do you give Joey Maxim credit for stopping Ray Robinson

Maxim won the fight.
If Robinson was better he'd have been able to endure the heat or adjust his strategy to cope with the heat.
But he didn't, he couldn't. He wasnt good enough on the night. And that's that.
You win some, you lose some ... even when you're Sugar Ray.

 

The point is Maxim couldn't have won a decision on the OFFICIAL cards,which casts a huge doubt over the claim that he planned to come on late and rely on stopping the previously unstoppable Robinson.

 

How can you not? Ray was winning but Maxim was in the heat also. It does sound like Robinson would have won had the heat not been an issue, but that is part of any event other factors. Hearns breaking his hand against Hagler. Pryor and the one I mixed. Either way, Maxim won.

 

It was, as I said before, a legitimate win, Maxim won within the rules and he definitely deserves credit for showing remarkable stamina in such extreme conditions.
But as it was so hot that the referee had to be replaced, Robinson was never in trouble from anything other than heat exhaustion and had an unassailable points lead then I don’t see how anyone can conclude that his defeat was not a result of the heat.
It’s so obvious that I’m not sure how there can even be a debate about it.
It’s a bit like debating whether the tortoise might still have beaten the hare if the hare hadn’t taken a nap.

 

I stopped reading after I saw you gave Maxim the first round...

 

"debating whether the tortoise might still have beaten the hare if the hare hadn't taken a nap."

Which was fiction. In a real event, we have to judge what the real decisive factors were and compare it to other real world events.

Fleischer mentions that as referee of the Jaffra-Armstrong bout in 1940, it was so hot that he removed his sweat soaked shirt and carried on with a bare torso. A woman spectator later called him out for refereeing in front of her bare chested. Fleischer comments that he restrained himself from mentioning that he also wanted to take off his trousers.

"it was so hot the referee had to be replaced"

Well, it was hot. But as I posted, and Daniel mentioned in his article, both common sense and off testimony from folks who went back years, it was not uniquely hot. There are a lot of heat waves and it is hard to buy it would have been hotter outside under the night sky then it must have often been inside crowded arenas with no air conditioning. As for Ruby Goldstein, we don't know what kind of shape he was in to begin with. The commentator on the film points out that Goldstein's style of refereeing included circling rapidly around the fighters, so this middle-aged man was moving more than the fighters. It might not have been quite as hot in Havana in 1915, but it seems to have been hot, with the referee lasting all 26 rounds, although it doesn't look to me like that ref was in something like Olympic level shape.

And in a lot of "hot" fights throughout history, fighters endured over more rounds and a longer period of time than Robinson managed.

I would like more focus on why exactly Robinson couldn't last.

 

I've said everything that I have to say on this but I will repeat one more thing.

The reason why Robinson didn't last is the same reason why the referee had to be replaced and several spectators passed out.

It's a four letter word starting with a 'h' and ending in a 't' with two vowels in between.

It doesn't require any more focus than that.

 

"Maxim couldn't have won a decision on the OFFICIAL cards"

Yes, but did Maxim or his corner know that. I think the fight was closer than the official scorecards, but you can legitimately rebut by pointing out that observers like Fleischer (who often judged fights) had it even more one-sided, seeing Robinson pitching a shutout through the first 11 rounds.

"he planned to come on late"

He did pick up his offense some in the 12th, and quite a lot in the 13th. Maxim landed quite a few "power" punches in the 13th. He hadn't earlier. Whether from the heat or whatever, Robinson at this point wasn't able to handle them well and falls apart when hit. He was staggering about the ring after Maxim's last inside right with his corner men having to come and get him.

I think it very legit to ask why Maxim didn't pick up the pace a few rounds earlier. He was almost somnolent from the 8th through the 11th. Robinson wasn't doing all that much more while retreating and jabbing to the body.

 

Great point.

And Maxim, being the bigger man, had to conserve himself even more in heat. He was insistent after the fight that he would have stopped Ray earlier had it not been so hot.

Ray likely felt the pressure of the larger man, which in combination with the heat, made him go for broke. Unfortunately, his reach exceeded his grasp.

 

I must say in fairness to Dan Daniel, he did not mention the Jeffries-Sharkey fight in his article. Any criticism of bringing up that fight should be directed at me and only me as the proper target.

"In how many of those fights was one man 15.5 lbs. the heavier?"

Okay. But Sharkey did go 25 rounds with Jeffries under the lights despite a 32 lb. weight disadvantage. The length of the fight and the stamina showed is why I brought it up.

"In how many was the referee unable to continue?"

This still begs the issue of why this night was so uniquely hot and why the heat didn't finish Maxim. It might be interesting to know how often a referee is actually replaced in a fight. That they keep extra refs on hand seems to indicate it does happen.

Nat Fleischer, who had Robinson dominating, mentioned in his article that he been at fights in which it was just as hot w/o a fighter collapsing and commented on removing his shirt while refereeing because it was soaked. He was strongly critical of Robinson for not properly pacing himself.

I guess another question is why was Fleischer able to referee 15 rounds under torrid conditions while Goldstein was only able to last 10 rounds, although several years younger than Fleischer was?

 

Heat exhaustion and stroke are common conditions, suffered in sporting competition. It doesn't need to be uniquely hot for it to occur.

 

Where this could be heading is a premise that Robinson was simply more susceptible to extreme heat and so it was going to effect him more. The problem is that there is no way of telling that. We can't tell if it was Maxim's body punches, Robinson dragging Maxim about in the clinches, Robinson setting too fast a pace,

or Robinson simply being physically more vulnerable to heat.

So I think it a moot point.

 

While I don't agree with the entirety of your post I find you the most "even-handed " poster on here and,as such I give your input the respect it warrants. Excellent response!

 

We know that:

- when Robinson fought Maxim, it was an extremely hot day.
- Robinson had never been stopped before.
- Robinson would never be stopped again (even at an advanced age).
- Maxim was not renowned for his power.
- Maxim had been taken the distance by opponents that he'd outweighed significantly, before.
- Robinson was winning the fight by a wide margin on the cards, at the time he retired.

I think it fair to say that the result of the fight is an anomaly in Robinson's record and, when I combine the above with what I've watched happen in the fight, I think it's reasonable to suggest that heat was the most significant fact or Robinson losing. However, I'd agree with anyone, who thought Robinson had not marshaled his energy very well. He didn't, in my opinion; especially, in view of the extreme temperatures.

He had put too much effort into the first two-thirds of the bout and essentially handed Maxim the victory, in the latter third. But, Maxim deserves credit for holding up under the same conditions and, if the objective of the game had been to do as little as possible, in order to conserve energy, he'd have been up on the cards, by the end of it, as well.

 

Why did Maxim have to conserve himself more, was he pushing and pulling a man 15,5lbs heavier as Robinson was?