The “Great White Hope” and Boxing’s Racial History - Rudy Mondragón - Reset Critical Podcast

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]The Great White Hope after Jack Johnson defeats Tommy Burns is this idea of like, we need a white boxer to emerge, defeat Jack Johnson, reclaim the title for white and whiteness and white supremacy to reestablish the social order and to wipe that smile off Jack Johnson's face.

[00:00:18]Because Jack Johnson was.

[00:00:19]What I loved about him, too, was he would laugh, he would smile.

[00:00:22]He was not.

[00:00:24]He was unapologetic about his emotions in terms of how he felt when he was winning, which is a big No-No at the time.

[00:00:30]And so the Great White hope they would make tournaments like, let's see who the best white fighter is in this great white Hope tournament, so that we can put them against Jack Johnson.

[00:00:38]Whether those fights ever happen or not is not the point.

[00:00:41]The point was that there was a moneymaker race and ethnicity has never been something that the boxing industry has been shy to use to sell the spectacle, because that fight was probably one of the highest paid, if not the highest paid for those two fighters at the time of boxing in that moment.

[00:00:58]So the Great White hope is these ideas of what it means to represent yourself in an American way around race, around class.

[00:01:08]Are you a gentleman or are you a savage?