What I watched: Footage of the National Boxing Association heavyweight title fight between champion Ezzard Charles and challenger Pat Valentino. The fight took place on October 14, 1949. I’m not entirely sure when or where this fight would have been broadcast. San Francisco had television since December 1948 in the form of CBS affiliate KPIX and ABC network KGO, and it’s also possible that KTLA or another California region station would have had a live broadcast. Hey, look, I wanted to write about boxing. Film of the fight is available on YouTube.
What happened: Since our last visit to the world of boxing, way back at the beginning of this long journey, Joe Louis had retired and vacated the heavyweight title. The National Boxing Association had sanctioned a bout between our old friend “Jersey” Joe Louis and light heavyweight contender Ezzard Charles for their version of the vacant crown. On June 22, Charles beat Walcott by decision to win the belt in Chicago, and defended it against Gus Lesnevich at Yankee Stadium in August. At 28 years old and on a 33 match winning streak, “The Cincinnati Cobra” seemed like he could be on top of the heavyweight division for a long time.
Pat Valentino was a Bay Area regional hero, his career mostly taking place on an entirely different scale than that of Charles. He had engaged in back-and-forth series of fights with other California scene staples like Tony Bosnich and a man named Turkey Thompson. He had taken the fight on four weeks’ notice, while suffering from a persistent eye injury. Needless to say, pundits didn’t expect him to stand a chance. (See this article for more on Valentino’s remarkable life.)
The film opens with an interview with Joe Louis, who talks slowly and noncommittally before eventually mentioning that he wants to do exhibition matches to raise funds for his boxing club. The two men enter the ring at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, with hometown challenger Valentino obviously being the crowd favourite, and wearing a sweet robe.
At the bell, the two go into a clinch almost instantaneously, a position they will spend much of the fight in. By my accounting, Charles wins round 1 by the virtue of some digging body work, but Valentino did have some success. Round 2 is much more hell-for-leather, with both guys throwing some winging punches to the head. Valentino is the aggressor, but Charles catches him with a nice counter that makes him stumble. The third round is more of the same, with Charles playing the role of matador easily.
By round four, Valentino is starting to show signs of damage. His movements forward lack their previous energy, and as he trundles Charles catches him with multiple countershots. As we come to the seventh round, Valentino’s offense has diminished to the occasional exploratory jab. He doesn’t look like a guy that could possibly last the fifteen-round distance. In round eight Valentino comes out with a bit more vigour, but it proves to be a last gasp. Charles knocks him down with a left hook, and Valentino milks the count for all it’s worth before attempting to get up and failing.
It wasn’t even a particularly brutal shot — it would seem that Valentino was knocked out by attrition more than anything else. All three judges had the challenger ahead at the time of the knockout. (Maybe they were seeing something I wasn’t.) Ezzard Charles retains his title. In a post-fight interview with a couple homers, Valentino apologizes to the crowd for losing. As best as I can tell, the victorious Charles is not given a chance to speak.
What I thought: Hey, remember how I wrote about boxing at the very beginning of this blog? Unfortunately, as footage of scripted television becomes more plentiful in 1949, footage of sports does not. For boxing in particular, this was a transition period from the Louis/Schmeling era of great heavyweight draws to the prime of lighter-weight fighters like Sugar Ray Robinson that would capture fighting fans’ attention. The events of the late 40s left little impact on the memory of boxing fans, and so relatively little it has been preserved. Despite that, there are good fights and good fighters to be found in the postwar period.
This is one such hidden gem, a really entertaining and surprisingly competitive heavyweight fight, at least for the opening three rounds or so. Valentino, fighting on short notice with a bad eye and all of the odds against him, came out with a huge burst of offense to start the fight, and seemed to genuinely bother the champion. This surge also allowed Charles to show what he was capable of, namely stunning counter shots. It was a firefight that holds up to the spectator’s eye much better than the plodding fights of the late-career Joe Louis we saw earlier. Charles and to a lesser extent Valentino look like modern heavyweight boxers, relatively small men (both spent a good part of their career at light heavyweight) who rely on footwork and technique.
Ezzard Charles was never near as popular as Joe Louis was. (You can count on one hand the boxers that were, and still have a couple fingers left over.) In this fight we can see Charles using what was colloquially known as “black style”, involving a lot of slick movement, conservative counterpunching, and judicious use of the clinch. This style was associated with African-American boxers because they often found themselves at a disadvantage, having to fight for less money than their white counterparts (and hence having to fight more frequently) and often in front of hostile crowds and biased judges. This style was a way to get through frequent fights without taking a lot of damage. Today we can still see it used in some form by African-American boxers like Floyd Mayweather, even if they don’t face the conditions which originally honed the style.
In comparison to other American sports, boxing was racially progressive: it had been integrated for decades, and Joe Louis was nationally beloved by men of all races. But black boxers still had to work twice as hard to earn half as much. In this film, we can see Charles lustily booed as he entered the ring. Part of that is likely due to him facing a hometown favourite, but the racial dynamics of the fight undoubtedly heightened the crowd’s emotional reaction and the way he was treated post-fight. Not everyone got to be Joe Louis.
Speaking of the Bronze Bomber, he hangs over this fight like a dark cloud. Having never lost the title in the ring, the question for many fans was when, not if, Louis would return to get his belt back. Charles may have been seen as a mere placeholder. The film even opens with an interview with Louis, currently on an exhibition tour: he was still the fighter who American audiences really wanted to see.
Interestingly, both men would end up fighting Louis within a year of this bout. Valentino, who had already lost sight in his right eye due to his fight with Charles, would get a big payday to take on the former champion in an “exhibition” that was really a brutal mugging. Louis would eventually come out of official retirement to face Charles for the belt he had never lost, offering the new champ an opportunity to prove he was really the best in the world. But that’s a story for another time.
Coming up next: On The Life of Riley, the titular dad realizes that his son sucks.
The Eternal Couch Potato 