Main impact Anthony Joshua vs. Jake Paul is obvious: the belief that this is a fight Paul has no chance of winning.
Still, there have been many mismatches in heavyweight history. A long list of heavyweights entered the ring when they had no chance of winning. In this sense, Joshua vs. Paul is no different from previous events, except that there is quite a lot of interest in this topic. What about those hopeless heavyweights?
Without hope. It’s too harsh a term, and yet it was used in many heavyweight fights. And sometimes, if rarely, a heavyweight with zero chance of winning can actually deliver a performance that becomes that fighter’s moment of greatness. The obvious example here is Chuck Wepner.
Certainly no one gave Wepner any chance against Muhammad Ali when they met in Cleveland in March 1975. Wepner actually had credentials. For example, he was ranked in the top 10 in the world and had won his last eight fights, which included overcoming a loss to Fresh Jersey rival Randy Neumann and then winning the rubber match. He also won a 12-round decision over former WBA champion (and Ali’s ancient rival) Ernie Terrell.
But Wepner now met in Ali one of the greatest heavyweights of all time – many would say the greatest. Just five months earlier, Ali had knocked out George Foreman in the Rumble In The Jungle.
The American press was critical of Monday’s Ali vs. Wepner scandal. This was considered a ridiculous mismatch. However, Wepner largely made his critics eat their words, lasting until the 15th and final round and even taking credit for the ninth-round knockout – although he did step on Ali’s foot. (Chuck, God bless him, insisted the knockdown was real.)
“Chuck Wepner’s Monday night was no joke,” wrote Dave Anderson in the Fresh York Times. “Chuck Wepner justified his existence as a sustainable, if not artistic, contender.”
Wepner played extremely. He needed only 19 seconds to cover the distance. “No one will laugh at Chuck Wepner anymore,” Anderson wrote.
Neither do they. Wepner’s courageous stance was the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone’s character in the Rocky films.
Chuck even received financial compensation (an undisclosed amount) when he filed a lawsuit against Stallone over the film’s underdog being based on Chuck’s real-life experiences.
So it was a case of a challenger deemed hopeless emerging from the fight a winner in life, though not in the ring. What about some of the others?
Tom McNeeley and his son Peter had no hope in heavyweight fights 34 years apart. Tom lost in four rounds to Floyd Patterson in a title fight in December 1961, and Peter suffered a first-round shellac attack against Mike Tyson in August 1995.
Patterson was a 1/10 favorite going into his fight with McNeeley père at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
McNeeley, whose 23-0 record was built largely against opponents with little pugilistic merit, touted a great fight, telling the press that he would knock out Patterson within six rounds.
“I’m going after him,” McNeeley said. – He won’t have to look for me.
Well, McNeeley was right when he said the fight wouldn’t go six rounds. BoxRec notes that McNeeley fell 11 times. I counted nine knockdowns, including a fourth-round countout, but referee Jersey Joe Walcott seemed to miss a few – I think things were moving a little too brisk for the ancient heavyweight champion.
There was even a point in the fourth round when Patterson appeared to have landed after McNeeley landed a left hook. The YouTube video shows that referee Walcott didn’t count to eight, but I would call that a knockdown. There was no doubt that Floyd had been hit.
“The Master is injured!” – exclaimed commentator Chris Schenkel.
So Tom McNeeley was beaten, but not disgraced, as the saying goes.
As for Peter’s son, well, he was basically handed to Tyson on a platter during Iron Mike’s return to the ring after his imprisonment and four-year hiatus. I was ringside for this event at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Showtime TV analyst and former champion Bobby Czyz predicted Tyson to win in the first round. (I think Bobby actually said it was “impossible” for the fight to go beyond the opening round.)
McNeeley came out swinging, got nailed and it was all over in a minute and 29 seconds – officially a disqualification as McNeeley’s handlers entered the ring mid-round, but all in all it was a TKO in all but name as they were saving their man.
