The Best of the Rest: 160lbs Tier II Tournie - Round 1 - Fight 4: Gene Fullmer UD15 Jack Chase

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, 1950s rules and ref. Ten points must. Weigh in is 18 hours before the fight.

I'll only vote if it's tied, then I'll decide the result.

Round of Thirty-Two Fight 4: Gene Fullmer vs Jack Chase

GENE FULLMER (55-6-3)
Slate-faced and bull-necked, Fullmer boxed with a tactical indifference to even the hardest of punches but such was his durability and determination that he became one of the four men to hold the middleweight title in the year of 1957. A cynic might argue that Fullmer, like Carmen Basilio, only picked up the title because of the inconsistencies of the late incarnation of Sugar Ray Robinson but Robinson remains Robinson and in slogging his way to the middleweight title, Fullmer became one of the definitive middleweight battletanks. Without the layered counter-punching abilities of someone like Dick Tiger or the full-blown work-rate of Jake LaMotta, Fullmer had to rely on durability and heart to perhaps an even greater degree than those two immovable legends.

Perched perfectly between Robinson and another great champion, Dick Tiger, no sooner had he seen of the first then he had to make war with the second – this was a contest he could not win as even his prestigious strength saw him out-matched by the monstrous Nigerian, who out-muscled and bulled the previously impervious Utah man. Still, Fullmer has a truly impressive ledger and took on and defeated multiple top five contenders, including Rocky Castellani, Ralph Jones, Spider Webb, Charles Humez and the superb Carmen Basilio, who he twice stopped in brutal encounters. He was unlucky not to get the nod over the superb Joey Giardello when they met in 1960, ten of eleven ringside reporters favouring Fullmer according to The Milwaukee Sentinel, but overall, Fullmer got far more out of his career than a fighter with his limitations had any business achieving. He was a hard night’s work for any man who ever weighed 160lbs.

JACK CHASE (82-25-12)
Another reluctant resident of the savage back-alley that was the Murderer’s Row, Jack Chase met Archie Moore an astonishing six times, four of them at middleweight and the single visceral, lauded win he produced was among the best of his career. As for Moore, his victory in the series with Chase was the high-water mark for his middleweight career, but Chase had more. He warred onwards to West Coast monster Eddie Booker, and did what Moore couldn’t in three efforts, outpointed Booker over the championship distance. Charley Burley had too much firepower for Chase and Holman Williams too much craft, but the wonderful Lloyd Marshall only managed 1-1-1 against him in a savage exchange of punches and strategy. Lesser light Aaron Wade was twice crushed in 10 rounds. Cocoa Kid’s surprising defeat of him plants Chase right in the middle of the Murderer’s Row pack.

 

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Crazy. Would be an absolute war.

 

Tough right? The art of Chase, stopped only by alltime greats Moore and Burley and only by Burley in anything like his prime. A man capable of also beating Archie Moore, of beating Lloyd Marshall. But in the other corner, an immovable slab of rock stopped only by Tiger and Robinson; a fighter impossible to discourage but who did not entirely lack maneuverability.

It's a very, very tough pick this one, this might be the toughest pick of the first round and with a lot of punches being thrown.

 

Gene Fullmer lay down a marker last night, out-pointing the dangerous Jack Chase with ease. Chase fought Fullmer throughout but Fullmer consistently enjoyed the last word with consistent hitting. Out-mauling Chase but also outmaneuvering him made it an easy night for Chase, such was his dominance that the astonishing sight of peace breaking out in the last three rounds as Chase, 10-2 down, threw up the white flag.