September 23rd, 1952
Philadelphia Stadium
40,379 spectators
$504,645 Paid attendance
In what has often been called the greatest title fight of all time, Jersey Joe Walcott defended his title against Rocky Marciano. The odds favored Marciano, yet Jersey Joe was used to beating the odds. As a 5-1 underdog, he took the title from Ezzard Charles on July 18th, 1951 with a surprising knockout of Charles, who had beat him twice before. Since, he had successfully defended against Charles.
Known for his famous "sucker punch", he had dropped the great Joe Louis in losing a controversial decision, then with the same punch knocked cold Ezzard Charles.
Marciano felt the power of Walcott in the very first round as he caught him twice with his deadly left hook, dropping the challenger for the first time in his career. Unlike Ezzard Charles, Rocky was up at the count of three.
What followed were 12 rounds of war between two great, determined fighters. Walcott's title was safely secured on points when, in the fateful 13th round, Rocky landed one of the mightest punches in the history of boxing.
From * The Ring Magazine * December 1952
It wasn’t so much old age that beat Jersey Joe. It wasn’t a decrepit old man who faced the Brockton Block Buster. Walcott put up one of the best fights of his long career, a most remarkable one. Had he not been up against the ropes when the mighty crash felled him, he might have carried on to win the nod of the three officials. It was a miscalculation of a trick he often had used to good advantage that cost him the fight. With back against the ropes, he shifted his body in an effort to baffle his opponent, and that movement brought him in direct line for the right that put him away.
It was truly a great and grueling fight. Almost until the final blow was struck, the ageless cutie from Camden, N.J., was as dangerous an opponent as was the challenger. Walcott had repeatedly thrilled the spectators, his own partisan rooters, and the Massachusett's adherents by trading punches with his younger and powerful rival.
At times when he tired, he used his backward style to advantage but when stung by a hard punch, he sailed right in and then it was a matter of give-and-take. Joe scored the only knockdown prior to the kayo. That came in the opening round when he floored Rocky with a hard left to the jaw for a count of three.
Besides surviving the three count knockdown, he suffered several other indignities, among them a deep gash on the bridge of his nose that required four stitches and a scalp wound that covered his face with claret.
Walcott sustained an inch and a half cut over his left eye.
Marciano will have to do considerably more than he did against Jersey Joe to reach the Dempsey heights. But this much must be said for the Brockton fighter-he is the only pugilist of the past three decades with a one-punch knockout blow.
A less hardy battler might have been put away in the opening round. In that session Jersey Joe handed his unschooled opponent a severe shellacking but there was no stopping the Brockton Block Buster. The punch that downed Rocky was probably responsible for the fighting spirit he displayed thereafter. He seemed bent on avenging that indignity and on several occasions it seemed that he would succeed via the kayo route.
While Charley Daggert kept counting over the fallen champion, there was never a twitch from Walcott as he lay crumpled on the canvas. The spectators looked on in awe. Many feared that old Jersey Joe had been fatally injured, so tense was his body.
From * Boxing Illustrated* December 1963
Jersey Joe Walcott felt the awesome impact of that blow when Rocky toppled him from the throne in the 13th round of a brutal fight laced with blood.
Up to that dramatic point, the ancient warrior - fighting the craftiest and most aggressive fight of his career - slipped, weaved, feinted and sucked Marciano into openings for his own assaults.
Except for one crushing right to the jaw in the 10th round, Rocky had been unable to land a solid punch. And as he stalked the wily champion, battering his arms and body with sledge-hammer blows, he bled from eye cuts and a deep, ugly gash on the bridge of the nose.
The Brockton mauler had luckily survived a round one knockdown, the first of his career, only to fall hopelessly behind on points. He knew he was losing. And one thought kept burning through his mind: "I've got to kayo him to win. Just one solid shot-that's all I need."
But Rocky needed a miracle at that stage. All Walcott had to do was stay away from him, coast for the next three rounds. He had a firm lead on all the official scorecards. He was about to snap Rocky's string of 37 knockouts in 42 straight wins.
And then, with explosive suddenness, the miracle happened. As Jersey Joe faded against the ropes, trying to suck in Marciano, the Rock loosed a shattering right to the jaw. The 40,379 fans in Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium gaped in stunned disbelief as champion Walcott slumped to the canvas.
One sportswriter captured the scene in these words: "You could see his body quiver with the shock. His lips, cheeks, nose and eyes all seemed to shake loose and run together like blobs of wet mud. Then he sank slowly, painfully, pathetically. When he fluttered to the canvas, he had no more life than a rag doll."
Walcott himself put it more succinctly: "Soon as it landed, the lights went out…"
From * Sports Illustrated* September 1955* Archie Moore on why Walcott lost:
"Everything in boxing is rhythm. Look at Joe Walcott. Walcott made the unforgivable error, a man had been in the ring as long as he has. He come out in the first round, he thought Marciano would be burnin' leather. Marciano not such a fast starter. They come out like this [bending and looking up]. Walcott just hit him in the mouth. Hit him in the face [accompanied by the motion of a short left hook. Marciano was knocked down at this point for the first time in his career].
