Jersey Joe Walcott, who gatecrashed the party late and then got little time to enjoy it, has gone down as a romantic and whimsical figure of the sport?
It didn?t happen once. It happened twice. Tough luck wasn?t the reason it happened the first time and old age wasn?t the reason it happened the second. Jersey Joe Walcott was knocked out by a burst of brilliance from Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium in 1948 and by one of the greatest right hands thrown in ring history by Rocky Marciano at Philadelphia in 1952.
Jersey Joe came up short on each occasion, having done all the right things until the time came to save the document and safely file it. He was the pitcher who falls one inning short of a no-hitter, the quarterback who plays the perfect game until he concedes a late touchdown by passing the ball to the opponent.
Walcott, the oft-described hard luck hero who gatecrashed the party late and then got little time to enjoy it, has gone down as a romantic and whimsical figure of the sport. He didn?t get the breaks early in his career and he was old and near decrepit when fate finally dealt him a good hand. Then he was cruelly cut down by Father Time against the crude and agricultural Rocky Marciano, who couldn?t distinguish an opponent?s chin from his kneecap. Poor old Jersey Joe. These are not just the opinions of some people. They are firm beliefs which give unjust credit to a man whose misfortunes were so often self-inflicted.
The fact that Walcott so nearly did it right on the big occasions (and the only time he did it right was when he knocked out Ezzard Charles in Pittsburgh to finally win the heavyweight championship) has deposited him in that category of mystical fighters who are remembered for being far better than they really were.
Walcott was an excellent and economic boxer of shifts, shuffles and feints, a genuine knockout puncher and as good at taking punishment as he could give it. It was no mean feat to knock out Charles with one of the most beautiful left hooks this writer has ever seen. It was equally commendable to get through nearly 26 rounds with Joe Louis in two fights and to survive Marciano?s brutal punching for more than 12. However, let us not pretend that the gods were forever conspiring to deprive Jersey Joe of his just dues.
He repeatedly failed to cross the line and this failure was born out of a self-destructive arrogance that made him believe the job was already done and that he could do the last few yards at a canter. Arrogance, one of the most essential ingredients in a fighter?s make-up, needs to be tempered. Walcott rarely managed to do this at the most crucial moments in his career.
His arrogance was most savagely punished at the Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia by Marciano, an opponent Walcott had derided for not being worthy. Jersey Joe got careless and got beaten to the draw in that fateful thirteenth round. Old age had nothing to do with it. For the first 12 rounds of that terrific battle, Walcott was the best Walcott we had ever seen. Many ringsiders made that observation. Are we supposed to believe that the minute?s rest between the 12th and 13th rounds suddenly turned 38-year-old Jersey Joe into a geriatric? False credit to his age has very unfairly tarnished Marciano?s star in the years that have followed.
Ring editor Nat Fleischer, at ringside for the Walcott-Marciano match, wrote: ?Walcott was better in defeat than he ever had been in any of his triumphs, a remarkable feat considering his age and the powerful hitting of his challenger. Walcott was the oldest title holder to defend the heavyweight crown, but his performance, a remarkable one, belied his age for he fought like one ten years his junior.?
Ended
Let us not forgot too that the fight could have ended in Walcott?s favor in the 11th round, which was torrid for Rocky. Boxing and punching quite superbly, Jersey Joe had Marciano in desperate trouble but couldn?t find the payoff punches. Walcott had decked Rocky in the first, cut the bridge of his nose and battered him throughout with hard and educated punches. Jersey Joe had done all the necessary groundwork and opened the door to the safe. But it was Marciano who plundered its riches with that booming right that wiped all the numbers off the scoreboard.
Walcott, looking assured and no less effective or energetic than he had done all night long, suddenly stopped circling and backed into the ropes. That was his mistake. He had trapped himself in similar fashion four years earlier against Louis in their second fight for the Brown Bomber?s title.
In their first match at Madison Square Garden in 1947, Louis had retained the title on a hotly disputed split decision, so disgusted with his lethargic performance that he left the ring before the verdict was announced. Yet here we have another Walcott untruth; the untruth that everyone believed Louis had lost. Everyone didn?t. Louis had a lot of supporters that night, many of whom might well have been seeing what they thought they saw through rose-tinted glasses. But it was so typical of Walcott that he should have left room for doubt. For all his unquestionable talent, it seemed he couldn?t help being lackadaisical and overconfident. When he needed to sprint and really seal the deal, he cruised.
Return
He was cruising very nicely in the return match until he committed fistic suicide in a spectacular 11th round. Knocked down briefly in the third round, Louis appeared once again to be vainly chasing the jigging, side-stepping challenger who had frustrated him six months before. The Bomber trailed on points after ten rounds and the crowd was booing the lack of significant action.
