James Jackson Jeffries (15 April 1875, Carroll, Ohio – 3 March 1953, Burbank, California), American boxer and World Heavyweight Champion. When he was sixteen, his family moved from the family farm in Ohio to Los Angeles, where he worked as a boilermaker - hence his later nickname. He boxed as an amateur before going professional at the age of twenty. Six-foot two-inches and two-hundred and twenty-five pounds in his prime, he was known for his enormous strength and stamina; he was able to absorb tremendous punishment while wearing his opponents down. A natural left-hander, his left hook had "one-punch knockout power". His professional record stood at nineteen wins and two draws before he retired in 1904. He is perhaps best known for being labeled America's "Great White Hope" six years later, when the press and public pressured him to come out of retirement, expecting him to beat the African-American boxer Jack Johnson, who was at the time the Heavyweight Champion. Jeffries was initially uninterested, but after being offered the equivalent of more the three million dollars, he agreed to participate in "The Fight of the Century". In Reno, Nevada on the fourth of July 1910, in one-hundred and ten degree heat, Jeffries was defeated in the fifteenth round. Afterwards, he admitted, "I could never have whipped Johnson at my best. I couldn't have hit him. No, I couldn't have reached him in 1,000 years." He subsequently retired permanently, training boxers and working as a fight promoter in his later years.
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