By 1909, the McMahon brothers were managing partners of the Olympic Athletic Club and bookers at the Empire Athletic Club and
St. Nicholas Athletic Club, located in or near
Harlem. Because of a loss of public interest in boxing, the two McMahons expanded their affairs in 1911, founding the
New York Lincoln Giants, a black baseball team, which played at Olympic Field in Harlem. With a team that included five of the best black players in the nation (who the McMahons recruited away from teams in Chicago and Philadelphia), the Lincoln Giants dominated black and white opponents for three seasons. In 1914, financial difficulties forced them to sell the team; however, they retained the contracts of many of the players, and for three more years they operated another team, the
Lincoln Stars, using Lenox Oval on 145th Street as a home field. Touring with the squad, McMahon and his brother ventured to Havana, Cuba, in 1915, where they co-promoted the fight between
Jess Willard and then-champion
Jack Johnson, scheduled for 45 rounds (Willard won by knockout in the 26th round). After 1915, Jess anchored in
Long Island, where he became the first McMahon to promote professional wrestling, at the Freeport Municipal Stadium. The wrestling wars led McMahon to ally himself with another independent faction, captained by Carlos Louis Henriquez. Together they booked the
Coney Island and Brooklyn Sport Stadiums, with Carlos being the main fan favorite. The formation of "the Trust" calmed the New York territory enough to allow McMahon access to a larger pool of wrestlers. Among those wrestlers were
Jim Browning, Hans Kampfer, Mike Romano and
Everett Marshall. It is not certain who the founder of the CWC was. Some sources state that it was Jess' son
Vincent J. McMahon while other sources (including the website of the CWC's successor,
WWE) credit Jess himself as the founder of the CWC. ==Personal life and death==