The Best of the Rest: 160lbs Tier II Tournie - Last 16 Fight 3: Bert Lytell UD15 Mike O’Dowd

What i've done is i've lifted top tiers out of my top fifty at the poundage and organised them into a seeded tournament to uncover "the best of the rest" at the poundage, with you, the denizens of the world's greatest boxing history forum, casting the deciding vote. The difference between this middleweight tournament and the equivalent at 175lbs is that I've left ALL the guys with no footage in this time. I understand that makes things difficult and for some, frustrating but there are just far too many excellent and intriguing fighters from middleweight history. I understand this makes making a pick very hard, but i hope you'll still place a vote and make a post because obviously without your input the whole thing becomes meaningless.

Pick your man! Write however many details you like or don't in a post below. But maybe try to post, to keep things moving a little bit. You have three days.

And let's be nice. No reason for disagreeing over total fantasies after all!

15 Rounds, 1930s rules and ref. 10 points must. I'll only vote where there's a tie.

BERT LYTELL (71-23-7)
“The Beast of Stillman’s Gym”, Bert Lytell, is probably the most underrated MW in history. Lytell built a resume so superior to that of the likes of Tony Zale or Marcel Cerdan I feel it reveals a bias in the old-time historians – to be respected, valued, cherished for their contributions to the sport which are enormous – to the champions when you see them ranked above him. Simply put, Lytell did better work in the middleweight division than many of these men. His paper record is deceptive as concerns MW; most of his losses occurred past-prime up at light-heavyweight.

Matched tough early, things reached an absurd, almost surreal level of the impossible when, with his record by Boxrec standing at just 18-4-2, Lytell was matched with a prime Jake LaMotta. LaMotta, an absurdity of violence and pressure in the ring, is to be credited with his determination to match the best of the Black Murderer’s row but one should be very careful about crediting him with a victory over the green Lytell as it is recorded in his record in April of 1945. Lytell seems to have duped the bull with a combination of aggression and patience that belied his tender beginnings as a professional, with two out of three officials seeing it to LaMotta, but with numerous ringside reports indicating that Lytell, a 10-1 underdog, deserved the decision; the AP report referred to LaMotta as “baffled” by the normally warlike Lytell’s more subtle skills and only a late rally and some controversial judging spared history what might have been a very severe twist. Lytell spent years trying and failing to get LaMotta back into the ring.

Absurdly, Lytell then went out of his way to embark upon a series with one of the few middleweights of that incredible era more dangerous to a young prospect than LaMotta, Holman Williams. Williams was shortly to begin a final fade into mortality but when Lytell first met him just four months after his close encounter with LaMotta, he was coming off a victory over fellow great Charley Burley. Lytell, boxing in rarefied air visited without disaster by only a few men and perhaps none of such little experience, followed the probable loss by officiating against all-time great LaMotta with a draw against the all-time great Holman Williams.

A bizarre exchange of roles followed, with Lytell boxing long and Williams stepping inside to rescue the fight on the cards and then dominating the younger man with a body-attack in the rematch. Lytell persisted with this out-boxing style in their third encounter fought in 1946. The only men to have beaten Williams in the previous two years were a light-heavyweight Archie Moore; the Cocoa Kid, who Williams then avenged himself upon; Lloyd Marshall, with whom he went 1-1; and the wonderful Eddie Booker, with whom he also shared a pair. He had defeated Jack Chase, Charley Burley, Young Gene Buffalo, Kid Tunero, Aaron Wade and Joe Carter in that same period but Lytell blasted himself to a points victory.

No man but Moore could produce both the longevity and resiliency to cope with long-term residency of that fistic underworld for more than a few years and things got no easier for Lytell; he went 1-1 with the incredible Burley; he went an outstanding 3-0 with Cocoa Kid and although this is tempered by his loss to Aaron Wade, his record against his fellow residents was an exceptional one. Ranked types from the other side of that demarcation line – guys like Major Jones, Sam Baroudi and Sylvester Perkins – were also matched and bettered.


MIKE O’DOWD (51-7-3; Newspaper Decisions 42-10-3)
Mike O’Dowd had the face of a fighter. The nose hammered into an indeterminate feature; the thin lips; the shovel flat face rubbed indifferently onto a bullet-shaped head; the jaw vanishing into his skull; and the thousand-yard stare. He held a punch like a fighter too, stopped just once in more than one-hundred contests. He went a superb 10-2-1 in middleweight title fights.

He owns an astonishing series victory over Mike Gibbons. Gibbons is an immortal of the middleweight division and O’Dowd was the only man to triumph in a series versus Gibbons. Their first fight was desperately close, with many ringsiders speaking in favour of a draw or a Gibbons win but a majority favouring O’Dowd according to reports. Their second fight, fought two years later, by which time the title had departed O’Dowd, was clear in favour of Gibbons; their rubber match fought in 1922 was the only meeting between the two in which an official decision was rendered, and that decision went to O’Dowd. Another key win over the wonderful Jeff Smith, all aggression and in part defined by the right hand to the body. This was typical of the type of performances O’Dowd turned in between 1917 and 1920 when he was the middleweight champion of the world although despite a hard-charging style he remained difficult to catch clean.

Two factors hurt O’Dowd. First of all, when he lost the title it was to one of the most underwhelming champions in middleweight history, Johnny Wilson, and despite the fact that he got two chances to undo that damage in rematches, he was always befuddled by Wilson’s southpaw stylings and unable to overcome his jab. Secondly, O’Dowd struggled desperately with the two best welterweights of his era. Despite a big size advantage he actually lost a series to defensive genius Jack Britton and dropped two newspaper decisions to Britton’s nemesis Ted Lewis.

 

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Very tough.

 

Anyone?

 

No-one!?

 

Word up Jel, that's devotion. Nobody does that.

 

Bert Lytell consistently beat out an unbowed Mike O'Dowd in the best fight of the tournament so far, early investment in the body paying dividends as O'Dowd seem to falter under heavy fire in the tenth and eleventh. Lytell, grim-faced, fought his way home against O'Dowd who continued to cause Lytell trouble with bursts of aggression but was unable to sabotage what ended a clean win for the Murderer's Row.