After being wiped out in a round twice by Sonny Liston in world heavyweight title fights, Floyd Patterson resurrected his career with a unanimous points win over Canadian George Chuvalo. In what was the richest non-title fight to date, there were gate receipts of $166,423 and $600,000 from theatre/cinema TV revenue. However, there were riots in Canada when there were technical problems in screening the fight. Patterson, the skilful former champion, seemed to be in trouble during the slugfest until flourishing in the ninth. “I can take it much better than you gentlemen give me credit for,” Patterson told the media afterwards. Patterson’s win earned him a shot at the new champion Muhammad Ali later that year.
Davey Moore was an eight-fight unbeaten novice when he travelled to Tokyo to challenge Tadashi Mihara – unbeaten in 15 fights – for the WBA world light-middleweight title. It was remarkable that the American had got his chance as No 1 challenger so soon, but he justified his opportunity by knocking out the Japanese hero in six rounds. After three knockout defences, Roberto Duran ended Moore’s reign the following year and in 1988, aged 28, he was killed in a freak accident when he fell under his own car that was rolling down the driveway at his home.
Paul Hodkinson produced a career’s best performance when he knocked out New York-based Puerto Rican Ricardo Cepeda at the start of the fourth round in a third defence of his WBC featherweight title in London. The Liverpool boxer, who was based in Belfast during his career, put himself on the brink of big pay-days and exciting TV deals by stopping Cepeda – but this would end up being his last win. Hodkinson agreed to fight American Kevin Kelley for $1million but first the Briton had to make a mandatory defence against Mexican Gregorio Vargas, who stopped him in April 1993. After another stoppage loss in 1994, all previous grand plans were forgotten and Hodkinson retired aged 28.
Cuban Kid Gavilan was behind on the scorecards with two rounds remaining but had enough left to clinch a 15-round split decision over Bobby Dykes in Miami. Gavilan held on to his world welterweight crown in the first racially mixed bout to be held in Florida. Gavilan was an early star of the television era, boxing 22 times at Madison Square Garden and making 34 TV appearances. His best asset was the bolo punch, a long looping uppercut. Two decades before Muhammad Ali introduced the ‘Ali Shuffle’, the Cuban was doing his own dance routines in the ring and was later part of Ali’s early training camps.
Jake LaMotta handed the great Sugar Ray Robinson his first defeat when the Bronx Bull charged to a ten round unanimous points win at the Olympia Stadium, Detroit. Robinson, who had already beaten LaMotta in their first of six encounters in 1942, was unbeaten in 129 amateur and professional fights until his second meeting with LaMotta. The Bronx Bull, who outweighed Robinson by more than 16 pounds, softened up his rival with body shots in the first half of the fight. Robinson was sent sprawling through the ropes in the eighth and was up at the count of nine. The first professional defeat in 41 paid bouts hurt Robinson – it was in front of 18,930 in the city he grew up in – but he got revenge just three weeks later with a ten round decision back in Detroit.
Watching Tommy Loughran box the ears of Max Baer among the 12,000 crowd at Madison Square Garden was James J Braddock. Loughran’s ten round points win in a non-title heavyweight bout left an indelible impression on Braddock; he never forgot how Loughran used his educated left jab to make Baer look clumsy and avoid the Californian’s big right hand. Baer would repair the damage done to his career and go on to rule as world heavyweight champion for one day less than a year. The man who relieved him of the title in 1935 was Braddock. “I seen Tommy Loughran lick him in the Garden,” said Braddock. “I said to myself, if ever I fought Baer I’d do the same thing as Loughran done with him, the left hand and move.”
In the last of their 20 fights over six years, world welterweight champion Jack Britton beat Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis on a 15-round points decision in New York. American Britton’s manager successfully objected to Lewis’s use of a gumshield, because he reckoned it gave him an unfair advantage. The Londoner is believed to be the first boxer to use a protective mouthpiece in 1913. Britton won the series 4-3, with one draw and 12 no decisions. It was the last big fight East Ender Lewis had in America.
In one of the saddest ends to a world heavyweight title fight, Oliver McCall disintegrated in an emotional and mental breakdown in the ring against Lennox Lewis. McCall’s meltdown allowed London-born Lewis to regain his WBC belt, which he had lost when McCall knocked him out in 1994. McCall, an on-off drug addict who was in rehab the previous year for cocaine abuse, burst into tears at the end of the third round and began walking around the ring. The unstable American came out for the fourth in a trance, refusing to fight. When McCall turned his back in the fifth he was disqualified.
