Newspaper decisions

Yes, I agree… most fighters would have liked to get the "newspaper decision". Most fighters! Especially the top boxers.

But at the rate the oldtimers fought, is it not reasonable to assume, that some (most?) of the boxers were satisfied with just getting through these fights without sustaining too much damage? One of them (or maybe both) could have a fight scheduled for the following week - so why try to kill each other? After all, in those days of small purses, it was all about putting bread on the table - so I suspect there must have been some kind of mutual agreement, to go easy on each other. I'm not saying in all fights - but in some this must surely have been the case.

 

I'm sure there were cases of both fighters cruising to an ND. Something similar likely goes on today, albeit with a different outcome (i.e. a W, L or D); particularly amongst professional journeymen. And, I only guess that it was less likely at the higher levels.

 

There is a big problem with press reports on ND fights in my view.

Appointed officials in a fight are SUPPOSED to be impartial in their judging. Whatever the crowd wants, or whatever is in the best interests of the promoter, or the "fight game," should not impact how they score a fight. In the event, perhaps they sometimes fall short.

But was there any reason for a newspaper to even strive for impartiality? The bottom line for them is selling newspapers. If the hometown hero is fighting a locally unknown outsider, with the local guy personally known to many of their readers, with even more rooting for him, why give the outsider a fair break in anything like a competitive fight?

I think that any problem one might have with "homer" officials is worse with the press. And if the readership of a given reporter is believed to be, or known to be, betting heavily on one fighter, is that reporter likely to go against his readership and cause them to lose money?

I imagine someone will dig up examples of the hometown newspapers going against the hometown hero. I don't think that would disprove my suspicions. I wouldn't expect a 100% lack of integrity. I would expect the scoring to be tilted. Rather than 50/50 and a fair verdict, it is more 75/25 with heavy bias. Even a homer reporter might have a problem claiming a guy who lost every round badly really was the better man. Word of mouth from those present would cause him to lose all credibility.

Another problem is that those appointed as officials by a state athletic commission would I assume have some sort of track record of reasonably judging fights and some sort of reputation for integrity. Would either necessarily be true of newspaper reporters? Yes, some reporters were into boxing and were good judges. Others were probably cub reporters more interested in other sports but sent out to cover a fight because there was no one else available. I remember a reporter appearing on TV after the first Ali-Liston fight. He was sent to cover the fight for a Louisville paper. He admitted he had no particular interest in or knowledge of boxing. He picked Ali simply because he looked younger and faster training and so this reporter couldn't understand why all the experts were so certain that Ali would have no chance with Liston.

Also, another side issue. Official judges know that their votes can make or break a boxer's career. This should give them a sense of responsibility in judging fights fairly. In the ND era, would the same be true of a reporter's take on a fight? An earlier post mentioned Billy Miske losing several ND newspaper decisions but still getting a shot at Dempsey. The reporters' verdicts don't seem to have impacted his career arc. Would a reporter therefore feel any need to rein in his biases?

My bottom line is that I think we should be very cautious about newspaper takes on ND fights. Without film, we have no way of judging how accurate the press "consensus" really is.

 

Decided with a C like decision. Desided isn't a word but if it was it would be more to the tune of taking the siding off of something.

I don't mean that disrespectfully in anyway I just figured since english isn't your first language you may like to know.

Also, great point.

 

Regarding the already mentioned Packey McFarland, excluding his very last fight, only once had a newspaper decision been scored against him, that I know of, and then the author of that decision, Walter St. Denis of NY Globe was being ridiculed and laughed at by every other writer for a long time. It was clear to everyone he was either bribed or affected in some other way, and even the author himself couldn't come up with a better explanation of his decision than "From the southwest corner of the ring at Madison Square Garden it looked as if Jack Britton outpointed Packey McFarland in their ten-round bout. From other positions around the roped enclosure the contest may have looked altogether different."

 

You often see explanations like that for giving a decision to this or that boxer? He wrote it BEFORE he saw what other dozen or more sporting writers had in print the next day, but he knew perfectly well they scored for McFarland, at least one of them not giving Britton a single round.

 

Well, he, his doctors, his daughter (who had the chance to speak with), his wife, Dempsey, and the press disagree with you. I will take their word over yours.

Tell that to the millions of people who looked to their newspapers to find out who won a fight. You have no understanding of the context of the times.

