ONE OF the most compelling things about a boxing match is that when a puncher is in the ring, a fight really is never over until it’s over.
Fabio Wardley demonstrated that when, well behind on the scorecards, he found one big right hand to blast out Justis Huni in the 10th round last June.
We’ve seen it time and again. One punch really can change everything. It’s something the favoured Joseph Parker will have to be well aware of when he faces Wardley on Saturday.
We’re not talking about fights where one boxer starts fast and then fades but, rather, those contests where a boxer seems well on his way to winning and then one blow, almost from out of the blue, turns the fight on its head.
In the heavyweight division, one of the first fights that comes to mind is Rocky Marciano, losing on the scorecards, suddenly catching Jersey Joe Walcott with a big right hand in the 13th round. (Actually, Rocky landed a left hook for good measure, but the right hand had done its work.)
Walcott was boxing a smart fight, hitting and moving, but Marciano stalked him steadily in that epic 1953 encounter.
Reminiscing years later, Walcott blamed a cut over the eye, suffered in a clash of heads earlier in the fight, for his defeat. He told reporter Ed Schuyler that he jabbed so hard in the 13th round that the cut reopened and blood got into his eye.
“I paused for a second and he uncorked a right hand,” Walcott told Schuyler in a 1985 interview. “I couldn’t see him.”
But, look, it’s never been easy for these old champs to admit they lost fair and square. Video shows Walcott starting to throw a right hand and Marciano beating him to the punch with a blockbuster.
Marciano waited and waited, and he punched with Jersey Joe. And it only took one blow, the right hand. Rocky’s left hook was almost an afterthought.
George Foreman’s 10th-round KO of Michael Moorer in 1994 was another one-shot ending with time running out.
Moorer, who was defending the world heavyweight title, had boxed an almost perfect fight for nine rounds. Two of the judges had him five points in front going into the 10th.
By this point, watching from my ringside seat, I thought Foreman had missed his chance of getting a KO.
Moorer won the seventh, eighth and ninth rounds on all three judges’ cards. Right jabs from Moorer’s southpaw stance had Foreman’s left eye swelling and closing. Even when Foreman seemed to be coming on, Moorer was able to fire right back.
In the 10th, though, I think the sheer strain of boxing a perfect fight against the massive, heavy-handed former champion began to tell on Moorer.
Even if Moorer hadn’t been floored or seriously hurt, the weight of Foreman’s punches must have had a wearing-down effect on the nearly 30lbs lighter champion.
Moorer perceptibly slowed, and Foreman was able to drill him with the right hand put the lights out and made Big George the oldest heavyweight champion in history at 45.
It was interesting to circle back to Larry Merchant’s observations on HBO. Merchant had the same thoughts as I did, in the middle rounds, that Foreman was almost certainly going to lose.
“I think the myth of George’s power has been exposed by Michael Moorer so far,” Merchant informed the HBO viewers. “He just doesn’t have the quickness to make the force of a knockout.”
But Foreman proved Larry, me – and I’d image almost everyone watching – to be wrong.
Foreman’s fight-finishing right hand didn’t look sensationally hard, but it got the job done – Moorer went down as if he never knew what hit him.
Veteran manager and trainer Gil Clancy, supplying expert analysis for HBO, was impressed. “I think this was probably the greatest punch ever landed in the history of heavyweight boxing,” Clancy marvelled.
Mike Weaver’s last round KO against ‘Big’ John Tate in 1980 was another heavyweight fight that saw the title change hands basically with one big punch in a fight where the ultimate victor needed something dramatic.
Tate had taken some heavy left hooks during the 15-round fight but seemed on course to retain his WBA title. He basically just had to stand up to win.
The ABC TV network broadcast advised viewers at the start of the 15th round that there would be a “station break” – when network affiliates could air local advertisements or news bulletins – after the decision had been announced.
But the fight didn’t go to a decision. Both men looked tired, fighting almost in slow motion, as the fight headed towards the final bell.
Then suddenly, with the fight almost over, Weaver somehow found the energy to deliver the most important left hook he had ever thrown.
Weaver added a couple of right hands, the last one sailing over Tate’s head, but the big man from Tennessee was already falling. It was a devastating, face-plant KO.
“Weaver hit him with a left hook and Tate is down!” commentator Keith Jackson exclaimed. “With less than a minute to go in the 15th round, Weaver knocked him cold! Incredible! Incredible!”
Joe Louis, of course, scored a come-from-behind KO in his heavyweight title defence against Billy Conn, but the ‘Brown Bomber’ ended the fight with a series of blows, one after another; it didn’t appear to be just one big punch that got Conn going.
Fights outside the heavyweight division that had one-punch turnarounds?
Well, Colin Jones showed lightning can strike twice in his two come-from-behind, ninth-round wins over Kirkland Laing. These were startling finishes in fights that had the British welterweight title at stake.
In each contest, Laing was boxing beautifully and was surely in a commanding lead on points after eight rounds. And each time, Jones landed a payoff punch when he most needed it.
The first time, Laing seemed to have the fight won heading into the ninth, but Jones caught him with a big right hand and didn’t let him off the hook.
“He waited all that time and caught up with him, just when Laing was doing his flashiest stuff,” Harry Carpenter noted in the TV commentary.
In the rematch, Jones again found a big punch when the fight was slipping away, blasting Laing to the canvas with a big left hook, again in the ninth round.
“Oh, he’s got him again – he’s got him again!” Carpenter exclaimed. “Unbelievable!
One of the most vivid turnarounds I saw from ringside was in a middleweight title fight in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1994, when Argentina’s Jorge Castro, cut over both eyes and behind on points, dropped slick southpaw John David Jackson with a huge left hook in the ninth round.
‘Locomotora’ Castro had been trying to land a big punch all night. He missed with a big right swing in the ninth round, and I don’t think Jackson expected the left hook that followed.
Although Jackson beat the count, he was finished; referee Stanley Christodoulou waved the finish after two more knockdowns, but the original left hook had blown John David out of the fight.
James Toney was losing to champion Michael Nunn after 10 rounds in their middleweight title bout, but never gave up trying to nail the elusive left-hander.
Toney found the punch he had been looking for in the 11th. Nunn had basically been on the move all night, but he strangely stayed in front of Toney after the challenger missed with a right hand in the 11th.
Toney seized the moment, bringing over a left hook that deposited Nunn flat on his back.
Although Nunn beat the count, the fight was as good as over. Another knockdown followed and referee Dennie Nelson had seen enough.
And for spectacular one-shot endings, against the run of the fight, it’s hard to top Julian Jackson’s fourth-round KO over skilful Sheffield southpaw Herol Graham in Spain in 1990 with the vacant WBC middleweight title on the line.
Graham basically outclassed Jackson for the first three rounds, making him miss and hitting him almost at will. Jackson had an ugly swelling under the left eye and the ringside doctor was concerned.
It was all Graham again in the fourth, but he stayed in one place a little too long after delivering two left hands in quick succession.
It was the moment the big-hitting Jackson had been waiting for and he landed a right-hand bomb that dropped Graham flat on his back, out like a light, to a cry of “Oh, no!” from commentator David Brenner.
These fights – and I know there have been others – all illustrated the fact that a single shot can snatch victory from what seems like certain defeat.
And that’s why even if Fabio Wardley is losing every round against Joseph Parker, he will be in with a chance at all times on Saturday.
