Newspaper decisions

I have a really cool article somewhere were a writer scores a Mike Gibbons fight using box score system. It was pretty cool.

 

No-decisions didn't take the "heavy lifting" off judges.

There were no judges in a no-decision fight. There was NO lifting to be done.

If you knocked the guy out, you won. If you didn't knock him out, there was no winner.

People didn't get title fights based on "no-decision" DECISION wins, because no winner was announced at the end of the fight. Nobody scored a KO, so nobody won.

In fact, guys who sportswriters said "lost" no-decisions routinely got title fights because their scoring meant nothing.

Also, no-decision fights didn't put "more pressure" on writers. They weren't "obligated to score" anything. And nobody was going to review their scoring later if they did score it.

In fact, few articles from that era are even very detailed. All of them don't say "I scored the first for him, the second for that guy" ... the majority just say one fighter was the aggressor throughout or it was closely contested until a certain round.

Nobody was standing over newspaper reporters, particularly in non-title fights or club fights, demanding to know how they scored every round, because YOU ONLY WON if there was a KO.

In fact, if there was no KO, often the writers disagreed who "unofficially" won. So the people reading in one town will read in the paper Fighter A "unofficially" won. And people reading in another town will read Fighter B "unofficially" won. Since it wasn't official, it didn't matter.

People back then didn't subscribe to a dozen papers, and then sit down and say, "Well four papers said this guy won, and six papers said this guy won, and two papers said it was a tie, so I think the guy who won according to six writers was the actual winner."

And I can post old newspaper articles where two fighters records and printed before their fight, and they'll list all the guys a person has faced ... and if he scored a KO it's listed ... if he was KOed it's listed ... and if it was no-decision fight, the paper just lists that he fought "SO-and-SO" and it was a ND.

In fact, their records looked even MORE impressive because the newspapers would just list names of the guys he fought and list the result as ND and they don't say anything at all about whether he won (because NOBODY OFFICIALLY WON if no one scored a KO).

So if a guy fought a lot of No Decisions and didn't get knocked out, his record could have a lot of names on it with none of the losses attached to those fights.

 

In hindsight... people gather all the local reports wires and reports and can gleam a decent picture of who won the fight based on those. My question would be, how did it work at the time. I don't believe there was someone or an organization who compiled all the wires and reports and came out with a consensus winner. So my question is, during that time since nobody was given the authority to find a winner combing through all the newspapers, how did people of the time view or won or who lost a ND fight.

 

You picked up a newspaper in your town and read the sports page. If there wasn't a knockout, whoever the writer covering it said won, that's who you thought "unofficially" won the fight.

It's really as simple as that.

If you lived in one town, you might read one guy "unofficially" won, and if you lived in another you might read the other guy "unofficially" won ... and if that's all you ever read about the fight then people reading their local papers could come away with very different ideas on who they thought "unofficially" won.

DECADES LATER, people have gone back and said, "well five of these papers said this guy won, and seven of these papers said this guy won," so the guy who won in seven papers was the "unofficial" winner.

Or they'll read the report from one paper, and say the reporter "asked other sportswriters who they thought won, and 18 of the 25 said this guy won" (even though the 18 writers aren't named and the 18 newspaper articles are nowhere to be found today in order to fact check) ... so people today assume "Well, if 18 thought he won, he must've won."

The truth is, if there was no KO, no one won.

Both fighters knew going in the only way to win was by KO. If they weren't KOed, they didn't lose. But they still got to say they fought THIS big name and THAT big name and how well they did depended on who was telling the story.

That's it.

So anyone saying "no decision" fights didn't impact the way people approached or fought fights is HIGH.

If you could win by decision or KO, you fought accordingly.

If you could only win by KO, and it wasn't happening for you that night, and the other guy wasn't hurting you, you could pick up a check and call it a day ... and not have to worry about getting outhustled or outworked and having any losses turning up on your ledger.

 

For example, when Billy Miske challenged Dempsey for the title, his record since the last time he fought Dempsey was:

Jack Moran = KO2
Battling Levinsky = ND
Bill Brennan = ND
Tommy Gibbons = ND
Kid Norfolk = ND
Willie Meehan = ND
Bill Brennan = W15
Harry Greb = ND
Tom Cowler = KO4
Tom Cowler = ND
Gus Christie = KO10
Fireman Jim Flynn = KO2

That's pretty impressive. He fought a lot of names. Good contender.

You go on boxrec, and they have him losing newspaper decisions to Levinksy, Norfolk, Greb and drawing with Brennan and Gibbons. And then you wonder how he got a title shot.

