Was Louis vs Walcott 1 a Robbery??? Analyzing the Scorecards

I present this as a bit of trivia rather than proof of anything. In his post-mortem on the Ali-Chuvalo fight nearly 20 years later, Louis randomly drops in the observation that "I learned a long time ago not to question the decision. I lost to Jersey Joe Walcott in 1947 and they gave it to me."

https://ibb.co/1rb3Xz9

 

"How It Was" with its "Happy Days are Here Again" theme was hosted by my favorite sportscaster, Curt Gowdy, and had several excellent boxing episodes. With Louis-Galento, Gowdy asked a hairpiece wearning Two-Ton about his practice of using elbow pads for striking during sparring. With Ingo, Patterson talked about how he walked away from Johansson in their first bout after the opening knockdown because Floyd thought Ruby Goldstein was counting over the Swede, so Floyd was heading to the neutral corner!

Zale was quiet and smiling as Graziano enthused about Tony (not surprising since Rocky was the experienced television star, while the Man of Steel seemed kind of shy) and after reviewing the Valentine's Day Massacre, LaMotta talked about moving that fraction of an inch Chuvalo also described to reduce the impact of a shot. (Jake also described putting himself into a "He can't hurt me" form of "self hypnosis" also affirming that SRR was indeed the greatest fighter of all time, and Robby laughed off Gowdy's question about going after the HW Title if he'd defeated Maxim, when he turned to LaMotta and specifically mentioned what a lethal puncher Satterfield was. It's been decades since I've seen it, but I recall Jake making his diabetes comment and how Ray was a best man of his.

Good programs worth viewing if you find them.

There was also a sports related game show where in one episode, the panelists were, from left to right, Norton, Ali and Moore, after Ali-Norton I & II, and I believe before Foreman-Norton and Ali-Frazier II. (Archie was very astute, and correctly guessed the mystery answer to one sports star as Elgin Baylor. Moore was whispering into Ali's cocked ear immediately before giving his answer. On another program, Joe Louis was the mystery guest, baseball legend Ted Williams was a panelist, and as that show went off the air, Williams was talking and gesturing to Louis at it ended. (The Bomber was asked who his toughest opponent was by the host, laughed and answered, "Uh, Uncle Sam!" As a kid, I enjoyed these programs.)

 

Joe Louis vs Jersey Joe Walcott, I & II - YouTube

 

60-40 paints a much different picture to 70-30 though. In any case, the crowd doesn't determine who won, Louis had his Witherspoon moment and got a clutch decision win.

Sure, doesn't make them robberies though. I already stated in my post that these guys were dead even on rounds where all three judges were in agreement for who won, and then there were several even rounds that swang both ways and Louis ended up getting an extra one of those even rounds in his favor. Walcott could've easily been declared the winner instead, or the fight could've been called a Draw. It was a super close fight and Louis made the right call and gave Walcott his immediate rematch 6 months later.

 

Watch the fight with your own two eyes

Walcott baffles Louis, outboxes him, outfoxes him, out jabs him, and knocks him down twice.

Louis tries to leave the ring before the decision is announced. Says it all!

highway robbery

rematch, that final combination a 34 year old Louis put together was the great finish from a fighter I have ever seen

 

Good luck to you. This is settled history, and a few of you have a misguided attempt to change it through whatever bizarre mental gymnastics you can think of.

 

Of course you don't. But you have opinions on lots of other fights you haven't seen. Johnson-Hart, for example.

70% picked Walcott, and it is obvious he dissevered the verdict.

 

I don't think a decision that 1 out of 3 or even 1 out of 4 people agree w/ is a threshold for an outright robbery. That sounds more like a debated decision w/ sizable support for more than 1 way of seeing the outcome, like Leonard-Hagler.

An outright robbery should have little-to-no discernable support for it, like Lewis-Holyfield 1.

 

I would disagree, especially when the guy receiving it is Joe Louis.

 

You could just as well question the objectivity of people who are swayed by a sympathetic underdog putting on a far better-than-expected performance.

