With declining standards, are Lee Savold and Ernest Terrell now legit champions?

Well, I agree with just about everything you said, but I think Terrell was the cream at the time. But really Eddie shouldn't have been fighting considering his performance against Patterson and his mental problems.

 

The complete original broadcast of the Terrell-Chuvalo fight is over on you tube. I re-watched because of the discussion of it.

I am not that big a fan of Chuvalo, but after watching it I can understand Chuvalo's feelings. Terrell scored often with the jab, but only occasionally with anything else. Chuvalo completely made the fight, coming forward all night. It is one of the few fights I have seen where one of the men never takes a backward step and the other doesn't do much else but retreat. What makes this fight hard to score fairly is Terrell's style. In some rounds he would simply run away from Chuvalo for minutes of the round. And his holding was really excessive. There was a lot of clinching but I can't remember one which was initiated by Chuvalo.

So aggression? If that is part of the scoring, it is all Chuvalo. Holding and running? Should a fighter be penalized for not engaging with his opponent? And if one fighter relies on clinching and the other gets a hand free and pounds away at him, shouldn't those punches count as much as all those jabs. What about the heavy body punches? Chuvalo finished stronger which might indicate that his heavy lefts to the body did more damage than all of Terrell's jabs.

I was surprised that the report quoted over at boxrec had Chuvalo a bloody mess because he looks relatively unmarked on the tape and I didn't notice much blood, and Dunphy didn't comment on bleeding. Dunphy only said a cut over the left eye didn't look dangerous. Terrell was also cut.

So my take is it looked a close fight. Now I watched it on tape from a camera, while the ref and judges were live at ringside. And they had it one-sided.

It was interesting, and commented on by Dunphy and Jim Brown, that after the fight photographers swarmed into the ring. There must have been twenty. Every one of them circled Chuvalo and photographed him. Not one was photographing Terrell.

The nub of what I am getting at is I think how you view this fight depends to a great extent on your philosophy of scoring. If you are cool with a run, jab, grab and hold, then run, jab, grab and hang on style, Terrell is your guy. If you credit making the fight and score body work, then Chuvalo does much better.

I have also watched the Terrell-Machen fight, which might be the dullest I have ever seen with Terrell using his jab and hang on style and Machen not being able to make a fight of it. Chuvalo was able to make it a fairly entertaining fight while carrying the fight to Terrell.

 

You dont score naked aggression. You score effective aggression. Where was Chuvalo effective? Which fighter fought and won “his” fight? Thats Terrell. It wasnt a hard fight to score at all unless, like Basilio, you are partial to come forward fighters or dislike fighters who box on the backfoot. I guess myself, pretty much every expert at ringside, and the officials are crazy because to a man we all consider(ed) it an easy fight to score and clear win for Terrell. It sure as **** was no robbery and it sure as **** was no fix by the mob. It didnt need to be because Terrell fixed it in the ring. Walking forward and swinging at nothing but air occasionally while eating jabs is not effective aggression. And while I dont like Terrells style or any fighter who grabs and clinches to break up momentum excessively at some point the other guy has to make his play and take the fight away. Chuvalo never could do that and it was noted by Basilio who was sympathetic to him. Chuvalo was supposed to be the stronger guy and the better infighter but he couldnt do anything with Terrell inside, so unless you, as a fan, arbitrarily dock Terrell points, or award Chuvalo rounds he didnt win based on nothing more than him coming forward I dont see how anyone can think that fight was close. When the most sympathetic judge to Chuvalo had Terrell with an insurmountable points lead by round 9 it tells you all you need to know. Chuvalo finished stronger but it was too little too late and its not like he dominated the later rounds either. Knocking a guy because he threw primarily jabs is ridiculous if the opposing fighter cant get past it. I guess we should not look favorably on Tommy Loughran, who relied primarily on a jab. Or Joey Maxim who fought a very similar style to Terrell. Im no fan of Maxim but denying that he was effective is ludicrous.

 

I love that fight.

 

I can't argue with you here.

 

One thing which interested me about the Chuvalo-Terrell fight was this line from the AP report:

"The Canadian, who weighed 209, required 10 stitches to close two five inch cuts over the left eye."

5 inch cuts? Those are some wounds. But during a lingering close-up of Chuvalo while he was waiting for the decision, there was very little visible facial damage. Five inch cuts requiring stitches would seem on the face of it likely to be very noticeable and I wonder why Chuvalo was never drenched in blood during the fight.

This is off the main subject of this thread, but that report strikes me as confusing.

 

that is certainly very strange. The only notable bleeding I thought Chuvalo suffered was the nosebleed early on in the fight. Hey, move over to the upcoming Terrell-Chuvalo post.

 

Where I disagree is less your evaluation of Chuvalo than your take on how effective Terrell was. Chuvalo in fairness was a tough and courageous fighter, but slow, and inaccurate with his head punches, and his punch volume was not high. That said, Terrell is hardly the master boxer. He is a run, stab, grab, run spoiler type. I watched this fight again, and with the sound off which aids me in concentrating on the punches. Terrell's jabbing didn't impress me as being all that effective. Chuvalo did quite a good job of picking off jabs with this gloves. Plus Terrell was generally so far away that his jabs were coming up short quite often and didn't seem to have much snap when they did get past Chuvalo's guard. In his commentary during the Terrell-Thad Spencer fight, Chris Schenkel made the same point that Terrell was too far away to effectively score with his jab during much of the fight.

Nothing much to say here as you have the evidence of the way the judges voted. They seem to have felt Terrell fought effectively.

I did not. And considering that Chuvalo was constantly carrying the fight to him, and landing quite a few body punches, I thought it was a much closer fight than that score.

Interestingly, Terrell actually landed more leather on Spencer, and even knocked him down. The quick handed Spencer was also able to reach Terrell somewhat more than did Chuvalo, and dropped him and hurt him badly in the second round. Still Terrell more effectively hit and cut up Spencer, so the final 118-110 type votes for Spencer stood in contrast to the Chuvalo scores. I don't dispute the Spencer scores, but found it difficult to square with what happened with Chuvalo.

Going cynical, I would note that for ABC, which was backing the elimination tournament in 1967, the worst possible scenario would have been Terrell, coming off the terrible loss to Ali, either going far or worse winning it outright. Schenkel and Cosell both seemed to be building up Spencer from the get-go. I don't want to be cynical, but I have to wonder.

As for the Chuvalo fight, the boxing establishment desperately wanted to get rid of Ali in 1965. Chuvalo just didn't seem to have the right style or tools. Terrell proved he didn't either, but many thought with his height and reach he could keep the fight close against Ali, so it would go to the judges. I don't want to be cynical, but I have to wonder.

Just on Maxim, he was far less of a runner than Terrell, more a mover. And more of a strategic clincher than a grabber. Terrell reminded me of an old B sci-fi film I saw as a kid, I think it was called It Came From Beneath the Sea, in which a giant squib grabs the Golden Gate Bridge with its tentacles and hangs on and on.

 

This fight was just a case of Terrell landed more, and Chuvalo landed the harder punches. Interesting, I never thought of Terrell being too far away, but when I think about it, I do remember his jab falling short often, due to distance.