If you want to talk specifically about the analogy you made though, boxing was a relatively new art in Mexico at the time of Benny Leonard brought over from Cuba, and Mexico wasn't producing the kind of fighters like obviously it became known for later on.

In the days of Gene Tunney and Dempsey, there were a ton of black boxers who were (generally) athletically superior, filled with anger from the way they had been and continued to be treated by white society, and a desire to break out of their impoverished beginnings.