Educate me on Duilio Loi

Well, to start with, Duilio Loi is apparently the only world champion in boxing history with over 100 victories to never be knocked down or stopped. When he was past 30 years of age, he won two out of three against a peak Carlos Ortiz (dropping Ortiz multiple times in the process), and was the only champion to ever successfully defend a world title against Ortiz (in their rubber match). After drawing with, and and then losing his World Light Welterweight Title to potential Hall of Famer Eddie Perkins (in a match where he floored Perkins twice), Loi decisioned Perkins to regain his title in his final career match, to retire as champion. With the exception of a couple draws, he avenged all other blemishes on his record. He has been descibed as a miniature version of Jake LaMotta stylewise, with some sources identifying Loi as a southpaw.

His career statistics closely resemble those of Billy Graham (including over 100 victories with no knockdowns or stoppage defeats) except for two things. Loi won a world championship twice, and won his last match to retire as champion. Long overlooked for IBHOF induction, he was finally accepted in 2005. A very, very worthy Hall of Famer.

 

Is there no filmed fight footage of this man in existence?

 

2 min. of Loi vs Ray Famechon is the only one I heard to exist.

 

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Duodenum said almost everything, great post like everytime. Loi wasn´t a puncher, like the thread creator correctly wrote, but he had enough power to floor fighters with iron chins like Perkins, Ortiz, Smith, etc., he was very fast, very mobile, and threw great combinations, especially to the body. He had an iron chin, was never KD or hurt. His stamina was also great, he fought with a very high pace and threw very much punches from every angles. He avenged his 3 losses. He fought later in his career the bigger names, because no 135 lbs´er or 140 lbs´er wanted to risk something against this unknown fighter in his prime. And although he wasn´t peak or so, he won 2 fights out of 3 with the great Ortiz, who was in his prime (the 1st fight was a robbery, that´s why a rematch was made). He had so much heart, for example he had a serious car accident in 1956, and 2 days later he even though fought Fernandez to a draw for the EBU-title (some months later Loi won their 2nd fight), every other one would have called off/ remitted the fight...

 

There exist filmed fights, but they´re hard to get...

 

Given that just about every fight around the time of Ortiz's was being filmed, I find it hard to believe that some footage doesn't exist at least of their first encounter in the States.

Ortiz-Loi is one of the fights I would LOVE to see.

 

Yeah, I also heard that his bout with Flanagan is also on tape...

 

I never saw Loi in action. But he certainly must have been an excellent fighter. Anyone who can best the likes of Eddie Perkins and Carlos Ortiz in 2 out of 3 has to be something else.

 

Exactly, and let´s not forget he faced both, Perkins and Ortiz when they were in their prime, Loi himself on the other side had already over 100 fights, and wasn´t peak or so...

 

According to Chris Christensens autobiography his fight aginst Loi was shown on danish TV, I have never located it, so I beleive it is lost. I have a very short clip of his fight in Denmark against Jørgen Johansen. It is from a newsreel and the commentator states that Loi did nothing but run all night. Maybe the occation got to him.

Woller

 

Total bull****, Loi was an inside fighter who liked to trade punches, do you really believe he traveled to Denmark and ran all the time away from the feather-fisted Johansen?

 

Hi Luigi1985
I don´t know! I only have the info from the newsreel. I checked Jørgen Johansens Autobiography and he claims that it was one of his easiest fights ever. He was not the slightest tired after 15 rds. Newspaper clips says that Loi was terrible. "If he had run straight ahead instead of backwards he would have been in Italy long before the fight ended". Sorry - Loi was a great fighter, but obviously this was not his night. Only scoring by referee Eugene Henderson (UK)

Woller

 

What is his record against ranked fighters?