On the same night as Patterson vs. McNeeley, in a closed-circuit double-header (spectators at each event could watch the other’s fight on four-sided screens that were lowered for the purpose), another heavyweight fight took place – this time as substantial as anyone could imagine – between future champion Sonny Liston, then the No. 1 contender and champion-in-waiting, and German Albert Westphal in Philadelphia.
Westphal was a former German champion, but he was a diminutive heavyweight, only 5-foot-8, who was stopped four times in his 24-8-3 record.
Destitute Westphal tried to move around the ring, throwing sneaky punches and getting on his bike right away, but the patient Liston followed him, knowing it was only a matter of time before he caught him.
Sure enough, a quick one-two knocked Westphal face down, and it was counted out after a minute and 58 seconds.
Joe Frazier has had so many wars that he could be forgiven for a few straightforward touches. One of them occurred when he defended the heavyweight title against local slugger Dave Zyglewicz on April 22, 1969 in Houston.
Zyglewicz had a decent record (28-1, 15 KOs) and defeated several once-solid but now overshadowed fighters. However, in one of only three fights outside of Texas, he suffered a decision loss to boxer Sam Wyatt (record 6-7-2) in Los Angeles just a year before meeting Smokin’ Joe.
As expected, Frazier outpointed Zyglewicz in the first round. Zyglewicz claimed he never went down, but Frazier dropped him twice with left hooks and won in a minute and 36 seconds.
However, Zyglewicz gave it a chance. “Both fighters came out with a slingshot, carrying the skin with them,” the AP reported.
But when Frazier landed a left hook, it was almost over, although Zyglewicz survived the first of two knockdowns.
Frazier was as nice as he could be to Zyglewicz in his later comments to the press: “He was full of heart and came to fight.”
In June 1987, Frank Bruno faced a woefully inadequate opponent in Chuck Gardner, a immense man with a shaved head from Minnesota.
This was Bruno’s second fight following his knockout loss to Tim Witherspoon in the first of Large Frank’s heavyweight title fights, and the fight took place in Cannes, site of the famed film festival. Harry Carpenter told BBC viewers: “This is a fight Bruno has to win.”
However, Bruno’s camp knew this and Gardner was chosen for a reason – which was to give Bruno a knockout victory. This goal was achieved, but unfortunately the fight was a farce. Gardner looked terrible even before Bruno landed the punch.
“It really looks ancient,” Carpenter said. “Even the hair is gray.”
Bruno landed just one punch on any note, a left hook, and Gardner went down in a heap.
“It only took one not-so-lethal blow from Bruno to put him down,” Carpenter said in a disgusted tone. “This man had no chance. He shouldn’t have appeared in the ring.”
No, he shouldn’t have, but there have been plenty of heavyweights who really shouldn’t have been in the ring against infinitely better opponents.
Take, for example, Johnny Paychek, the Chicago heavyweight who faced the great Joe Louis for the title in 1940 at Madison Square Garden.
Paychek had an extensive record of 44-4-2, 28 KOs. Writer Jack Cuddy called him “a light-skinned, half-bald guy who claims to be 25.”
Paychek attended college for a year and, according to Cuddy, “brought several best-selling volumes of fiction and nonfiction with him” to boot camp in Pompton, Fresh Jersey.
But the “Illinois intellectual,” as Cuddy called him, was a 10/1 underdog (today the odds would be more like 35/1), with a 1/2 chance that Louis would win within five rounds.
As it turned out, the fight lasted only two rounds.
“It didn’t even look like a fight,” the AP reported. Paychek lost three times in the first round, and Louis finished the fight after 44 seconds of the second round.
I could go on and on, but you get the point: there were a lot of mismatches in the heavyweight fights. Jake Paul couldn’t do any worse than some of those who came before him. Anything better – say, a Chuck Wepner or Tom McNeeley-style “magic moment” – will be a bonus.