How long did that last? Because anyone who cherry picks his sources like you do certainly didn't finish the program. You wouldn't know standards and practices if they bit you on the ass.

You posted wire reports. Those are completely different than what we are talking about. You would know the difference if you were ACTUALLY a journalism major. I published first hand sources and the reason I did it was to refute your bull**** claim that newspapers didn't give detailed accounts of fights and didn't award fights round by round etc. This is the inherent problem with your argument. You don't want to argue the actual point. You want to create a false narrative and then use that as the basis of your argument. Essentially you are saying: "Newspaper decisions weren't official. Nobody cared about them or paid attention to them. This is reflected by the fact that newspapers gave very little coverage to ND boxing matches." And then its supported not by an actual article written by a newspaper ringside for the fight but by a wire report which gave a quick one paragraph rundown for a fight 1000 miles away (which actually supports my argument that people did ****ing care about the results of ND fights). Senya's point about inverted pyramid was to illustrate to you that wire reports were, at best, taken from a first hand source and paired down to depict the most major event in that article. Hence the shortness of wire reports for fights far away.

And again, this is a complete misrepresentation of the facts. If the fans relied on the word of the reporters, if the gamblers relied on the word of the reporters, and the managers, promoters, and fighters themselves relied on the word of the reporters then basically everybody who made up the body of the sport simply placed their faith in a different arbiter. And frankly I don't understand why that's so hard to wrap your thick skull around. Who wins any boxing match that goes to a decision is largely a matter of perception. Scoring is and has always been subjective whether you score an entire fight as a whole or score based on the association of boxing commissions criteria. Judges, regardless of how much training they receive or whether or not they have the backing of a sanction body, have always been called into question. When this is done who do people fall back on to illustrate who they think won? THE PRESS. How do they do it? A CONSENUS OF OPINON. Hell, that how ****ing judging is operated TODAY! You have three judges and if they cant come to a majority vote then its a draw. Judges aren't infallible and they aren't any more expert than reporters today, much less than the reporters from that era. Don't believe me. Go look at the wiki for Pacqiaou-Bradley 1. It quotes FIFTY FIVE members of the pres to illustrate that the judges were wrong. Go look at Louis-Walcott 1. A consensus of the press has ALWAYS been viewed as a more accurate barometer than three judges. The fighters from this era all carried around scrapbooks everywhere they went? Why? You think they were little old ladies who liked arts and crafts? No. They were promotional tools to take from location to location to show the press that they won the decision of the newspapers in their last three fights in Akron, Dayton, and Steubenville. That's how it ****ing worked. They all did it. I have Tommy Gibbons' scrapbook. In it he has his handwritten record with the results. For ND fights he denotes that it was a ND fight and then has a notation of the number of newspaper decisions awarded to him for that fight and then built the rest of the book out with those newspaper clippings showing he won the fight. You think he took the time to put that together because he enjoyed scrapbooking?? Fay Keiser's scrapbook was the size of three phone books. They were all like this. Do you think Sugar Ray Leonard kept a scrapbook? These opinions mattered. And why wouldn't they. In the 1910s and 1920s organized boxing was still in its infancy. Less than a generation earlier fights were fought on barges and in the back rooms of saloons and who won a fight was largely subjective if it wasn't a fight to the finish. Why do you think you have so many weird decisions in the bareknuckle and early Queensbury days? So to suggest from a 21st century perspective, that people back then didn't care about the outcome of a fight because a decision wasn't rendered by an "official" is totally untethered from not only reality but from the context in which those people operated. My suggestion to you is that you take some of that supposed journalism education and put it to use by doing some research.

 

Uhhh, no. And this is were your journalism degree from the Online University of American Somoa has failed you. Again, I didn't look at just one paper and quit because it supported my argument because I realize mistakes happen. I looked at several New York papers:

[url]https://flic.kr/p/29VfXwb[/url]
[url]https://flic.kr/p/MfKtBR[/url]
[url]https://flic.kr/p/29VfXt5[/url]

The New York Times is A major paper. Not THE ONLY paper. Its coverage of boxing was minimal, particularly in the 1910s compared to its contemporaries as you can see in the clips above.