Then that cocky streak in Walcott showed itself. It did so disastrously. Breaking into a little shuffle and strut, he decided to trade punches with Louis. Jersey Joe had been strictly advised not to do this. A thunderous right to the temple severed all movement in Walcott, rooting him to the floor and teeing him up for one of the greatest combinations ever thrown.
The ripping punches that followed, short and perfectly sweet, stretched Jersey Joe flat on the canvas. He clambered to his knees, nearly made it to his feet at the count of nine, but fell back down to take the count.
Louis, for the umpteenth time in his epic career, had shown us economical power punching at its most sublime and thrilling. I have yet to see it eclipsed for its strange beauty and disciplined savagery.
The dejected Walcott had strong words for referee Frank Fullam. ?I thought I had Louis. Then the referee kept telling me to come out and fight. He didn?t tell Louis ? just me. It got me confused. I changed my style of fighting and this happened. I only remember that first punch ? a right to the head. They say he hit me some more ? I don?t remember.?
This was a familiar squawk from Jersey Joe. When Marciano knocked out a quite plainly uninterested Walcott in the first round of their return match (with what still appears to be little more than a medium poke) the old man who never got an even break in his own mind complained of a fast count. Walcott, some revisionists would have us believe, has been underrated and unappreciated. I don?t believe so. I don?t think history has misjudged Jersey Joe any more than it has sold short the greatly gifted but fatally temperamental Jack Sharkey. I don?t believe that either man was deceiving us. I don?t believe that either possessed a reserve store of magic that never saw the light of day.
After Louis, Walcott failed twice to wrest the championship from Ezzard Charles. When Jersey Joe finally hit the jackpot by knocking out Charles at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in 1951, it seemed that the final piece to an otherwise well constructed template had finally fallen into place. It was a wonderful win and one of the greatest ever one-punch finishes. But the trilogy between the pair had otherwise failed to thrill the fans in the manner of Louis? explosive victories.
Perhaps that is why the fourth and final meeting between Walcott and Charles is now so infrequently discussed. Jersey Joe won a unanimous decision at the Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia in June 1952, three months before his dethronement in the same ring by Marciano. But it was Charles who had the sympathy of most after a dour and dull fight, with 24 of 41 writers polled at ringside voting in his favor. Walcott, as the title holder, probably deserved the benefit of the doubt in a contest where champion and challenger were similarly timid. Yet once again Jersey Joe failed to stamp his authority on a vital fight. Had the judges not found in his favor, his box office bonanza against Marciano would have been out of the window.
Rocky and Joe Louis
The fashionable belittling of Rocky Marciano?s status among the all time heavyweights is largely centered around the argument that Rocky beat up a succession of ?old men? starting with Walcott. Never mind the fact that these ?old men? were still at the top of the game and still highly dangerous. Ezzard Charles was some creaking old man when he failed by a whisker to lift Marciano?s crown in their first battle. I have argued here that it is a myth that Old Age beat Jersey Joe Walcott in his first fight with The Rock. Is it also a myth that old age beat Joe Louis against Marciano in October, 1951?
Here, against all my usual instincts, I find myself resorting to the classic fence-sitting answer of ?yes and no.? Rocky?s brutal victory over Joe has certainly been devalued and too easily dismissed as insignificant. It was far from that. But Louis, unlike Walcott, was patently no longer the great fighter he used to be. Gone was that beautifully lithe physique and the explosive fast punching that made him famous. A year before being wrecked by Marciano, Joe had failed to win back his old title against Charles, looking ponderously slow and flabby.
Joe?s best days were way behind him and everybody knew it. He racked up eight wins on the way to Rocky, but had to go the full distance in five of those bouts. He was still a formidable fighter by the standards of most others and the proof of that pudding is the damage he did to Marciano before running out of steam and getting flattened in that memorable eighth round.
Why, then, can?t we just hide that result in the closet and say it doesn?t count? Because of each fighter?s style and because Joe?s style played right into Marciano?s hands. Because Marciano might just have knocked out Louis at any time in Joe?s career.
Editor
James P. Dawson (Jimmy Dawson to give him his more familiar name) was boxing editor of the New York Times from 1915 to his death in 1953. In 1951, shortly after Marciano?s knockout of Louis, Dawson wrote a very interesting and insightful article. The timing of the article is significant, because Dawson had no way of knowing whether Rocky will go on to further glory or simply prove to be a false alarm.
Dawson writes: ?The Marciano who pounded Joe Louis into unconsciousness would have done the same thing in Louis? first defense of the title. This is for sure. The record proves it. It is there for all to read. But all anybody read after the Madison Square Garden denouement was that Louis bowed to Old Age. A dangerous customer, to be sure, this Old Age thing. Sure, Louis? advanced years, for an athlete, had something to do with this latest ring drama. Joe?s reflexes aren?t as sharp, his movements aren?t as swift and light-footed, his punch lacks the accuracy of old, although it might have the steam. But to say this guy Old Age beat Louis is burying in anonymity the new ring sensation, Marciano.
