How the nation's sportswriters saw Louis-Walcott [1947]

I agree with all this.

 

I wish Joe Louis would've fought Jersey Joe Walcott for a third time in the fall of 1951, instead of Louis fighting Marciano.

Louis-Walcott III for the title would've been interesting.

Louis was on an eight-fight winning streak and was coming off a decision win over Jimmy Bivins that summer and Walcott had just upset Charles in Joe's fifth attempt at the title.

A trilogy would've been a nice cap on that matchup. Walcott took nearly a whole year off after finally beating Charles in '51. Too bad he didn't make his first defense against Louis that fall.

Oh well.

 

Sorting those scores to make them easier to digest

Hank O'Donnell, Waterbury Republican, Walcott, 12-2-1
Ted Meier, AP, Walcott, 11-3-1
Wilbur Wood, N.Y. Sun, Walcott, 11-4
John Carmichael, Chicago News, Walcott, 11-4
Lester Bromberg, New York World Telegram, Walcott 10-5
Murray Rose, AP, Walcott 9-5-1
Harry Grayson, NEA, Walcott, 8-4-3
Frank Eck, AP, Walcott 9-6
Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun, Walcott, 8-5-2
Sec Taylor, Des Moines Register, Walcott 8-6-1
George Barton, Minneapolis Tribune, Walcott 8-6-1
Al Abras, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Walcott 8-6-1
Elliott Cushing, Rochester Democrat-Chronicle, Walcott, 8-6-1
Lewis Burton, N.Y. Journal-American, Walcott 8-6-1
Bob Considine, INS, Walcott 8-7
Whitey Lewis, Cleveland News, Walcott, 8-7
Leo Peterson, UP, Walcott 7-6-2
Jack Cuddy, UP, Walcott, 7-6-2
Gordon Cobbledick, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Walcott 7-6-2
Hugh S. Fullerton, AP, Walcott. "He scored the harder punches" [no score provided]
Frank Graham, New York Journal American, Walcott [no score provided]
Ted Smits, AP, Walcott [no score provided]

Gerry Hern, Boston Post, draw 7-7-1

Tom Meany, PM, Louis, 9-6
Joe Gootter, Paterson Evening News, Louis 9-6
Dan Parker, N.Y. Daily Mirror, Louis, 9-6
Al Buck, N.Y. Post, Louis, 8-5-2
Cliff Keane, Boston Globe, Louis 8-5-2
Red Smith, N.Y. Herald Tribune, Louis 8-7
Jesse Abramson, N.Y. Herald Tribune, Louis 8-7
Joseph C. Nichols, N.Y. Times, Louis, 8-7
James Dawson, New York Times, Louis, 8-7
Joe Trimblee, New York News, Louis, 7-6-2
Jim Jennings, N.Y. Daily Mirror, Louis, 7-6-2

 

One observer who called it for Louis said "without Louis there would not have been a fight."

There was also a belief among some observers back then, that in order to take the champion's title, you had to "take it off him."

Trying to win a decision based upon defense was often dicey back then.

You could certainly say something like "based on the available evidence, giving the decision to Walcott, would have been less problematic than giving it to Louis."

Then a gain there is often a trend to identify with the underdog when he looses a controversial decision.

I would be very interested to see the reaction if the decision had been given to Walcott.

Of course I am not saying that the 1/3 who favored Louis are more important than the 2/3 who didn't.

I am saying that they are still not to be ignored.

I would also say that worse has generated less controversy.

There was one poll of sports writers after Canelo Golovkin II, where nobody favored Canelo!

 

A majority on both sides of the argument, have only one round between them!

That is significant.

That basically means it can be argued either way!

 

Taking the difference in number of rounds (so if it's 7-6 to Walcott that's 1, if it's 8-5 that's 3 etc), and using the median of score in favour of Walcott, puts the mean score at 1.5 to Walcott.

Replacing the missing scores with the mean of the difference of score in favor of Walcott in place of the three without a spefic score, then the average difference is scoring 1.63 rounds to Walcott.

In either case the median score is 1.5 rounds to Walcott, and the first quartile is 1 round to Louis, with the former the 3rd quartile is 3 rounds to Walcott, while with the latter replacement the 3rd quartile is 3.47 rounds to Walcott.

 

Added my own compilation of newspaper votes for this bout to boxrec wiki:
http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Joe_Louis_vs._Jersey_Joe_Walcott_(1st_meeting)
Some of the votes were cross-checked, some were borrowed from post-fight write-ups.

 

So on most of these score cards, it would only take a slightly different interpretation of one or two rounds, to flip the result!

