The Best of the Rest: 160lbs Tier II Tournie - Round 1 - Fight 3: Billy Papke KO13 Jermain Taylor

What i've done is i've lifted top tiers out of my top fifty at the poundage and organised them into a seeded tournament to uncover "the best of the rest" at the poundage, with you, the denizens of the world's greatest boxing history forum, casting the deciding vote. The difference between this middleweight tournament and the equivalent at 175lbs is that I've left ALL the guys with no footage in this time. I understand that makes things difficult and for some, frustrating but there are just far too many excellent and intriguing fighters from middleweight history. I understand this makes making a pick very hard, but i hope you'll still place a vote and make a post because obviously without your input the whole thing becomes meaningless.

Pick your man! Write however many details you like or don't in a post below. But maybe try to post, to keep things moving a little bit. You have three days.

And let's be nice. No reason for disagreeing over total fantasies after all!

15 rounds, 1950s rules and ref. Ten points must. Weigh in is 18 hours before the fight.

I'll only vote if it's tied, then I'll decide the result.

Round of Thirty-Two Fight 3: Jermain Taylor Vs Billy Papke

JERMAIN TAYLOR (33-4-1)

Here is a sobering fact: before Jermain Taylor was matched with the godfather of the middleweight division, Bernard Hopkins, he defeated just a single ranked contender, William Joppy, who had dropped a wide decision to the champion a year earlier. Joppy was legitimately ranked, but the inside-line was that he had become damaged goods, an older fight who had suffered serious beatings at the hands of Hopkins, and earlier, Felix Trinidad. The veteran was surprisingly lively however, not that it spared him as Taylor romped home without losing a single minute of a single round. Almost as a unit the boxing media closed ranks around Taylor and insisted that a star has been born. The only problem was the tactical genius that sat atop the division.

Taylor seemed genuinely assured of his chances against Hopkins and he had three aces to back his bullish confidence: size, speed and power. Overcoming all three of these disadvantages is all but impossible, but Hopkins has made a career out of overcoming the impossible and the fight that resulted was a tension-soaked affair that first saw Taylor dominate and then began to ebb steadily towards the old master. At first the Hopkins plan had looked anemic; walk Taylor around the ring and into a right hand. But as the rounds trickled by the champion inched closer while offering Taylor the same virtual threat as a counter and Taylor had been hooked. Hopkins won the ninth through the 12th rounds on most cards. It was enough to earn him a draw on my card, but Taylor took a split decision via the officials. Spared, I think, by his organized footwork more than any other single attribute, Taylor had edged across the line.

He edged across the line, too, in the rematch, a fight I also scored a draw and a fight where each of the officials saw it 115-113, making Jermain Taylor a two-time victor over Bernard Hopkins. Taylor not only defeated a great incumbent champion, but also successfully defended that title on four separate occasions. Deposed by Kelly Pavlik in 2009 for his only loss at the weight, Taylor added to resume taking out ranked contender Sam Soliman to pick up a strap years after he had been written off by many.

BILLY PAPKE (37-11-5; Newspaper Decisions 3-6-1)
Billy Papke had to shoot himself in the heart three times to end his torrid life on Thanksgiving Day 1936, finally succumbing to the terrible disarray of his personal life. Once upon a time, he had boxed with a savagery fitting of the man he would become, the man who would slay his ex-wife before taking his own life, a man so brutal that he was able to take the great Stanley Ketchel apart at the seams so completely that some wondered if he would ever be put back together again.

Ketchel had already defeated Papke once in a torrid ten rounds in April of 1908; the litany of excuses he laid at the door of pressmen as he relentlessly pursued a rematch is typical of those adopted by a fighter. Ketchel meanwhile was standing on tiptoe and peering past his seething nemesis at the world heavyweight champion. Papke saw his chance, and if it was borne, as the legend holds, of a smash to Ketchel’s throat before the bell was rung, this is not reflected in any of the ringside reports I have seen. Instead these reports describe a fighter possessed in out-fighting, out-slugging, and, yes, out-boxing the ultimate furnace-bound middleweight Stanley Ketchel. Ketchel dominated their series 3-1, but Papke tore a primed Ketchel into punch sized pieces in their second encounter to become the middleweight champion of the world.

He was not given the opportunity to make any successful defences as a rampant Ketchel vanished into the desert and re-emerged to exact a terrible revenge just months later and, I suspect, broke Papke in the way some thought Papke had broken him. But he still did some good work, beating the likes of Willie Lewis, out of New York and sporting an excellent record when Papke blasted him out in just three; Joe Thomas, who held a newspaper decision over Frank Klaus, but who Papke stopped in the sixteenth round of a savage encounter in 1910; the excellent Dave Smith, who was unbeaten and would go on to defeat Battling Levinksy and Jimmy Clabby; an easy decision over former pound-for-pounder Jack “Twin Sullivan”, and many other worthies. He also went unbeaten in a four fight series with Hugo Kelly, and for all that he is defined by his other four fight series with Ketchel, achieved a superb resume.

 

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Couple of picks for Taylor KO here. I'm surprised. Papke was stopped just once by one of the most savage beatings of the most savage era of gloved boxing. He also, whatever his limitations, had a colossal punch - 31 stoppages in 37 victories weighing between 154 and 165.

I guess the guys picking Taylor to stop Papke are saying "boxing has advanced" which I actually find to be fair enough as an argument even where no style or legacy advantage exists. But i'd point out, too, that Taylor didn't generally look great in the championship rounds, and here there are five of them.

 

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I think, frankly, that's sensible.

The way I see it is either Taylor is so much better than Papke because boxers have evolved and so takes him out or Taylor gets knocked out himself. But there is no way Taylor fights at Papke's pace for 15 rounds.

As I see it.