The answer is because people back then didn't view newspaper decisions as official.

Miske knew if he didn't get knocked out by Greb, Norfolk, Gibbons, Brennan, Levinsky and Cowler ... then he wasn't going to lose. (And nobody did knock him out, except for Dempsey.) So he had no qualms about fighting any of them.

He looked for a KO. It didn't happen. No problem.

Newspaper decisions didn't hurt his chances of fighting for a title at all. Because they didn't count for anything.

If there was no KO, there were no winners or losers. And that's how everyone approached it.

 

Again, you are wrong. We’ve been over this before. The idea that ND fights were illegitimate, or glorified exhibitions is not only incorrect its plain stupid.


Yes, men got title fights based on their performance in no decision fights. How else do you explain guys like Harry Greb, Johnny Dundee, or Rocky Kansas maintaining such a high esteem with the public and experts when they fought the majority of their careers in no decision bouts with low KO percentages? Men died in no decision bouts, they broke bones, suffered cuts, bets were waged on their outcomes. They were real fights. No decision bouts drew big audiences. In fact the sport of boxing proliferated and flourished in the no decision era. You think people began flocking to no decision fights because they thought the fighters werent trying or the outcomes were meaningless? It beggers belief. And yes, people did wait for the opinions of the local reporters. The argument to the contrary is non-existent. Its not even debateable, Ive never heard a historian (which you arent) try to argue otherwise. You are as wrong as wrong could be when you say few articles were detailed or lacked round by round descriptions. In fact coverage of local boxing matches, even in small towns, was far and away better in the nd era than, well, probably any other era simply by virtue of the fact that there was so much of it. In fact, if you really want to put that fact to the test we can pull tons of newspaper articles for fights from little towns of a few hundred people like Herrin Illinois, to larger towns of 1000 or so like Lonaconing, Maryland to cities like St. Louis all the way up to a mecca like New York. You, or rather the people you are trying to sell this falsehood to, will see that the idea that coverage for these fights was minimal is completely false.


It is true that fighters records in the early days lumped results together but they did that in general, not as a result of ND bouts. You would often see decision bouts lumped in with No Decision bouts depending on who was reporting the record. In some instances you would see newspaper decisions tallied as well.


Finally, and again, the idea that nobody cared about ND because there was no decision rendered leaves me wondering how you can reconcile that idea with the absolute plethora, to the point of being a cottage industry, of wire reports all over the IF NEWSPAPER DECISIONS? How do explain the lists that were published regularly in newspapers across the country tallying the fights fought the night before? If those fights were so unimportant in the grand scheme of things why did newspapers 1000 miles away waste their time publishing recaps and wire reports of them? Your belief, and believe me thats all it is, YOUR BELIEF, leaves a big gaping hole in an entire period of the sport when it was probably at its most vibrant in this nation.

 

For betting purposes if you were betting on fighter A and I was betting on fighter B we would agree to bet based the opinions of a pre-selected group of sportswriters. If two of the three voted for fighter B I win.

Im sure people in that era picked a favorite writer that they tended to agree with. No different than scanning the net today for the results of a fight you missed. Maybe you like Dan Rafael and there. Maybe the fight was close and controversial so you look up Dan, Kevin Iole, and Steve Kim to get some kind of consensus. Its no different really.

Its not uncommon to find one paper printing a summary of the results from rival papers to illustrate a consensus. Thats why dubblechins answer is so asinine. If one paper is printing its rivals results to add weight to its own decision then obviously people cared about the outcomes and understand that the fights were not only real but wanted to have a better understanding of who “won.”

 

HA! Miske got his title shot specifically because he looked like **** in ND fights. Not because he wasnt trying but because he was ****ing dying and Dempsey knew it, as he admitted.

Of course this again totally ignores how fighters such as Greb and Dundee were held in universal high esteem despite being light hitters and having fought mostly ND contests prior to getting a title shot. Its also ridiculous to suggest that a guy who was a knockout puncher and believed he could only win by getting a knockout is going to just lay back and accept a newspaper loss. Have you ever seen that in any era? Typically the knockout punchers are the guys going for broke. Nevermind, again, that this argument defies logic that men like Greb and Dundee would excel in the sport when their entire game was predicated not on knockouts but on outscoring their opponents. By your argument they would have just sat around waiting for a loss because it didn't matter anyway. Yet the opposite was true, particularly in Greb's case, whereby he has a remarkably consistent record in ND fights regardless of what town he was fighting in.

Jesus, Ive never seen an exhibition of mental gymnastics as impressively displayed anywhere as they are here.