 

Yet again, you totally misrepresent what the logical conclusion should be, and come up with "see, this means it could be argued either way". Never mind that the 2/3's found a way to argue it one way, and had no issue picking a winner. The key aspect of the scores which should further slide things Walcott way, you completely gloss over and don't get it's impact. There were quite a number of people who had Walcott decisively winning, which is where the controversy comes from. How could a fighter seem to win 11-4 on someone card, only to lose the decision. That is exactly how and why you'd get some of the outrage we saw. Let's examine the scores with more than 3 rounds different between them (The cards that would seem to indicate a clear victory for the fighter that had winning by that margin):

Walcott by three or more rounds:

Hank O'Donnell, Waterbury Republican, Walcott, 12-2-1
Ted Meier, AP, Walcott, 11-3-1
Wilbur Wood, N.Y. Sun, Walcott, 11-4
John Carmichael, Chicago News, Walcott, 11-4
Lester Bromberg, New York World Telegram, Walcott 10-5
Murray Rose, AP, Walcott 9-5-1
Harry Grayson, NEA, Walcott, 8-4-3
Frank Eck, AP, Walcott 9-6
Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun, Walcott, 8-5-2

Walcott by two rounds or more:

Sec Taylor, Des Moines Register, Walcott 8-6-1
George Barton, Minneapolis Tribune, Walcott 8-6-1
Al Abras, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Walcott 8-6-1
Elliott Cushing, Rochester Democrat-Chronicle, Walcott, 8-6-1
Lewis Burton, N.Y. Journal-American, Walcott 8-6-1

Louis by three or more rounds:

Tom Meany, PM, Louis, 9-6
Joe Gootter, Paterson Evening News, Louis 9-6
Dan Parker, N.Y. Daily Mirror, Louis, 9-6
Al Buck, N.Y. Post, Louis, 8-5-2
Cliff Keane, Boston Globe, Louis 8-5-2

Note: Louis had no judges score him winning by 2 rounds The rest were by 1 round.

Also note: Louis had zero people who thought won by more than 3 rounds. Walcott had observers thinking he won by 10 rounds, 8 rounds, 7 rounds, 5 rounds etc etc

So the total for those that had Walcott by two or more rounds is:

Walcott - 14 (Of these 14, 5 had him winning by more than 5 rounds)
Louis - 5 (Louis had none thinking he won by more than 3)

So no, clearly almost 3 times the amount thought Walcott won by at least 2 rounds or more. That's a significant amount to see a fight relatively clearly for one fighter and it go to another, which is exactly why there was controversy about the decision. If all the cards were the 8-7 or 7-6-2 variety, there wouldn't have been the uproar there was.

You also believed it was plausible NY was a pro Louis state of sorts for him. You believe it to be plausible because that is how it seemed to others at the time, and the scores here reflect yet again, as it did in other fights. Basically every single person who voted for Louis, was from NY, which again leads credence to the theory. While Walcott had votes from all over the country. The other thing to note is, Walcott basically coasted the last 2 rounds thinking he had it in the bag. With some of the scores we've seen, it's no wonder he did. Even then, Louis still came out far behind on some cards and losing on the majority. The NY press who still voted for him, clearly gave Louis those rounds. But what kind of picture does that tell us? It certainly doesn't tell us Louis figured him out and was beating him from pillar to post at the end. It's like the people who gave Trinidad vs. Hoya to Trinidad and act like he outboxed Oscar because of it. He did no such thing. He basically got a schooling for most of the night and the judges didn't like him coasting. Yet we all know Oscar outboxed him easily when he had his foot on the gas. Just because a fighter lets up thinking they won, doesn't mean the other fighter figured him out or outboxed him, it means what happened... the other fighter let off the gas, and then you were able to muster some resistance. So when you see scores that wide, and he gave away the final rounds, how badly was Louis getting outboxed prior to Walcott coasting? Pretty soundly I would speculate.

Also note: On Senya's additions to the Wiki page, and I obviously can't verify all these scores and votes. The vote tally is:

Walcott - 59
Louis - 21

Is that like 73% of the votes.... Yet I'm sure you'll next say:

Louis could've likely earned the decision......
Louis was aggressive, aggression was counted a lot back then (So does outboxing your foe pretty decisively and knocking him down twice with nothing in return.... Yeah, clearly Walcott must've been running all over the ring and Louis just slipped on a banana peel, but damn he was aggressive!!!!

 

Good honesty. If you look at the scorecards, you will also see the judges were favorable to Louis.

 

That could have been your best post. Keep in mind, the fight was not scored on the ten point must system, in a modern sense, Walcott gets two 10-8 rounds.

73% of sports writers suggest this was a robbery.

Walcott was but one of two black men Louis fought in his 26 title defenses, the other had vision problems and was a light heavyweight, given the match as a gift. While there was no Harry Wills for Louis to avoid in his times, there were some good ones as good or perhaps better than some of the white fighters that gave Louis Trouble. Elmer Ray tops that list.

I have been saying Louis management and the MSG connection, which included Donovan as the ref who had some terrible scorecards strongly suggests what you are talking about ( NY was pro Louis ) is correct. How biased was Donovan? He only gave Tommy Far one round!

More on Donovan can be read here....No spoilers, just read it ( You too McVey ). Jaws will drop.

http://www.boxing.com/referee_arthur_donovan_youre_in_good_hands.html