HE WAS flash, he was in your face and he drove fast cars. He quoted Bunyan, Milton and Shakespeare and spent most of his spare time playing musical instruments and visiting museums, art galleries and archaeological sites.

But there was something explosively special about the heavyweight boxer described by the Herald as "the versatile Mr Jack Johnson". He was African-American - black in an era when world champions were white.

Johnson bought that era to an end on Boxing Day 1908 by winning the heavyweight title from Canadian Tommy Burns at Sydney Stadium in Rushcutters Bay. It was a tense, black-white contest watched by a sell-out crowd of 26,000. A further 40,000 fans were locked outside.

The bout ended in chaos in the 14th round when Burns was knocked down.

NSW police entered the ring and Johnson, who was allegedly forced at gunpoint to fight by the promoter after a last-minute wrangle over payment, was awarded a win on points.

"It was a remarkable event - not just in Australia, and not just in terms of sport. It had a significance that transcended boxing, posing questions about race, about what it meant to be a man," says Randy Roberts, a Texan sports historian and biographer.

"At the time it was as dramatic as later breakthroughs by the likes of Muhammad Ali [the three-time heavyweight boxing champion] and Barack Obama."

Roberts marked the 100th anniversary of the Johnson-Burns fight with a speech yesterday as part of a three-day conference on sport, race and ethnicity at the University of Technology, Sydney.

"There was huge interest in the fight," he said.

"Australia was fascinated by all things American after the visit of the United States' 'Great White Fleet' [the US Navy battle fleet] some months earlier, and it was feeling like a white outpost at a time of growing 'Asian peril'."

The bout was staged by a pushy entrepreneur, Hugh "Huge Deal" Macintosh, who had built the stadium two years earlier.