FROM THE BOOKS
There was not much about Jess Willard to grip the public imagination, apart from his size and the fact that he had recovered the heavyweight title for the Caucasian race from Jack Johnson in 1915.The late Robert Edgren, syndicated sports columnist-cartoonist, pointed out that Jess was nothing but a big clown at the outset. "Partly because he was embarrassed fighting smaller men, and partly because he liked to get a laugh out of the crowd," Edgren said. "But he cut out all the horsing around when he learned he might get a chance to fight Johnson for the championship. Then he trained seriously for 10 months. The last part of it, at El Paso and Havana, was very earnest indeed. He became so serious in his workouts near the end that his sparring mates were afraid of him."

John D. McCallum-The Encyclopedia Of World Boxing Champions