?Marciano, whether you like him or not, inevitably must go on through a career which will end with him remembered with an approximation of nostalgic awe, respect and retrospective allure as Jack Dempsey. The Brockton strong boy, with his blockbuster punches, is what Dempsey was at a corresponding time in his career in a couple of very vital respects. First, he fights out of the Dempsey manner, out of a crouch, winging with a left hook. Second, Marciano has the savage, primitive, merciless style that is pitiless until a foe is prostrate. To minimize the fighting qualities with which Marciano crushed Louis will, on sober consideration, be recognized as an injustice to the Bay Stater. Indeed, even to couple old age and Marciano?s furious fighting style with excessive emphasis is taking something away from Marciano.?
Primarily, Jimmy Dawson insists, the downfall of Louis at the hands of Marciano was triggered by their respective styles, not Joe?s advancing years. ?The record is there to support this view. From the start of his career back in 1934, Louis never has been able to handle a crouching fighter. Nor could as wise, experienced and capable a ringman as Jack Blackburn ever equip Louis against this style, although he tried diligently.
?Louis was a young fellow in those days. He was bouncing along joyously on a career that shall always remain unparalleled for heavyweight title defenses. He had only to scowl from his corner to blow down the fellow in the opposite corner, so overwhelmingly complete was the awe in which he was held.
?But, Joe knew. Those around him knew. Louis could never do much with a fellow in a crouch who entertained no fear, had the will to fight and would go in against the Bomber doing just that.?
Back in the more recent days of 2012, writer Springs Toledo wrote an intriguing and intricate article on a fantasy fight between Marciano and Louis. Therein, Toledo speaks of Marciano?s much underestimated ?deep weave? that wasn?t simply employed to get under an opponent?s offense: ?It powered-up his own offense enough to send much larger men reeling backward. It?s a critical point. Before the opponent could recover either his wits or his balance, Marciano would be at his chest grinding away and throwing right hooks to the flank and left uppercuts to the sternum.
?Few men anywhere near his weight would have the strength to resist his low-centered power thrusts and fewer still would have the speed of foot to step back out of range, counter, and then spin off before he pinned them on the ropes.
?Joe Louis isn?t among them. He was not stronger than Marciano and his mobility was efficient, deliberate?and not fast enough. He was a thinking fighter who worked off the jab and tried to blast through the back of an opponent?s head. It made for a compelling spectacle when he was stalking opponents and closing the distance on his own terms, but Marciano would concede nothing. Marciano was too stingy a fighter to allow either room to punch or time to mull things over.?
Springs Toledo states another truism when he says: ?Boxing historians and fans watch clips of Louis?s knockouts, compelling spectacles all, and are rightfully astonished. Many are astonished enough to deny an odds-busting truth of boxing: Styles make fights. To be sure, Louis had the ability to handle almost any style.
?He could be counted on to overcome modern giants, flatten punchers, and, contrary to popular myth, search out and destroy mobile boxers. Louis had trouble with one style in particular and he knew it: ?I had a bad weakness I kept hid throughout my career. I didn?t like to be crowded, and Marciano always crowded his opponents. That?s why I say I could never have beaten him.? For a man who said Muhammad Ali would have been just another ?bum of the month,? this admission reveals much.
?Peak-for-peak, Rocky Marciano should be favored to defeat Joe Louis by late round stoppage.?
Assessment
Your writer is inclined to agree with that assessment, with Marciano surviving great punishment to knock out Louis late in the fight, possibly as late as the 14th or 15th round at the traditional world championship distance. But there is always a twist in the fight game, isn?t there? There has to be.
The twist to this little tale is that Joe Louis was the greater fighter of the two in an overall perspective. This is one of the reasons that boxing largely stands alone from other sports when we attempt to measure fighters from different eras. It is so much more than simply number crunching their stats and tossing them into a very clever computer. It is so much more than imagining a simple head-to-head confrontation based on styles and similar opponents.
?The record proves it,? wrote Jimmy Dawson in contending that Marciano would have beaten Louis at any time. But Louis? record is also there to prove his achievement, longevity and an undisputed championship reign that is now unlikely to be surpassed. That record still stands up all these years later and let?s not forget that a fair few of those so-called ?bums of the month? were very talented and dangerous men. The likes of Max Schmeling, Buddy Baer, Tommy Farr, Tony Galento and Arturo Godoy would not be out of their depth as major league contenders in any era. People gasped and cried out in shock when Joe got knocked out by Rocky because, even after the Charles defeat, they couldn?t believe that the great Bomber could be emphatically smashed.
And so Rocky Marciano beats Joe Louis. Then again, no he doesn?t. Only in the field of boxing do such glorious contradictions come by the score.
