[RING, April 1952] Marciano Loses Prestige in Stopping Lee Savold

"Marciano Loses Prestige in Stopping Lee Savold," by Jersey Jones (p.27)

A large hunk of prestige was chipped from Rocky Marciano’s stature as an outstanding contender for the world heavyweight championship when the well-bally-hooed Brockton slugger was unable to knock a feeble, fightless, 35-year-old Lee Savold off his feet even once during the six rounds their affair lasted in Philadelphia’s Convention Hall. It was physical exhaustion that finally forced Savold to retire in his corner before the start of the seventh. The tired old veteran, his features a mass of cuts and bruises, could go on no longer. The Commission called it a seven-round knockout, though the bout was halted immediately following the sounding of the gong ending the sixth round.

Supposedly a dynamic puncher, with a previous record of 33 knockouts in 38 winning fights, Marciano showed himself against Savold to be little more than a willing but crude, cumbersome mauler. He threw everything he had at an opponent who never—or hardly ever—made an effort to fight back, yet at no time did Savold appear on the verge of toppling until weariness finally overtook him.

Apparently all the bout meant to Savold was another, and probably his last, payday in the ring. Puffed up to a soft, flabby 200 pounds, slowed down to a walk that was more of a creep, Lee had nothing to offer in the way of opposition. He was on the defensive from the start, and during the entire affair didn’t throw more than a half-dozen faint-hearted punches. Yet at times his bobbing and weaving made Marciano look like a clumsy novice.

In the sixth round, Rocky missed a right swing so completely that he landed on his face on the canvas. Ringsiders could not help speculating on what probably would have happened to Marciano had he been in with the fast, shifty, sharp-shooting Savold of other days.

The Pennsylvania Commission officially declared the result a seven-round knockout, but in The Ring Record Book, it will be recorded as a K.O. in the sixth, because no bell had sounded for the seventh round.

The bout was a financial as well as an artistic disappointment to Promoter Herman A. Taylor and his collaborators, the International Boxing Club. The expected $90,000 gate failed to materialize, the gross figures reaching $61,386, contributed by 9,243 customers. The television revenue was reported to be $35,000.

 

Was Jones too harsh?

 

Interesting--I don't think I've heard the flu story before. Do you happen to know when/where it first appeared?

 

I think Jones was just surprised that a man rumored to have extraordinary one-punch-knockout power failed to knock an old, bloated, listless Savold off his feet after battering him with fully-loaded punches for many rounds.