World flyweight champion Pancho Villa, known as the Filipino Flash, beat Georgie Marks by a 15-round decision in New York – but the title was not on the line after the challenger weighed in four pounds over the limit. Villa, whose real name was Francisco Guilledo, had beaten Welshman Jimmy Wilde for the belt the previous year and comfortably dealt with the heavier Marks with his whirlwind style. This was Villa’s last performance at Madison Square Garden in a brief reign; he died aged 23 the following year from blood poisoning after having a wisdom tooth extracted the day before his last fight against Jimmy McLarnin.
After dominating the welterweight division for five years, Jose Napoles discovered he was just not big enough to conquer the middleweight scene when he failed to come out for the seventh round against Carlos Monzon in Paris. The Argentine, who had a five-inch reach and six-pound weight advantages, retained his WBA-WBC world middleweight titles and would reign for another three years; the following year, Mexico-based Cuban Napoles lost his welterweight title.
Tony Canzoneri won his first world title when he earned the featherweight belt for a 15-round split decision over Benny Bass, who broke his collarbone in the third round, in New York. Canzoneri went on to win world titles at lightweight and light-welterweight.
Mike Tyson, 25, was convicted of raping Desiree Washington, an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Black America beauty contest, in an Indianapolis hotel room. The former world heavyweight champion would serve half of a six-year sentence after being found guilty of one count of rape and two counts of deviate sexual conduct.
No American venue would host Mike Tyson’s world heavyweight title defence against James ‘Buster’ Douglas as it was deemed such a mismatch. It ended up in Tokyo and being arguably the biggest upset in boxing history. Douglas, a 42-1 no-hoper, took advantage of the champion’s poor preparation to floor him for the first time in his career and then knock him out in the tenth round. Douglas was motivated by grief after the death of his mother 23 days before the fight while Tyson trained on a diet of women and late nights. Unlike those before him, Douglas was not intimidated by Tyson and after surviving a knockdown in the eighth produced a sharp combination to leave Tyson stretched out. Promoter Don King afterwards tried to get the result overturned as he claimed Douglas profited from a long count in the eighth.
The most Ken Buchanan was shaken on his trip to Los Angeles to fight Ruben Navarro was by an earthquake in the days before their fight for the WBA and vacant WBC lightweight titles. The Scot had to contend with more trouble in the days before the fight than the Mexican managed to give him in the ring. Navarro was only drafted in at 72 hours’ notice to replace the injured Mando Ramos. There was then a change of hotel, emergency fillings in three teeth, a row over ensuring a British judge and a neutral referee and an attempt to dope the water bottle in his corner on the night of the fight. Buchanan started slowly, losing the first four rounds, but Navarro tired and Buchanan’s jab earned him a convincing points decision.
It was billed as ‘Two Angry Men’ and American rivals James Toney and Iran Barkley were certainly that ahead of their world super-middleweight title clash after a bitter war of words. But Toney, 24, kept his emotions in check in the ring as he opted to box rather than brawl as he expertly dismantled the champion, whose face was left disfigured by lumps. Toney lifted the IBF belt after the ringside doctor advised Barkley, 32, should be stopped after the ninth round since he could barely see out of either eye.
Jake LaMotta often said, “I fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times I got diabetes,” and it was their last of six meetings that was the most painful for LaMotta. It is known as ‘The St Valentine’s Day Massacre’, named after the 1929 shoot-out involving gangster Al Capone because of the bloody beating LaMotta took in the latter rounds. Robinson, who had been welterweight champion for four years from 1946, lifted the world middleweight title after stopping LaMotta on his feet in the 13th round at Chicago Stadium. Robinson elegantly dismantled the brawler with sharp jabs and damaging counter punches until LaMotta, who was subject of the hit film Raging Bull starring Robert De Niro, could barely stand. Robinson won their series 5-1.
“I’m the latest, but he’s the greatest,” said new WBC-WBA world heavyweight champion Leon Spinks after dethroning Muhammad Ali on a split points decision in Las Vegas. Spinks, the 24-year-old who won light-heavyweight gold at the 1976 Olympics and had a comical gap-toothed grin, had only boxed seven times professionally when he upset the 8-1 odds. “I kept waiting for him to run out of gas but he never did,” Ali said, who was making an 11th defence. Spinks, 24, was sharper, busier and finished the stronger. Ali, at 36, was left hanging on late in the fight and although he won a rematch later in the year, this was the beginning of the end for Ali, who lost three of his last four fights. It was the pinnacle of Neon Leon’s career and by the time of the rematch he had been arrested four times for driving offences and drug possession.
