THE WAR ZONE: Revisiting Classics (Vol. 8 - Arturo Benjamin Aragón vs. Charles Pierce Davey)

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edit: new formatting since the switch to xenforo...

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Apologies for the brevity. There is, all told, about three minutes and nineteen seconds worth of extant surviving footage. That's all. Could there be more in a basement somewhere, or hoarded in an individual's private collection? Sure. As far as what's publicly available, however, this is the full balance - and too little of a good thing is always better than bupkis.

Chuck Davey is the southpaw, in the darker trunks, a bit taller, with the noticeable widow's peak. Aragón is the shorter man in the white trunks, boxing orthodox, stalking his way in and showing an incredible multifaceted defense on the front-foot, including head movement, arm parries, and full-body feints.

Tragically, we're missing the other 88¹⁷/₁₈% of the fight (and yes, that fraction is precise to within exactly one second, and yes I'm enough of a nerd to have bothered converting the repeating decimal .944444444~ into a fraction, and then figure out how to express that in Unicode...) but we can extrapolate from the bit we have - as well as contemporaneous plaudits - that an unearthing of the above's (2 minutes & 35 seconds of the original telecast with crowd noise & commentary starting at 4:21 until 6:56, and then 44 seconds of "MOS" - or soundless - footage tacked on at its end from 8:15 until 8:59 in the video embedded) full complement would be a huge boon for the sport's archives in perpetuity, and moreover a real treat for us fans to watch.

All we can do is enjoy the snippet at our disposal, and fill in the "gaps" (and I use that word very loosely, the same way there are gaps in the remains of King Ozymandias' works) using our imaginations - and write-ups from its time. Here is one such:

Bout officials are suspended in Aragon win

Crowd Reacts To Decision Against Davey

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 19 (AP) - Controversial Art Aragon of Los Angeles, held a decision over southpaw Chuck Davey today and two officials of the bout were under suspension as a result of the disputed decision.
Touching off an immediate roar of disbelief and disapproval from most of a turnaway crowd of 10,400 fans. Los Angeles' self-styled Golden Boy was awarded a split decision at the end of 10 rousing rounds at the Olympic auditorium last night. The match was not televised.
Chairman Tony Entenza and Commissioners Everett Sanders and Norman Houston of the California Athletic Commission went into a hurried conference within a matter of minutes.
ANNOUNCEMENT MADE
Soon after Sanders hustled down to Davey's dressing room and announced that the two officials who had voted for Aragon, Referee Mushy Callahan and Judge Joe Stone, had been suspended.
'This is the worst decision I have seen in many years of attending fights', Sanders told Davey, newsmen and a room crammed with hangers-on.
Callahan, a former fighter and a veteran referee, scored the fight 56 points to 54 for Aragon. Stone scored it 55½-54½ for Aragon, under the California 11-point-per-round system.
Charlie Randolph, the other judge, called it for Davey, 58-52.
The Associated Press has it 56-54 for Davey, with the Michigan State College graduate winning six rounds, losing three, and one even.
Aragon was a two-to-one betting favorite.
Sanders called for a hearing Feb. 24. He said it probably is impossible to reverse the decision, but he declared:
"We are going to cut out these bum decisions and the split decisions. We will not tolerate such a lack of uniformity."
The 27-year old Davey, sitting on the rubbing table, grinned half-heartedly and said:
DAVEY SURPRISED
"I was the most surprised guy in the house -- unless it was Aragon. "
Aragon, his left eyebrow a bloody mess -- Chuck was scarred a bit, too -- told boxing writers:
"Leave those southpaws out of my life. I don't know how to fight them. Maybe it's in my mind. I think Al Cruz, a little featherweight, could knock this guy out."
True it was that in the second round the 26-year-old local attraction landed, by the count, seven righthand punches to Davey's jaw and head. In the fifth Aragon connected with three solid wallops to the head, and in the seventh he shifted to the midsection and landed two healthy smacks.
The dancing, retreating, jabbing Davey took them all, and kept a constant stream of rights stabbing away at Aragon's chin and damaged left eye.
There were no knockdowns, and neither fighter appeared seriously hurt at any stage. But the action was constant and kept the crowd in an uproar.
REMATCH POSSIBLE
Promoter Cal Eaton, who said the gate receipts grossed $59,347.90, shrugged his shoulders when asked if he planned a rematch.
Davey said, "sure. I'd like to fight him again, under the right conditions. Kokomo, Butte, Mont., any place, just so long as I get a fair shake. I thought I won, but that's the way it goes. I picked off most of his punches. He's a good hitter but can't knock you out with a single punch."
Davey took the first round, Aragon the next two, and from then until the seventh Davey appeared to have an edge. Aragon, seemingly tiring toward the end of each round, won the seventh, they split the eighth and Davey seemed to have a comfortable edge in the last two.

(courtesy of Bob Myers/ the Reno Evening Gazette, Feb 19, 1954)


There are later, contradictory reports that address these claims of judging corruption or incompetence, trivializing all the hubbub as just sour grapes from a contingency within the betting community that believed it had the "smart money" on Davey with underdog odds perceived as being too wide. It would be great to see the whole match, both for its entertainment value and to cut to all the controversy's heart and settle the matter with fresh, financially disinterested eyes from a vantage of 65 years on, the passage of time serving as the great equalizer.

Aragón seems to have been, outside his Angeleno faithful, largely written off by contemporaries as just a loudmouth phony, a fighter in name but really more of a Hollywood party fixture playing the part of "gloved playboy" than a legitimate tough guy. Sort of his era's Mike "Subway Commercials" Lee - whose fights may have been "on the level" (ie not prearranged) but still a carefully matched & sheltered phony, in other words. History would seem to have softened this view, as he is now acknowledged to have faced a quantity of very good opponents, and from the footage available doesn't look to have been out of his depth even against the likes of Carmen Basilio. Certainly a clearer sense of the validity of that split decision over Chuck Davey would go a way towards establishing where he fits into his time period, exactly.

Speaking of split decisions, LOL @ that one promoter's histrionics at wanting to abolish them. :roll: What a pie in the sky ambition to "eliminate non-unity among boxing judges", in what reality did he believe there was ever a prayer of that happening with an inherently subjective methodology of scoring?? :yep