The Best of the Rest: 160lbs Tier II Tournie - Round 1 - Fight 5: Marcel Thil vs 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, 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 5: Marcel Thil vs Mike O’Dowd


MARCEL THIL (113-23-14)
The highest ranked opponent Marcel Thil ever met appears to have been the superb Canadian-born tough Lou Brouillard who made the trip to meet the Frenchman on his own soil not once but three times. In their first meeting, in 1935, Thil’s superb, cultured right hand seems to have been deployed with enough variety in order that he was able to take a legitimate 12-round decision from Brouillard but the competition provided was stiff enough that Brouillard was invited back for a shot at Thil’s belt. The resulting contest ended bizarrely when Brouillard was disqualified in the fourth for a low blow that may not have happened. Certainly Georges Carpentier, who was apparently ringside, was of the opinion that the disqualification was bogus, describing the offending punch as a “beautiful uppercut to the liver” and at least some of the reported 40,000 in attendance seemed to agree, booing the ruling and even attempting to storm the ring according to The Associated Press. The inevitable rubber match, fought early the following year, ended even more embarrassingly with Thil writhing on the floor clutching his groin when film, ringside reports and the humiliating exhibition of the fight in French cinemas revealed no low blow.

It seemed an inauspicious ending to world-class competition for a man who fought tooth and nail to get there. Thil turned professional as a boy and was little more than a journeyman winning a small proportion of his first 20 fights, but who clawed his way into the world class until he was named among the plethora of fighters making a claim for the middleweight championship in the wake of the great Mickey Walker’s retirement.

Boxing mostly in defense of the lightly regarded IBU title (Thil had a spell as NBA champ also), he nevertheless built a superb resume in his native France, winning the strap from the superb Gorilla Jones who was legitimately disqualified for low blows with Thil in firm control of the fight. Ranked men like Kid Tunero, who he bettered in a three-fight series, Jock McAvoy, Carmelo Candel and Len Harvey were all bested. That said, he was never lineal and at no time did he defeat the man ranked the best middleweight in the world but he learned his trade and the way he went out against Brouillard seems not to have sat in his gut as Thill, for his last contest, set sail for the first time for the USA where he matched the great if green Fred Apostoli, who he out-hustled – only to be pulled with a disastrous cut after 10.

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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Mike O'Dowd won a scrappy fight with Marcel Thil, despite the protestations of Thil who apparently thought he was ahead after 15 turgid rounds. O'Dowd though had done the consistently better work in a fight marred by fouling and clinching.