Joe Frazier began a three-year reign as undisputed world heavyweight champion after his pounding left hook overwhelmed Jimmy Ellis at Madison Square Garden. Muhammad Ali had been stripped of the title after he refused to be drafted into the US Army and an undisputed champion for the heavies was overdue with the vacant WBC belt and Ellis’s WBA strap on the line. Smokin’ Joe had a bobbing and weaving style, relentlessly stalking his opponents as he did Ellis, who was a sparring partner of Ali and had the same trainer, Angelo Dundee. It was Dundee who pulled Ellis out of the fight at the end of the fourth. “Gee, Angelo, I was OK, I was only put down once,” said Ellis. Dundee replied: “You were put down twice, but you only remember once. That’s why I stopped the fight.”
World heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was told he was eligible to be drafted by the US Army for the Vietnam War after his draft status was reclassified from exempt, after failing an aptitude test, to 1-A. With war raging in Vietnam, the American government said standards had been lowered to bring in more soldiers. “For two years the government caused me international embarrassment, letting people think I was a nut,” said Ali. “Now they make me 1-A without a test. Why did they let me be considered a nut for two years?” Ali would refuse the draft as a conscientious objector after claiming: “I ain’t got nothing against them Viet Cong.” The subsequent court cases meant Ali was out of the ring between March 1967 and October 1970.
British boxing’s reputation was left as tattered as an old boxing glove after David Haye and Dereck Chisora turned a humdrum post-fight press conference into a violent punch-up in Munich. Chisora had just been outpointed by WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko when he left the top table at the press conference to walk past journalists and confront Haye. The pair then rolled around the room with fists flying. Chisora accused Haye of bottling him and threatened to ‘shoot’ his fellow Londoner. Even the trainers were hurt, with Haye breaking the jaw of Chisora’s trainer Don Charles and Haye’s trainer Adam Booth left with a cut head.
Mexicans Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales were two of the best lower-weight fighters of their era and first collided in a super-bantamweight world title unification fight following weeks of bad-mouthing. The pair came from rival regions – Barrera from Mexico City, Morales from Tijuana – and were vying to replace Julio Cesar Chavez as Mexico’s leading boxing hero. They refused to touch gloves before 12 rounds of non-stop aggression for the WBC and WBO titles in Las Vegas; neither were there any handshakes after Morales won a debatable split points decision. Barrera landed the best punches, especially in the fifth, and Morales even touched down in the final round. But the story did not end here and Barrera sucker-punched Morales at a press conference before their second fight, won controversially by Barrera. The trilogy ended with another Barrera points win in 2004.
“He deserved to be punished,” said Julio Cesar Chavez after stopping Greg Haugen in the fifth round in front of a record crowd of 132,247 at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Mexican Chavez was unhappy at some of American Haugen’s pre-fight comments and took retribution in the ring, flooring his challenger within seconds before returning him to the canvas in the fifth and then peppering him with punches to prompt the stoppage. Haugen unwisely claimed Chavez had built his 84-0 record up on “Tijuana taxi drivers”. He needed a 25-man security team on fight night yet still had urine and beer thrown at him as he made his way to the ring. Chavez underlined his status as boxing’s pound-for-pound No 1 with this WBC light-welterweight title defence. He grew up in an abandoned railway carriage but became Mexican royalty with the crowd for Haugen beating the 120,470 who watched Gene Tunney-Jack Dempsey in 1926.
Dennis Andries began his second of three reigns as world champion when he knocked out Tony Willis in the fifth round to lift the vacant WBC light-heavyweight belt in Tucson. Guyana-born Londoner Andries, 33, had lost the title to Thomas Hearns two years previously and upset the odds against unbeaten American Willis with a big left hook.
Ad Wolgast recovered from a knockdown in the 22nd round to finally break the resistance of Battling Nelson in the 40th round and capture the world lightweight title in California. It was the highlight of Wolgast’s career in which he was involved in too many ferocious fights. In 1927 Wolgast – known as the Michigan Wildcat – was committed to a sanitarium for many years because he had become punch drunk.
Lloyd Honeyghan cheekily bumped off Johnny Bumphus when he bolted from his corner at the start of the second round to floor the startled American, who had not finished rising from his stool, with a left hook. “The bell went ding and I went dong,” Honeyghan said. Honeyghan was deducted a point for his fast start, but moments later the Londoner finished the job on a dazed Bumphus. It led to the introduction of the ten second warning to allow fighters and corners to prepare for the start of a round.
