Even when the odds were stacked against him, Sugar Ray Leonard was a late finisher. | Photo: The Ring Magazine/Getty
A puncher’s chance.
September means different things to different people. It’s back-to-school time for students and teachers, the stretch drive for baseball pennants, the start of a new season and the promise of all that entails in football. But, from the unique perspective of boxing history, it is the month perhaps most associated with the fulfillment of impossible dreams, when pugilistic Cinderellas, through battered eyes, see bloody pumpkins transformed into gilded carriages.
Three of the most memorable late turnarounds in ring annals took place in the ninth month of the calendar year, and all are properly celebrated as classic bouts to be stored away in fans’ memories like cherished heirlooms. And for those too young to have witnessed these keepsake moments in person or on television, well, YouTube is always available to make the past come alive.
Sept. 13, 1950:
Jake LaMotta KO15 Laurent Dauthuille
LaMotta was no one’s idea of a slickster, and there was always the possibility that a boxer with more polished skills would serve as the matador to parry the crude rushes of a man known as “The Bronx Bull.” Dauthuille, a Frenchman who lived in Paris and was more than comfortable in Parisian café society, had already frustrated and defeated the wild man from the Lower East Side of New York City, winning a 10-round unanimous decision on Feb. 21, 1949, in Montreal.
It appeared that the rematch in Detroit’s Olympia Stadium, with LaMotta’s middleweight championship on the line, would be more of the same, with the quicker, more mobile Dauthuille -- who also had a colorful nickname, “The Tarzan of Buzenval,” that rivaled LaMotta’s -- rolling up a points lead by sticking and moving when it suited his purpose, and standing and trading at other times, scoring with combinations before skipping out of harm’s way. Through 14 rounds, with a five-point-must scoring system in place, Dauthuille led on the scorecards by seemingly insurmountable margins of 72-68, 74-66 and 71-69.
Before the beginning of the 15th and final round, LaMotta’s corner told him in no uncertain terms that, to win, he’d have to “knock the Frog out.”
That the Raging Bull would try to do just that was no surprise; that Dauthuille’s handlers advised him to carry the fight right to LaMotta was. Maybe the feeling in the challenger’s corner was that the French Tarzan could put an exclamation point on his all-but-certain victory by knocking out a man who, despite being only 29, had a lot of hard miles on his boxing odometer.
LaMotta, who often feigned fatigue or wooziness to lure opponents in, again gave the impression of a fighter in peril. An eager Dauthuille obliged him by coming forward, and, with less than a minute left before the final bell, he was greeted with a ripping left hook that badly shook him. Dauthuille staggered backward and LaMotta, instantly invigorated, tore into him with a fusillade of ferocious punches, knocking him onto the bottom strand of the ring ropes where he was counted out by referee Lou Handler after an elapsed time of 2:47.
The Ring magazine deservedly cited LaMotta-Dauthuille II as 1950’s Fight of the Year.
Sept. 16, 1981:
Sugar Ray Leonard TKO14 Thomas Hearns
Thirty-four years before another perceived welterweight unification showdown which pitted Floyd Mayweather Jr. against Manny Pacquiao, WBC 147-pound champion Sugar Ray Leonard (30-1, 26 KOs) took on WBA titlist Thomas Hearns (32-0, 30 KOs) in a fight that was long on expectations and delivered on all of them. This was a matchup of supremely gifted fighters in the full bloom of their primes, and eager to demonstrate to the world which one was more deserving of being hailed as the best of the best, at Caesars Palace Outdoor Arena, in Las Vegas, Nev.
The consensus going into the bout was that the taller, rangier and presumably harder-hitting Hearns, a slight (6½-to-5) favorite, would try to bomb out Leonard, who was more of a stylist, though also packed some appreciable pop. But that script never materialized, with Hearns opting to use his superior reach (78 inches, inordinately long for a welterweight) to jab and circle, building a lead in the process.
After 12 rounds, Leonard’s trainer, motivational master Angelo Dundee, told his fighter, “You’re blowing it, son! You’re blowing it!” Perhaps Dundee’s exhortation served as a wakeup call, or maybe Leonard, his left eye nearly swollen shut, had already come to the conclusion that, like LaMotta against Dauthuille, he was going to have to fish something big out of his trick bag, and quickly.
Leonard had turned the fight around in the 13th round, flooring Hearns, who barely beat the count and was saved by the bell. But the one-minute rest period between rounds did not provide the “Motor City Cobra” with nearly enough recuperation time, and Leonard came out for the 14th with the idea of finishing what he had so recently started. Sugar Ray was landing everything he threw as Hearns, who stubbornly refused to go down, lay defenseless against the ropes. Referee Davey Pearl had no choice but to step in and wave things off at the 1:45 mark (Leonard trailed 125-122, 125-121, and 124-122 on the scorecards at the time). Just like that, Leonard, a 1976 Olympic gold medalist who had been dismissed by some as a pretty boy who lacked true grit, had established himself as a fighter not only of his time, but for the ages.
As was the case with LaMotta-Dauthuille, Leonard-Hearns also was selected as Fight of the Year by The Ring, as is the case with the next instance of late lightning caught in a bottle. That would be …
Sept. 23, 1952:
Rocky Marciano KO13 Jersey Joe Walcott
Walcott, after having failed in three previous bids for the heavyweight crown, and at the advanced age of 37, had finally made it to the top of the mountain by landing what many considered to be the most exquisite punch in history to that point, a walk-in left uppercut to the chin of champion Ezzard Charles that sent Charles crashing, face-first, to the canvas.
Despite being a 9-to-5 underdog in his second title defense, against the undefeated (43-0, with 38 KOs) Marciano, Walcott figured he was too cagey for the 29-year-old challenger, and he also believed he could hit just as hard.
“He can’t fight,” Walcott had said of Marciano before the bout in Philadelphia’s Municipal Stadium. “If I don’t whip him, take my name out of the record books.”
For much of the evening, it appeared Walcott was going to make good on his vow to retain the title. He scored a flash knockdown in the opening minute of the first round, the first time Marciano had been decked, and by the middle rounds he had opened a large gash on the top of Marciano’s head as well as cutting him over the right eye. But Walcott was sustaining damage as well, a cut over his left eye that would take eight stitches to close.
Marciano was a devastating body puncher, having stated frequently his philosophy that “if you kill the body, the head will die.” Heading into the 13th round, he had tenderized Walcott’s rib cage to such an extent that the champion was lowering his arms little by little to protect his bruised innards.
“How am I doing?” Marciano asked his trainer and longtime friend, Allie Colombo, before going out for Round 13.
“You’re losing,” Colombo answered. “You’ll have to knock him out.”
Colombo was correct; through 12, Walcott led in scoring by rounds by margins of 8-4, 7-4-1 and 7-5.
But Marciano’s not-so-secret weapon was his short overhand right, which he called “Suzie Q,” and this time he delivered it with the force of a runaway train, the blow traveling no more than six inches. It caught Walcott flush on the side of the face, transforming it into a mask of agony. Down Walcott went onto one knee, an arm draped over the middle rope, not fully prone but nonetheless out cold.
What are the common links between all of the aforementioned fights? Well, they were all voted Fight of the Year in what presumably was landslide balloting. All three endings came past today’s 12-round limit for championship fights, leaving traditionalists -- there are a few of us left -- to wonder how many of boxing’s greatest fights of the more recent past might have turned out differently were it not for the shortening of title bouts.
Oh, and they all served to remind us that boxing, unlike other sports, can allow a competitor who appears to be hopelessly behind to turn the tables with the landing of a single well-placed blow.
Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.