Did Fulton KD Willard?

The newspaper archives I have online access to (from Russia) don't have Rochester (MN) newspapers. So the question can only be answered by somebody who lives in USA and who is ready to go to library and request Rochester newspapers dated May 15, 1915.
Assumption that if a manager claimed something favorable about his boxer it is always an exaggeration/distortion or a lie, is a logical fallacy.

 

No one has suggested it is always an exaggeration/distortion,just that, in the absence of corroborative testimony, the likely hood of it being true in this case is fairly remote.

 

And I never said I believed in that story, to be obliged to provide the evidence to back it up. If it did happen it could have been slippery ring or Willard losing balance or something which the manager exaggerated to be a KD from a punch. Only local sources could tell. If the exhibition had taken place at all, which we don't know.

 

Sorry Senya but in the absence of any factual evidence a story like this must remain squarely in the fictional realm. The burden of proof isnt on me its on the guy playing devils advocate. I dont have to provide evidence that something didnt happen when there is no evidence that it did beyond the word of a very biased source. My argument is much less a logical fallacy than pretending that because SOME of Dempsey's and Sullivan's exhibitions MAY not have been covered by national press and that during those possible exhibitions they MAY have been knocked this somehow gives credence to Mike Collins' story that Willard MIGHT have sparred Fred Fulton in May 1915 and MIGHT have gotten knocked down and for some reason NOBODY beyond Fulton's manager thought it newsworthy enough to write it down.

 

Without checking primary sources a historian can't conclude it didn't happen. Beliefs that a manager is prone to exaggerations/lies or that some non-local newspapers would report it if something significant had taken place, can't be used as proof, they are speculations/assumptions. I can just as well speculate that it could be something questionable, not a clean KD, in which case one couldn't depend on non-local sources to report it. Not to mention even primary sources could disagree, such as the case with that knockdown of Tunney by Leo Houck at Jersey City, which was mentioned by Jersey Journal, but not by others. Or some sources reporting Packey McFarland being knocked down by Eddie Murphy at Kenosha, while other reporters didn't see no KD.

 

Viewing the film is the only way to really know.

 

Is the Dempsey-Fulton film available? Anyway It's not on YouTube.

 

"Fulton, like Willard, had been born in Kansas and stood 6 feet 4 1/2 inches. He was lighter than Willard and weighed about 220, but he actually had a longer reach by 1 1/2 inches than the champion. Fulton had already fought Luther McCarty and now was trying to get a name, so challenging the champion was a great idea.

Willard agreed to the exhibiton, and in the second round of the three-round bout, Fulton caught Willard with a blow on the jaw, knocking the champion flat on his back. This was something that no one else had been able to do, and it gave Fulton an immediate boost of confidence. As a result of this punch, Fulton began to camp on Willard's trail and repeatedly sought championship bouts."

This is from the new Jess Willard book.

The source that they cite:

"Jess's Trainer is Interviewed" The (Rochester MN) Daily Post and Record May 14, 1915,
p. 5 "As We Heard It,"
p. 8 "Victory is Expected,"

The Daily Post and Record June 2, 1915
p. 2 Anne Beiser Allen, "Fred Fulton, The Rochester Plasterer,"

Minnesota History (Summer, 2004) pp. 77-87


My formatting is probably crap. For that, I apologize.

Apparently, all three of these sources are specifically for this Fulton incident.

It would be really helpful to read those sources.
But if you as me, common sense says it most likely happened.

My reasoning? If the claim was false, I don't think it would've survived peer scrutiny from people in the boxing scene, especially and including Willard himself.

Do we know of anyone denying this claim of the knockdown?

 

A couple of articles about this - neither of which are definitive proof that it happened.

This one is the text of the affidavit which Fulton hoped to use to get a shot at Willard's title:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1915-07-18/ed-1/seq-14/

This is Fulton's own account from 1918. He doesn't claim that Willard was badly hurt:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85049554/1918-04-10/ed-1/seq-7/

 

Six boxing men said they saw Champion Corbett knock-down Jeffries in sparring. Either way it isn't that important, imo. Travis Walker and Raphael Butler supposedly dropped Vitali Klitschko in sparring and we know Toxie Hall dropped Marciano