Art Donovan, was he at all partial to Joe Louis?

Not for the first time your character assassination does not seem to be going as planned. Not one poster agrees with you, and that's putting it mildly.

 

As Janitor has pointed out the burden of proof falls to you, the accuser.

 

Roxborough had been a numbers runner he had no" in "with gangsters no special advantages through connections.
Now if you want to talk about a guy who was " connected".
Here he is.

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Who was he? Jersey Joe Walcott's MANAGER!

Now get back to the 14 points that I have disproved.

 

This is ridiculous. First being a numbers runner does not mean you fixed Louis' fights.

Second Farr fought a good fight against Louis and was competitive but that doesnt mean he was robbed and it doesnt even mean that a card in which he was given only one round was criminal. Ive seen a bunch of fights that were competitive but that i gave the vast majority (even all) of the rounds to the victor. You can look good in a round, be competitive and still lose it and if that happens time and time again a lopsided scorecard in a competitive fight is not only possible but probably and forgiveable. We score fights on a rounds basis not on a whole.

Another point that was brought up above is Louis-Walcott 1. Less than half of that fight exists on film. It was heavily edited to make it more marketable (and more exciting). I have the complete radio broadcast of the fight and several things are evident which call into question the accepted narrative that Walcott was outright robbed: 1. Walcott ran A LOT. The announcers make constant mention of it and in the last couple of rounds Walcott ran out so much that it prompted one of the announcers to state that Walcott "put on the retreat from Moscow..." and later "ran all through that last round." In those days, more so than today, the burden was on the challenger to "take" the title and to many Walcott did not fulfill that obligation. Louis won the majority of the championship rounds on two of the cards. I personally feel that Walcott won a close fight but the idea that CLEARLY won is ridiculous. Even in the footage we have, which was edited to make the fight more exciting, watch Walcott's work in those close or slow rounds. A LOT of his punches are blocked or miss completely. With Louis missing many as well but the aggressor its not hard to see how judges could have given him the benefit of the doubt in that era. Another factor which may have influenced some into thinking Walcott did better than he actually did was that Louis was a heavy favorite going in (10 to 1) with most picking him to knockout Walcott early. The fact that Walcott scored two knockdowns and troubled Louis so much may have left many "looking the other way" in those rounds where his defense was befuddling Louis but where he wasnt really having much success offensively. Another factor ignored here by the idiot who claims the fight was fixed for Louis is that of the four possible points per round that can be awarded a fighter in New York system of scoring at the time Walcott won 37 points across all 3 cards, Louis 32. But the victor isnt necessarily awarded victory based on those points but on which factors the judges lean most heavily on. So if the fight was indeed fixed why would the judges be pointing to their crookedness by scoring that way? Indeed they were giving Walcott great credit for the closeness of the fight by their cards. James Dawson of the The New York Times (who I cant stand) scored the fight for Louis as did Dan Parker who is and was well known as a leading crusader against corruption in boxing scored it for Louis as well. Hardly the kind of guy to go along with the fix. John McNulty scored it 7 rounds for Walcott, 6 Louis, 2 even. Jack Cuddy's score matched McNulty's. Bill Corum, who covered the fight for both radio and INW, felt that Walcott threw the fight away by running. Lawton Carver of International Newswire gave Louis 7, Walcott 5, and 3 even. Leonard Cohen had it 8 Walcott, 6 Louis, 1 even (a 1 round swing for a draw). So this is hardly the criminal robbery its being painted.

Anyone who wants to pretend that a black numbers runner from Detroit had any pull with white Gangsters in New York needs to look at Felix Bocchicchio, Walcott's manager, who was indeed mob connected on the east coast... something Roxborough wasnt.

 

Seemed like the commentator in Louis vs Farr was British and therefore obviously focusing on what Farr was doing. He still commentates on Eurosport I believe.

Louis won based on those highlights.

 

"Donovan's score card in the Farr fight was outrageous"

I don't follow the logic that this proves Donovan was somehow in the tank to make certain Louis won.

Donovan had one vote, and only one vote, and that vote counts just the same if he scored the fight 8-7 or 9-6 as it does scoring the fight 13-1-1. To me, the one-sidedness of his scoring points to his vote being honest. If I were being paid off to give my vote to Louis, I certainly wouldn't call attention to myself by such a one-sided vote when all the extra rounds I give to Louis beyond the 8 needed don't mean a thing.

Donovan's vote actually didn't matter at all as the judges both scored for Louis.

As for the Godoy fight, the judges split, but Donovan voted the way the ringside press saw it.

 

Just on Donovan. I don't see it as much of a surprise that Donovan handled so many Louis fights. He was handling the big fights with Baer, Schmeling, Sharkey, and Carnera before Louis arrived on the scene. He was clearly the go to guy for the NYSAC from about 1933 to 1941 for big fights. Check other championship fights below heavyweight. Around 1941 the aging Donovan was far less frequently used. Of the six Louis defenses from the first Conn fight through 1946, Donovan worked only two. His only post-war championship fight was Louis-Mauriello. Louis-Conn II, Robinson-Bell, Zale-Graziano and other big fights were handled by other refs.

I have no knowledge about Donovan and the Walcott fight, but off the gross factual inaccuracies displayed on this topic and the frankly twisted logic, I would like to see the source about his "removal" from the Walcott fight, and especially the reasons given.

After all, not wanting Donovan as referee might mean nothing more than he had a tendency to score for aggression, something the Walcott camp would want to avoid. And if I were representing Walcott, I might well prefer a younger man than the 56 year old Donovan to be in charge, for considerations of the physical well-being of my fighter. Donovan probably wasn't as fast in reacting as he had been or as Goldstein was.

What undercuts your whole line of argument totally is that the referees were appointed by the NYSAC which in turn was appointed by the governors of New York, who during the period Donovan was a referee were Al Smith, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, and Thomas Dewey. Kind of a hard sell that these men were under the thumb of gangsters, or that they would appoint commissioners who were corrupt.

 

Its about Louis when you accuse him of fouling in two fights.
Its about Louis when you insinuate that he benefited from mob assistance.

You have previously given us your opinion of two of Louis's fights ,fights in which you say that though he received the verdict he did not win

.These are the first Walcott ,and the first Godoy fights. You have never seen a complete version of either fight yet you say both of them were robbed.
Can you actually conceive of how utterly ridiculous this makes your position?

 

And Donovan gave one more round to Godoy than did the other official who voted for Louis.:good

 

Excellent post!

 

Bocchicchio was an out and out hoodlum, no question.

But I don't quite understand how Roxborough and Black, (black men who were at least crooked or in the gambling racket), could have come to New York with Joe Louis, dominated/eliminated a whole slew of NY mob-connected fighters/managers, without giving up a piece of their fighter to 'the boys' .... unless of course they were part of the very shady mob themselves. It seems pretty obvious that the racketeers had a piece of just about every lucrative fighter in NY, or who came in. They took their slice.
For Joe Louis to establish himself in NY he took on some very well-known mob connected names. Those mob guys weren't stupid.