What I watched: The November 1, 1950 boxing match between then-NBA featherweight champion Sandy Saddler and Charlie Riley. The bout was broadcast live on CBS as part of the Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts series, and is available to view on YouTube.
Starring: At 24 Sandy Saddler was at the peak of his powers as a boxer. Known for his surprising punching power, Saddler was thrust to fame in 1948 when he became the first man to ever knock out legendary slick boxer Willie Pep. The two had fought two more times after that, trading wins, with Saddler losing and regaining the unified featherweight belt, as well as picking up the NBA super featherweight title along the way. Like Ezzard Charles, Saddler would never be as famous or well-liked as the man he took the title off him, but he was a great boxer in his own right.
Charlie Riley was a comparative unknown, but was popular in St. Louis, where a majority of his fights took place. He had racked up a record of 56-13-2, including his own world title match against Pep earlier in the year, where he was knocked out in the fifth round. This would be another, perhaps his last, brush with the sport’s true elite.
What happened: The fight took place in Riley’s hometown of St. Louis. Riley was aggressive out of the gates, attacking Saddler’s body in the first two rounds as well. Saddler got his share of shots in too in these rounds, including busting up but it was a far more competitive and exciting fact than the commentators and spectators were expecting.
In the remaining eight rounds, Saddler turned to his defense and veteran gamesmanship to regain control of the fight. The action fell into a familiar pattern of Riley pushing forward and sometimes landing, followed by Saddler clinching and punishing him with shots and uppercuts. The judges (and referee) weighed in with a majority decision for Saddler. After the bout, the announcer interviewed both fighters and put over their tenacity, as well as the PBR sponsorship.
(I originally wrote up a much more detailed, blow-by-blow summary, but the computer ate it. Maybe a short summary is more readable anyway.)
What I thought: Most of the boxing matches that have popped up as part of this project have been preserved for their historical importance (mostly the final matches of Joe Louis’s legendary career.) This fight, however, is not all that historically significant, but has still been preserved (the YouTube video is a rip from ESPN Classics) for one reason: it’s a great fight.
The highlights are the first two rounds, where Riley takes it to the champ and the fists are flying furiously, but even the latter eight rounds where Saddler uses a somewhat more negative style keep up a fairly high rate of action. It’s the archetypal boxing narrative: the local hero pushes the champion hard, but ultimately falls just short in the end. It’s Rocky in St. Louis.
One thing that might be confusing to modern fans is not the fact that a world champion was facing a regional-level fighter (this happens often enough in the modern sport) but that this was a non-title, ten round bout. This was actually fairly common for high-level boxers in this era, who fought frequently and often did so as more of an exhibition for the local crowd than to put together a match that would interest the world.
This was already Saddler’s thirteenth match of 1950, and he would fight one more before the year was out. Only two of these fights had were for one of the two world titles that Saddler currently held. He even felt on consecutive weeks on two occasions. Nor was this year an outlier: this was Saddler’s 126th fight, and he only debuted in 1946. For boxers in this era, the goal was to make as much money as possible in a short period of time, and no one was exactly worried about CTE.
When you fight this often, avoiding damage becomes more of a priority than inflicting it. Hence skilled boxers often developed a defense-first style, and this fight shows Saddler applying these dark arts in the later rounds: a lot of clinching, punching on the break, and maintaining distance. This style is even used by a lot of boxers today, who fight far less frequently and for far greater paydays. But, as Riley’s efforts demonstrate, an aggressive puncher challenging a defensive boxer can still make for a tremendously exciting match.
Sports on TV: It’s been a while since we did one of these! The most watched and important sporting event in the fall of 1950 was of course the World Series, in which the AL champion Yankees swept the NL’s Phillies 4-0. The individual games were closer than the overall series, with three decided by one run, but the sweep contributed to the sense of Casey Stengel’s Yankees being utterly dominant. Full games aren’t available, but you can watch a half-hour highlight movie on YouTube.
What else was on: The network competition was fairly weak in this late Wednesday timeslot. DuMont aired the quiz show version of Broadway to Hollywood, while ABC featured a two-hour block of wrestling from Chicago (some of which we’ll get back to in a little while.) NBC ran the game show Break the Bank and the anthology series Stars Over Hollywood. On New York local TV, WOR aired its own boxing telecast, with amateur bouts from Ridgewood Grove, and WPIX aired the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden, which was seemingly quite a big event at the time. Without having actually seen the other shows, Blue Ribbon Bouts feels like a clear winner.
Coming up next: Ollie has yet another new profession on Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.
The Eternal Couch Potato 