The Best of the Rest: 160lbs Tier II Tournie - Round 1 - Fight 6: Bert Lytell UD15 Bobo Olsen

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 6: Bobo Olsen vs Bert Lytell

BOBO OLSON (97-16-2)

Bobo Olsen was blasted out twice by the immortal Sugar Ray Robinson in the mid-1950s and immediately departed for the desert of the light-heavyweight division, finding beating up the much bigger Joey Maxim more to his liking than the tender attentions of Sugar. The mark he left upon the 160-pound division, including a total of four disastrous clashes with Robinson, was a significant one: 71-8, 4-4 record in title fights – with each and every one of those losses in championship fights coming against Robinson. The fortitude he showed in picking himself up and dusting himself up after every subsequent detonation of his ambitions by perhaps the single best fighter in history was considerable.

It was after his second loss to Robinson in 1952 that Olson really began to motor. This fight, according to Sugar, was among the hardest of his career. Olson in fact surrendered the first six rounds in rather tame fashion, but battled back and on without pause until Robinson was being made to fight for every advantage. Olson acknowledges his master’s superiority and then went on a 21-fight winning streak that was only ended by the light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore. In the course of that run Olson fulfilled his dream by lifting the world middleweight title upon the retirement of Robinson by defeating former king Randy Turpin over 15 rounds in October of 1953. The only loss Turpin had posted in the previous five years was against Robinson, who he had also, famously, defeated; after his customary slow start, Olson began slowly to climb into Turpin’s space, dropping him in the ninth and10th and very nearly beheading him in the 13th. It was a clear victory for the Hawaiian whose stalking, succinct style propelled by as fine an engine as the middleweight division has seen left Turpin marooned in Olson’s fight.

A narrow defeat of the wonderful welterweight champion Kid Gavilan followed, Olson basically was able to out-tough his more cultured opponent despite suffering desperately from the attentions of Gavilan’s left hand; he had to climb from the canvas to take the decision against No. 1 contender Rocky Castellani. It was never easy being Bobo. His style was one of grind and pressure, a life of constant danger – worse, after another successful defense against Frenchman Pierre Langlois, Robinson returned and the blinds were closed upon Olson’s middleweight career. Sugar was the only man ever to stop him at the weight.

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.

 

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Could be the sleeper war this.

 

Bert Lytell, wary of Bobo Olsen's right hand with which he had ripping successes in the early part of the fight, nursed his way home to a clear unanimous decision. Aside from the first two and last two it's possible Olsen did no better than a share in any other round, just about out-crowded and cleanly out-boxed.