Because I didn't have to cross check the fight with boxrec. That's where you betray yourself. LOL

Hardly:

[url]https://flic.kr/p/29VfXwb[/url]
[url]https://flic.kr/p/MfKtBR[/url]
[url]https://flic.kr/p/29VfXt5[/url]

I just didn't stop looking the instant I found one article that supported by lame contention. And, more to the point, Im not going to let you deflect from the fact that this discussion began because you alleged that papers didn't give detailed descriptions of ND fights. I proved that wrong and pointed out that the ND fight you held up as your shining example was actually a decision (a DQ) which you seem to have missed in your frothing attempt to win an argument. It was you who brought Boxrec up in the first place to pat yourself on the back for finding something, not me.

You know, and that's all that matters. Im going to continue posting to counter absolutely ignorant notion about this era.

Were there official decisions? Who gives a ****. I don't give two shits about official decisions today. Do you think I give a **** about the WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO, NVSAC or anyone else who has driven this sport into the ground?? You are going to argue with me that gaining a clear consensus of opinion is worse than listening to some overpaid fatass old white man who gets to judge fights because he donated a lot of a money to the local party in power? I can assure you I don't. Do you think I care or have any respect for some cheese fighter who according to you didn't have enough faith in his own ability to beat the man in front of him that he ran the entire fight to hear the final bell because he knew he couldn't lose? I don't. Hes a ****ing loser in my book whether Dalby Shirley or Damon Ramon judges him so officially or otherwise. Go back through my posts and look how many times Ive discussed Oscar DLH losing to Trinidad and note that I think he deserved to lose because he stopped fighting and tried to run out the clock. Sound familiar or at all applicable? My philosophy is exactly in line with that era. Were there fighters like that then? Yes. There are today as well. They were well known then and you knew what to expect. To pretend these guys were going to be supermen when the decision was on the line is simply not borne out by any factual evidence. Al McCoy and Mike McTigue were two of the most notorious abusers of the ND laws. They won and lost at a comparable pace whether a decision was on the line or not. Don't believe me? Go back and look for yourself. I know you wont because you wouldn't even know how to come up with such a statistical analysis but its there for anyone who wants to look.

You wont find this. Why? Youd know this if you knew what you were talking about: Codified scoring didn't start until well after the ND era ended. Every judge judged fights differently. Don't believe me? Go back and tell me what the scores were for Wilson-O'Dowd 2, or Greb-Tunney 1. Go back and tell me what the scores were for those decision fights held in New York. You might as well be asking what the ten point must score was. IT DIDNT ****ING EXIST!

Then why did the Times render a decision? Whats the point? Why write about it? Column space is precious, you would have learned this at the University of American Somoa school of Journalism. Why spend that precious ink and use that precious space if there was no point to it???

 

I'm sure he eventually died of his illness.

He wasn't dying when he was beating top contenders.

Neither was Morrison.

 

Your temper tantrums have grown tiresome.

 

Reread them champ. The advertisement for the fight lists it as the main event and every article except the times gave it top billing their recap. Regardless it doesnt change the fact that you dont know your ass from your elbow. Tah.

 

I don't doubt you.

"Official" verdicts have never seemed to be what you're interested in.

You're more interested in adding up any "newspaper" scores that support "YOUR" opinions and discounting those that don't.

Unfortunately for you, the "official verdicts" ... whether they were No-Decisions back in the day ... or the "official judges scores" today are really ALL that matters.

I can't argue with you anymore.

You obviously didn't care about official verdicts then or now.

 

Yes, the TIMES got it wrong and the paper that hasn't existed for 70 years was right.

Like I said, you believe whatever supports your opinion.

 

No I dont. And frankly I doubt you do either. All an official decision does is a stamp of “officiality” to the conclusion of a fight. Ive been watching boxing for 40 years. Some political hack is a better judge than me? I don’t think so. If I disagree my opinion is just as valid as his. If I watch a fight and an official says Fighter A won and 90% of the viewing public says fighter B won Im sorry but that official doesnt mean ****. And if the same official in the same fight agrees with the public and says fighter B won does his one opinion somehow add more weight to theirs? No. A consensus of opinions, whether there are judges or no, is always better than just blindly following the judges like a lemming. Sometimes Ive even disagreed with the consensus but Ill always acknowledge that Im in the minority and that obviously my opinion carries no weight. But in that era, the vast vast vast majority of people deferred to newspaper decisions whether you like it or not.

 

“The failing New York Times. Fake News. Fake News” lol

Yes, the times got it wrong. Hard to believe but it did. Id trust Abe Pollack, a dedicated respected boxing beat writer, over a New York Times article with no byline any day of the week.