 

To discourage gambling from infiltrating and poisoning the sport but Gamblers just changed the way they operated as the sport changed the way it handled decisions. This is kind of a simplified answer though because decisions were not banned everywhere. They were banned on a state by state basis and each state had its own reasons for doing so. Some states banned "boxing" due to its "public exhibition of barbarism" but promoters in those states got around this by forming "private" clubs where boxing was staged. Your membership into the club was predicated on buying a ticket. If you bought a ticket to the "club" you could go see the match at the club that evening. Your membership was only good for that night. That's why you see all of these "Clubs" proliferate in the ND era: the Broad Athletic Club, The Fairmount Athletic Club, The Market Club, The Liberty Athletic Club, they were all formed specifically for the purpose of selling tickets to boxing matches. In some states Boxing was legal but was regulated by the municipalities. Meaning, for example, in Toledo, Ohio you might have ND bouts but 20 miles away you might have decision bouts, and 30 miles over in the next town boxing might be outlawed entirely.

 

I have no idea what you're arguing with me about.

You seem to be creating an argument and then countering it ... when I've said no such thing.

All I said was you could only win a No-Decision fight by Knockout. There were no judges. BY DEFINITION ... there we no official decisions. You won by KO. If you didn't win by KO, there was no winner.

Of course people would send writers to cover fights. Of course the fights mattered. Of course the fights were exciting, and boring, and thrilling, and dull, depending on who was fighting.

But if NO ONE SCORED A KO, there was no winner.

That's what a NO-DECISION fight means.

Nobody "won a decision" in a NO-DECISION fight.

 

Miske wasn't dying. Miske was a top contender. Miske hadn't lost in years, because he'd never been knocked out and he hadn't lost an official decision in years.

After Dempsey knocked him out, Miske fought 23 times against many of the top contenders and only lost once.

 

Nobody's talking about Harry Greb except you.

Harry Greb was a fine fighter. One of the best of the era.

Speaking of Miske, Billy Miske fought Greb in no-decision fights and Greb never came close to knocking out Miske. In one of their fights, Miske opened in the final rounds and was bashing Greb all over the ring. (Miske must've been one of those guys who was patient in looking for a KO.) And Greb somehow managed to last the distance.

I'm sure at the final bell, Miske's friends came over and told him, "Billy, you almost had him." And I'm sure Miske went over to Greb and said, "Harry, congratulations on surviving." And then nobody's hand was raised in victory and they shook hands an both went home.

Then, the following day, Greb's hometown paper said Greb "won an unofficial" decision because he landed more in most rounds, even though THAT ISN't HOW YOU WON NO-DECISION fights. You won them by SCORING A KNOCKOUT.

The only one who came close to scoring a knockout was Miske. But CLOSE didn't get Miske a win, either.

They weren't playing horseshoes.

It didn't matter how many rounds someone jabbed and poked and danced around. It didn't matter if the guy never hurt you and you had him out on his feet when the final bell rang. It didn't matter what the newspapers said the next day.

You only won if you scored a KO.

If you didn't score a KO, it was a wash. NO-DECISION. NO WINNER. NO LOSER.

 

And clearly knowing a fight was a no-decision going in impacted how people fought those fights.

If you didn't have a lot of power and had to break guys down, you threw a lot.

If you had one-punch power, you looked for the one-punch and didn't worry about the scorecards - because there weren't any.

 

A "newspaper" loss?

HE COULD ONLY WIN OR LOSE BY KNOCKOUT.

Newspaper "wins and losses" only mattered to the newspapers, and had no bearing on a fighter's record.

On BOTH of their records it was a ND.

The scoring principle in no-decision fights were ... if you knocked the guy out, you won. If you didn't, then there was no winner or loser.

That's all.

 

So I guess newspapers were typically just wasting a quarter of their sports page space and all of that ink for no reason then:

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But hey, lets not focus on a city of half a million people, lets take a look at a city 1/10th that size with two newspapers:

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Or one in between those two:

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Here is an example of really lame report with zero details because nobody cared what the result was in ND bouts from Rochester:

[url]https://flic.kr/p/2aUMWuL[/url]

You mean like this one for Gus Christie showing his ND fight results?

[url]https://flic.kr/p/28efWxG[/url]


I could go on and on and on if you care to match examples. Ive got thousands of them. I didn't have to dig for these. I just plucked them out of Miske's and Christies files in the drawer next to me. The bottom line is that youd have to look hard to find first hand sources that weren't this detailed, that didn't render a result, and where the outcomes didn't matter to either fighter.