Although it came to be seen that Walcott got a fair shake, the essential mystery remained.
Why did he just sit there after being knocked down by Marciano ?
Why didn't he get up?
What happened to Jersey Joe?
At the time these theories abounded:
1. Jersey Joe took a dive.
2. Jersey Joe miscalcutaled his rise.
3. Jersey Joe got bad advice from his corner.
4. Jersey Joe was knocked out.
5. Jersey Joe quit.
Let's take a look at it all beginning with the first theory.
Jersey Joe took a dive?
Some immediately after the fight was over suspected that the fight was foxed. Bocchicchio (Walcott's manager) was known to have some shady connections. Was it possible that he had lined up a sweetheart deal for Walcott to take a dive? Most at the time felt not! As Tommy Loughran (an ex-fighter) at the time had pointed out, if the fight had been a tank job, Jersey Joe would have assumed another posture. He'd have gone down flat on his back or stomach, agonized it a bit, and listened to the full count.
Jersey Joe miscalculated his rise?
Another theory held at the time was that Walcott wanted to get up and tried to get up but merely miscalculated his rise. If so, in being the very experienced fighter he was he made a rookie mistake. An experienced fighter would have gotton himself up om one knee so he could spring up at the count of seven or eight. Walcott made no such move and gave himself no margin of error by attempting to rise from a sitting postion. Perhaps Walcott, in the confusion of the moment, lost track of the count. To some reporters at the time. Walcott said that he got up at seven; to others, he said that he got up at nine. And about that one reporter at the time (Red Smith) said about this Walcott said jokingly: "He can't count his years; he can't even count to ten."
Jersey Joe got bad advice from his corner?
While he was sitting in the ring, after being knocked down by Marciano, Walcott was glancing, at least part of the time, toward his corner, where Bocckichio (his manager) was frantically waving with both hands for him to stay down. He may also have yelled instructions at Walcott, although it is unclear whether Walcott could have heard them from across the ring. Equally important, perhaps Walcott's manager could hear the referee's count from across the ring. Bocchicchio later said, "Walcott was O.K., he was watching me for instructions. When I thought the count had reached eight, I signaled for Joe to get up, which you saw he did with no trouble." The miscalculation, then, may have been Bocchicchio's, not Walcott's.
Jersey Joe was knocked out?
At first, most weren't overly impressed by Marciano's short punch the short right that dropped Walcott in the ring. A notable exception was the referee Sikora, who said about it, "Don't let any body tell you Walcott didn't get hit . . . . It may not have shown on television, but believe me I was the closest man seeing that punch and oit was a knockout punch." After they had a chance to view the films of the fight, and several reporters agreed. "It was there. It was perfect," praised Matt Ring. "It was a real good punch, it was inside," Marciano said. "I got a lot of beef behind it, and it hung there on his chin." A few days after the fight, even Florio (Walcott's trainer) admitted that his fighter had been hit hard. Perhaps the punch was hard enough to account for Walcott's sitdown in the ring.
Jersey Joe quit?
Many at the time that Walcott was in a poor mental state going into the fight. As Fiorio (Walcott's trainer) later confirmed, "Joe froze up on us in the last twenty-four hours ... I tried all day to get him to talk fight --- tactics, punches, anything, ... but he wouldn't talk. The guy was through before he went into the ring." In the ring that night in Chicago, once Marciano knocked him down, perhaps all the memories of the Phildelphia punch eight months earlier when Marciano had knocked him out in the thirteenth round in their first fight came back --- perhaps Walcott gave up instead of getting up. About this return fight between Marciano and Walcott after the fight, former champion Jimmy Braddock said, "The bum quit."
In the end, the answer wasn't clear.
Jack Carberry of the Denver Post at the time said, "One man knows the true answer. That's Jersey Joe Walcott."
A month after the fight, Walcott was still claiming he got a fast count.
Years later, Walcott changed his story, claiming that he blacked out late in the count.
The mystery, then remains to this day, very much unresolved.
After recently to have watched the tape of this fight at youtube ... and having veiwed that tape several times I'm convinced that Jersey Joe had just quit after he got knocked down, he chose to just stay down.
JJC
__________________ "The more I sweated in the gym, the less I bleed in the ring."
In the aftermath of the fight, one fact was clear: Walcott's reputation was in tatters, at least for the time being at that time it was, any way.
One sport writer at the time Matt Ring claimed: "Walcott sacrificed the prestige and sentimental favor he had built up with many gallent fights over the past eight years."
Joe Bostic of the New York Amsterdam News said it was "the most disgusting exhibition of craven gutlessness in the history of the heavyweight championship divison."
Walcott's performance stood in striking contrast to his gallant stand in the first fight with Marciano, when he had gone out on his shield.
And another sports writer at the time, Red Smith said about Walcott he was going out in "total disgrace.
".
"It is hard to believe he would deliberately pass from the fistic scene ignominiously," mused Arch Ward of the Chicago Tribune. But he did.
And after the rematch with Marciano, Jersey Joe Walcott would never fight again.
Walcott's performance was also responsible for the heavy critism directed at the fight.
Like the fans in Chicago Staduim, fans from around the country were disappointed and angry, jamming the switchboards of their local newspapers to complain about the fight.
The press joined the cresendo as well.
Baltimore sportwriter Jesse Linthicum claimed that the "bout set boxing back ten years."
Philadelphia sportswriter Lance McCurly charged that the fight had been so "naueating and disgusting and unbelievable" that a congressional investigation of the entire fight game was in order.
New York sportswriter Bill Corum simply noted, "This fight, if it could be called that, was really was bad. Bad in itself. Bad for boxing. Bad for sports. Bad for this country, which is a sports loving county, and people had a right to demand better of Walcott than he gave them last night."
Lost in all the speculation about Walcott's actions and criticism of Walcott and the fight was Rocky Marciano.
In the ring, Marciano shared the crowd's amazement and disbelief in the sudden end. Had he really won that easily, that quickly?
After Marciano's hand was raised in victory and he started to leave the ring, he heard some boos from the crowd.
The boos were for the fiasco of the fight, but they still tarnished his successful defence of the title he had taken from Walcott in their first fight.
Later, an angry Marciano would say of Walcott, "He should have gotten up; I would have."
JJC
__________________ "The more I sweated in the gym, the less I bleed in the ring."
Marciano -Walcott Fight II
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