 

Sure, send me the link. I only have 15 minutes of grainy high exposure footage on youtube. If you expect me to believe that you can make a judgement on a 45 minute fight based on that, I'd say you're pulling my leg.
Chop Norton-Ali (1-3), Norton-Holmes, Charles-Rocky 1, Ali-Frazier 1, Patterson-Quarry 1-2 down to 30% of the full fight and go make a scorecard, it's the same thing you're asking me to do with Walcott-Louis 1. Close fights are hard enough to score with the full fight available, take 70% away and it's complete mess. All three judging officials (ref&judges) had the fight close, most reporters at rignside had it super close no matter who they gave it to, but you're going to call it a robbery despite never having actually seen the bout.

Again, what you see based on a few minutes of highlights. According to many at ringside Louis landed more punches, go figure.

What Louis thought doesn't affect what the judges scored. Even if he thought he lost (which we have conflicted evidence for, multiple sources where he claims he won, right after the fight and decades later, and other sources where he claims he lost) it doesn't mean that he couldn't have clutched a decision win but let himself down in doing so. Ali famously said Norton beat him in their third fight, is it a robbery then?

Until you can actually prove it, I'll stick to what I wrote in my post.

At least you got one thing right.

 

You haven't provided any evidence to support your claim but it's "settled history", lol.
Point to me what part of my post is mental gymnastics. I even used criteria to give Walcott a better chance to sway the score to his favor.

So you are making the claim after all, are you going to show me how Forbes and Monroe were biased in favor of Louis or are you just going to pull a statement out your ass, get called on it and ignore the counter points again?
Forbes giving Louis the worst score in the Charles fight and Monroe giving him the worst in the Conn fight goes to show how biased they were towards him. Astounding logic.

 

In what available footage exists, I don't see either fighter being in outright command except for the isolated moments that Walcott drops Louis. Louis does some good work w/ his jab during the stretches that Walcott is just backtracking & shuffling w/o actually letting his hands go.

 

Louis also threw a couple of right hands and seemed to have gotten more blows in, some of Walcott's missed or landed on the gloves.
But you see the point of this post, the fight can't be used to score the fight. Round 3 is 47 seconds long, and based on that you and me come with different conclusions. Now apply that to every round and you see why 15 minutes of footage isn't reliable to score such a close fight.
Take the Usyk rematch with Joshua, cut out 70% of the fight and then give the 11 minutes of footage to a friend of yours to score the fight. I think you see where I'm going with this.

10:55

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If you want to know who I gave it to, it was scored W1 E0 W1 a by the officials. Seeing as neither of the fighters was given two or more points and that not all three judges were in agreement towards one fighter, I left it as Even until I got a draw result using the other rounds (6 - 6 - 3). Then it was up to this round and two other rounds to sway the fight, and given that two of the three voted for Walcott, I gave the 9th to him.

Sure I can, Louis was landing more jabs, even if Walcott was landing the occasional left or right he was still getting driven around the ring and jabbed in the face. Keep in mind that the jab is the punch that loses its impact the most on footage. It might not look like those jabs did much but Walcott was feeling them.
In any case, I am not going to argue that your scoring for these rounds is wrong, round 14 is 38 seconds long, 15 is 34s neither of us can make a definitive claim based on that, which is why I looked into the official scoring, to see if Walcott had more rounds where he had a points advantage for dominance and more rounds where the judges were all in agreement in voting for him.
The reason I made these my criteria is because if Louis won the fight by having two out of three judges on his side for most of the rounds that were given to him, then he would lose using my criteria because Walcott would end up having more rounds where all three judges voted for him and more rounds where he was given 2 or 3 points for dominance. Based on that, it ended up being a 6 - 6 - 3 Draw with the 3 even rounds swaying the result. You can call that a bad decision but there's no evidence to support the claim that it was some robbery that should've gone to Walcott by 10-5. Even the people at ringside who gave it to Walcott didn't score it like that (the majority of them at least).

 

My scorecard

1. Walcott
2. Walcott
3. Walcott
4. Walcott.
5. Walcott
6. Louis
7. Walcott
8. Walcott
9. Louis
10. Louis
11. Walcott.
12. Walcott.
13. Even
14. Walcott.
15. Walcott

Remember, most of if not all of these rounds are incomplete, so I am scoring this off of what I see here

Final score:

11rounds Walcott
3 Rounds Louis
1 Even

11-3-1 for Jersey Joe Walcott.