Eric Boon and Arthur Danahar put on a thrilling show for the cameras at the Harringay Arena. It was the first publicly screened bout in Britain with cinemas showing it live. It was also the first fight the BBC televised and viewers were not left disappointed as both visited the canvas before Boon, known as the Fen Tiger, triumphed in the 14th round in defence of his British lightweight title. Boon got £3,000 for his night’s work.
Roberto Duran earned a close 12-round decision over Iran Barkley to become a four-weight world champion aged 37 and 22 years after his professional debut. After defeats to Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler, Duran returned to form to earn a split points decision. Barkley, who won the WBC middleweight title off Hearns, was staggered in the first round by an overhand right. The American then struggled to find his corner after being floored in the 11th round. Barkley could hardly see out of a swollen left eye and was caught by two overhand rights in succession. It swung the fight Duran’s way. “I am like a bottle of wine,” Duran said. “The older I get, the better I get.”
Nigel Benn-Gerald McClellan was savagely thrilling but, more than anything, it was sickening as the loser suffered life-changing injuries. McClellan was widely tipped to win and silenced the home crowd when he knocked Londoner Benn through the ropes in the opening round. It is disputed how long Benn took to get back in the ring, but he survived the early storm. Benn had to drag himself off the canvas again in the eighth, after sinking to his knees following shots to the head and belly, before overwhelming the American in the tenth to defend his WBC super-middleweight title for the seventh time. McClellan suffered brain damage from injuries sustained in the fight, needing around the clock care thereafter. “I can’t say it was my best fight because he came out in a wheelchair, blind and 80 per cent deaf,” said Benn.
Lionel Rose was only 19 when he became the first Aboriginal boxer to win a world title after he outpointed local hero Fighting Harada by scores of 71-72, 70-72 and 69-72 in Tokyo. Australian Rose was a replacement opponent and lost the WBC-WBA world bantamweight titles the following year.
Tiger Flowers pulled off an upset when he tamed the rough brawler Harry Greb over 15 rounds, earning the points decision and the world middleweight title at Madison Square Garden. Flowers, from Georgia, became the first black boxer since heavyweight Jack Johnson to hold a world title. In the 11 years since the end of Johnson’s reign, black fighters had been blocked from fighting for world titles. Flowers was such a religious man that he recited passages from Psalm 144 before every fight and even brought the Bible into the ring before facing Greb, who enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle. Flowers beat Greb in a rematch later in the year but died aged 34 in 1927 following an operation to remove scar tissue from around his eyes. Greb also died following surgery on a nose injury in 1926.
World bantamweight champion Harry Forbes was successful on this day two years in succession, winning points decisions over Tommy Feltzj in 1902 and then Andrew Tokell a year later. Irish-American Forbes’s reign was ended later in 1903 when he was knocked out by Frankie Neil.
Ezzard Charles’s unanimous 15-round split decision over Joey Maxim earned him a crack at a version (NBA) of the world heavyweight title and a year later he would face undisputed champion Joe Louis. Charles was Maxim’s nemesis: this was one of five victories for Charles over Maxim, whose real name was Giuseppe Berardinelli. But Maxim, who was renamed after the Maxim machine gun because of his quick jabs, travelled to London the following year to beat Freddie Mills for the world light-heavyweight crown.
Juan Manuel Marquez silenced Juan Diaz’s home crowd in Texas with a ninth round stoppage as he continued his remarkable run of winning world titles at different divisions. Marquez, who would win world title belts in four divisions, captured the vacant WBO and WBA light-welterweight belts for dismantling Diaz in the ninth round. Diaz, cut in round eight, was leading on two of the judges’ scorecards when a sharp combination dropped him in the ninth. He bravely got up but Mexican Marquez followed up with a right uppercut to finish.
A month after his 18th birthday, glamorous Georges Carpentier won the European middleweight title when he knocked out Londoner Jim Sullivan in the second round in Monte Carlo. The Frenchman had previously campaigned at welterweight and this win boosted his popular image around Europe. Despite being smeared in blood by the end, Carpentier was mobbed by women who accounted for half the crowd at the Stand de la Condamine. Two years later, Carpentier’s career was put on hold until 1919 while he served as a low-flying observation pilot in the French air force during the First World War, which earned him two of the highest French military honours. After having his first paid bout aged 13, Carpentier – known as The Orchid Man – boxed in every division from flyweight to heavyweight, winning the world light-heavyweight title in 1920, and France has not had a boxing hero of his like since.