Heavyweight Title Fights at Madison Square Garden

This is much harder to find than I thought it would be but I will keep looking.

 

Which Building? The have been three of them. Following this thread.

 

Joe Louis fought several matches at MSG.

Filmed matches vs. Joe Walcott, Abe Simon, Buddy Bear, Jonny Paycheck , Auto Godoy, and Nathan Mann to name six.

 

Definitely something fishy about MSG, although not a title fight light hitting Cunningham knocked Fury down in their 2013 bout.

That's also where the infamous draw happened against Lewis vs Holyfield. Also where Lewis knocked out Michael Grant.

 

You can say that again. Fixed fights happened there, including the filed LaMotta vs Fox. Jake says he threw it. He was in yet another filmed match, I forget vs who but it went to a decision and Jake threw it. It's on film. Big time gambling problems happened at the garden in the 1930's, 1940's not to mention some questionable decisions. Personally I think Max Baer tanked his fight vs Jimmy Braddock at filmed at MSG and the gamblers in the know cleaned up on it, being 10-1 against. And a some questionable decisions and scoring in Joe Louis matches took place there too.

The Garden had some moments where fan fighting happened and some great fights took place there too! It's a boxing building for sure.

 

Philly, that actually wasn't MSG, but the MSG owned Long Island Bowl. It had a bit of a hex on it for defending champs as I recall.

 

Most of the fights there are in the small theater now like Jacobs--Dereveychenko and Teofimo--Kambosos.

 

An interesting fact that I heard the other day on an interview with Bonecrusher Smith is that when he won his title against Witherspoon, it was the first time (and perhaps only time??? Have to think on that one) that a heavyweight champion lost his title at the Garden.

I can’t recall off the top of my head, have any heavyweight champs lost their title at the Garden since?

 

Bingo! How could I forget? Haha. Thank you sir.

 

I remember Muhammad Ali vs Zora Folley on March 22 1967, Ali by KO 7. And Joe Frazier vs Buster Mathis on March 4 1968, Frazier by TKO 11 for the vacant 5 State World Heavyweight Title. And of course, The Fight Of The Century on March 8 1971, when Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier defended against challenger Muhammad Ali, Frazier retained by unanimous 15 round decision.

 

A bit to my surprise, Floyd Patterson’s only heavyweight title fight at MSG appears to be his second fight with Ali.

He had title fights at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds as champ.