Is Jersey Joe Walcott an ATG?

Yes of course.

Everything has context. The guy has losses because he took fights at the last minute, he took fights when he hadn't eaten, he never got the benefit of decisions (he beat Louis...sorry) and he even might have thrown a couple.

Wins:

CharlesX2
Harold Johnson
Joey MaximX2
Elmer Ray
Jimmy Bivins
Lee Q. Murray

And, as we carefully derived, 70% of press thought he beat Louis.

Guy is not great...he's super great!

 

Sorry Seamus I know your newspaper people think otherwise… but sadly a journeyman doesn’t win the title or have the respect of Toney, Ali, Miller and McGirt.

 

Name me another guy who was ,500 in his supposed prime who gets that sort of displaced accolades. Form does not beat function. He was imminently bearable

 

How do you rank Ezzard Charles at heavyweight?

 

Tellin' you.

 

You know the circumstances too well Seamus stop it, you know why, you just keep saying it badly on purpose mister - he was a getting by fighter, he was a journeyman sorta guy, he got better management and had more of a chance he had mixed results at the highest level but he still ended up cleaning out the top ten and a majority of folks said he beat Louis, Louis thought he beat Louis - he ain’t an “ATG” no, he was a guy who built his style around surviving (in an out of the ring) and probably had to learn to punch back lol because YES he was a journeyman but that all changes when you start regularly beating contenders and win the title give him his flowers, he wasn’t a journeyman with the belt around his waist nor when he cleaned up the top ten… Buddy McGirt, Bill Miller, James Toney and Muhammad Ali all disagree with your newspaper clippings to quote McGirt…“Is it possible to put into words how much you learnt from Jersey Joe Walcott” - Nah, I still watch tapes of him today and I get chills because fighters today don’t know what they’re looking at.”

 

ATG - No

Went 0-2 against Marciano including a first round KO loss in rematch

Lost in his first two attempts against Ezzard Charles before winning. Many guys don’t even get a 3rd shot if they lose the first two times.

Has a debatable loss against a pretty faded Joe Louis gets a deserved rematch and gets knocked out.

Take a guy like Hasim Rahman that crushed Lennox Lewis with a single punch a far more decisive win than a SD loss to Joe Louis and he like Walcott got knocked out in rematch yet their is a constant push to promote Walcott as an ATG.

Walcott was very good- journeyman is way too harsh but he’s closer to Jerry Quarry level than Joe Louis material.

 

Walcott's bag of tricks is super under appreciated. He didn't have many physical gifts but he was pretty tricky and it's not by any coincidence Ali reflects Walcott more than any other fighter. Corkscrew came from Kid but the feet and shoulder work are all from Joe's bag of tricks. Throw in LaStarza's defense for Marciano and you've the rope-a-dope. Dude grew up watching these cats and obviously agrees with the idea Walcott's tricks on a man with more speed is a killer.

I think his technical prowess makes him an ATG regardless of resume.

 

Great post, Pat. I doff my hat in concession to you.

 

He was a .500 fighter, a journey man from 1946-1953, his great run of success. Being a journeyman does not make you an ATG other than an ATG journeyman. Commentators of his days saw him for what he was, an old dude who waited out for repeated shots at a division that was receding in talent.

People fetishize over a few cute dance moves as if he were unlocking the key to some lost art, and then extrapolate that interpretation to his entire legacy, which was Braddock-esque at best. He was a great story, a humble, hard-working guy who showed true perseverance. But if your bar is so low as to allow him the status of ATG, then there are dozens if not hundreds of fighters who need to be given the same consideration, thus making the moniker useless.

 

Walcott isn't an ATG. No how, no way. His resume is too thin and too riddled with asterisks on top of having far too many losses to thoroughly average opposition. People only believe he's an ATG because he has a compelling story and funky feet for a guy his size.

 

I actually agree with all of this besides calling him a journeyman, he got a lot of chances at the title yep, he was an old dude who got his because the talent was as you say receding yep - he did wait it out absolutely! and people do overrate him for his “wasted motion” (people do the same with Ali, Pep Locche and others) but the rest of the time he fought, he fought like a pro and easily displayable is just how much smarter he was then guys like AJ, Usyk, Dubious etc if any of them had his sense they’d never lose… but he got there by surviving something we don’t see much in an age of even fixed sparring ffs - now Walcott ain’t an ATG he was just very good to me - he was a journeyman in the way everyone was a prospect he cleaned out the top ten and won the title the “journey” is over he got there can you just give the fella his flowers and say something else negative sir? like “One of the weakest HW champions” because saying “Journeyman” is just factually wrong from my understanding of the term.

 

San Francisco Chronicle, 11/30/47
"As a journeyman fighter (Walcott) who wants to stay in the business, he has learned to protect himself, even at the cost of displeasing the crowd."

Washington Evening Star, 12/6/47
"Joe Louis... today is wearing a tarnished crown which belongs on the fuzzy semibald head of Jersey Joe Walcott, 34-year old journeyman heavyweight and ebony-hued father of six children."

Plain Dealer 6/23/48
"(Walcott) only lately come to be recognized as a fair journeyman operator after 17 years of ring warfare."

Washington Evening Star 12/8/49
"Walcott doesn't have youth. He's older than Louis. Jersey Joe lacks the vicious, killing instinct which lifted Dempsey to the peak of popularity... He is, in short, a plodding journeyman heavyweight who had his night."

Burton Hawkins, Buffalo News, 7/30/48
(Walcott) He's a moderately talented, but extremely cautious- a 34-year old journeyman heavyweight who finds himself squarely in the championship picture strictly due to the mediocrity of his competition."

Milwaukee Journal, 6/22/48
"For Walcott is strictly a second rater, a journeyman boxer working at a trade."

Richmond Times Dispatch, 3/5/50
"The heavyweights are such a poor lot that a journeyman fighter (Walcott), who once quit the ring but came back to fight regularly, can make the No. 7 heavyweight look like a novice amateur scrapper."

Oregon Journal, 7/20/51
"His is a story- which for sheer drama- rivals that of another old man, Jim Braddock. The both hail from New Jersey and each was a journeyman for years without ever getting past first base in their race for fame and fortune."

Commercial Appeal, Memphis, 6/5/52
"Though he's an effective journeyman artilleryist, Walcott's style places heavy demands upon his legs as he jibs about in the manner of barefooted man on a sun-blasted tin roof."

 

SKILLED, Fit, Technical, Cagey and Willing, this IS what Boxing used to look like, yes even at Heavyweight... and Jersey Joe employed that better than most.

not at all like 'most' S-HW's - grabbing, holding, puffing and spoiling, with limited skill and very little heart and a lot of hype...

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That is exactly my opinion of Jersey Joe Walcott. He was a very good Heavyweight, but not quite an all-time great. He beat Ezzard Charles twice (but also lost twice to Charles), gave a still pretty good Joe Louis two tough fights (losing efforts), and did well against Rocky Marciano (losing effort) in their first encounter in spite of a major stylistic disadvantage going in.