l he entered the ring at Reno away | back wonder some weeks ago, "as the Dark Age of Drama was just | dawning." that he was scared a l wet-ashes gray. And also how il was that as soon as he found he didn't have anything much to lick except a memory and a set of good press notices he chirked up and be came a regular sun-cured cutup, full of ginger and confidence and merry | quips. and how he sprang the croI of apt retorts that drove that veteran actor of the old or Caucasian sChoo T refer to Mir. James J. Corbett-
 into state of temporary silence | Put il uc late eX-James Je flies had heen the!" with the pun vii. | ake the long end of th" bet ana | let you write your own ticket, that one solid wallop on the WeathereC mahogany chest would have shut off the flow of merriment. For the present hero of the hour in the the atrical world is a creature of mo mentary impressions. He could prob ably be almost as sorry if the first watermelon of the season turned out 1 to be green as he would be to lose worlds championship, and one would probably make as lasting al impression upon his mind as the other.
 Thespian Johnson is clear stained African, with no leaves of white blood in his veins. and he runs true to his racial instincts. l would say that he had as much sense of re sponsibility as Newfoundland puI and not quite as much dignity.
 Johnson Likened to Watermelon 1 l am surprised that no one has SC far likened his physical makeup tc a crate of garden truck. His skull is the shape of a Accent Georgia water melon. with brow slipping all the way to where it meets the back o1 his neck, with a large, triangular | scar just aft of that peak, as Il the melon had been plugged at the green grocer's to see if it were ripe He has nose that's the very i'm age of a young onion half buried il rich loam, and when he opens his mouth and shows his teeth yol think of a roating ear of spring corn Just add to these an eggplants skin a pair of small, mischievous, good humored eyes and pair of broat lips-I cant think right now of any vegetables that looks like the eye: and lips-and paint the whole ricl dark brown, vanished with the bes coach shellac and put it in the SUI l until the colors set and you have tht face complete.
 It is the rest of him that impresse: you most, with it's suggestions of un limited strength and wonderful swift ness-the body 1.-the as blacl