"Walcott, you could see his chest swell five inches. He just turned around and walked away. He turned his back. That's where he lost his man right there.
"Man been in the ring long as Walcott and me, he knows where the ropes is. He knows where the corner is. He don't have to turn around. Walcott turned his back, then went over to the ropes thinkin' he just wait for the man to count him out. He swung around again. [Moore spread his arms in the posture of a man resting outstretched arms on the top strand of the ring ropes, then jumped to indicate surprise.]
Man was on his feet. Marciano didn't take a count. Got right up.
"Walcott should have been backin' up this way. [Moore did a kind of crab-wise retreat, dropping the right foot back, then sliding the left foot back, always on balance and eyes always on the imaginary spot where Marciano had fallen.] Backin' up. Backin' up. He should have been countin' the number of steps to his corner and countin' the exact number of steps it would take to get back to the man. And he should have been thinkin' about what punch he was goin' to hit him with when he got up. But he looked, jumped. He lost his rhythm right there. He was out of the rhythm of his fight."
The scorecards at the time of the knockout read:
Referee Taggert WMWMMMWWWEWW
Walcott leading by a score of 7-4-1
Judge Tomacso WWMWMMWWMMWW
Walcott leading by 7-5
Judge Clayton WWMMMWWWMWWW
Walcott in the lead 8-4
Blind Courage
Sometimes overlooked is the fact that Rocky was blind for several of the middle rounds of the fight, similar to the way Ali was blinded in his first fight with Liston.
In the 6th round the combatants had collided heads opening a cut atop Rocky's head. His corner put medication on the wound to stop the bleeding, and possibly it was this that ran down into his eyes. Others at ringside felt Walcott's people had put something on Walcott's gloves or shoulder to blind Marciano.
At the end of the 6th round, Rocky told Columbo, "There's something in my eyes. They're burning."
When he came to his corner after the 7th round, Marciano said, "My eyes are getting worse. Do something! I can't see!"
"We suspected it was some kind of medication used on Walcott," Allie Columbo said. "But we didn't know what to do about it. We just kept trying to wash the stuff out of his eyes, but they seemed to be getting worse all the time."
"What're they doing? What're they doin' to Rocky?" Al Weill yelled at the referee. Then referring to Walcott he demanded, "Check his gloves, check his gloves! They've got something on his gloves!"
"It seemed like Walcott had some stuff between his neck and shoulder where I rested my head when we got in close. Every time we came together, my eyes would start smarting again," Rocky later said.
But promoter Sam Silverman said, "They blinded him in his own corner. I was sitting ringside, right next to them. I think it was poor work, a mistake by his own handlers, that blinded Rocky. Whatever they used on his head got into his eyes."
Whatever the source, Marciano was almost completely blind for three rounds and took a terrible beating.
"Walcott had the legs of a twenty-year-old," Silverman said. "He was having the best fight of his career. He must've put Rocky into two hundred head-on collisions. It was one of the worst lickings I ever seen a guy get...The poor kid couldn't see. He was getting the shit punched out of him."
"What's happening to your pal?" a reporter asked Rocky's friend Nicky Sylvester.
"What do you think is happening? He's getting his brains knocked out!"
"I'll never forget it," Izzy Gold, another friend of Rocky's said, "Rocky was taking a helluva pounding."
Marciano couldn't see Walcott's punches at all and had no chance to block the incoming blows. Dozens of Jersey Joe's hardest punches landed with devastating accuracy against an almost defenseless Marciano. Any other fighter would have clinched or covered up and backed away, but Rocky knew only one style; always go forward, always attack.
"Marciano kept on coming. Possessed by something too intense for description - determination, killer instinct, courage - all of these and something more." Everett M. Skehan—Rocky Marciano, Biography of a First Son.
Rocky would later say, "I couldn’t see Walcott at all...couldn’t see the punches coming. The only time I felt safe was when we were touching, so I kept following after him to get in close."
In "Who Was the Greatest", Richard B. Stockton wrote, "He was almost helpless and Walcott opened up in an effort to end the fight. Rocky took a beating in those rounds, but plodded on..."
It was one of the most amazing displays of courage and relentless determination ever shown in the ring.
Finally, in the 10th round, Rocky's eyes began clearing up and he went after Walcott in a fury. Walcott began jabbing and backing away. If he couldn't stop a blinded Marciano he would have to be content with a decision victory.
Walcott would later say, "If there was something in his eyes, it had to be medication."
Marciano said, "He was too wrapped up in the fight. You don't notice what your handlers are doing to you between rounds, you're too busy concentrating on the fight. They could have put it there and Joe never would have known. He was too great a champion to go along with something like that. They wouldn't tell him. But somebody did it, because I know what was happening to my eyes."
"Rocky believed he was blinded intentionally until the day he died," Peter Marciano said.
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