JCC said:
Although Walcott got a fair shake, the essential mystery remained.
Why didn't he get up?
What happened to Jersey Joe?
And these theories abounded:
1. Jersey Joe got a fair shake.
2. Jersey Joe misculated his rise.
3. Jersey Joe was knocked out.
4. Jersey Joe quit.
I had to change some of what I said in my last post for I didn't say it all completely right. Although it came to be seem 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 there 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 remained wholly convinced that Jersey Joe had just quit after he got knocked down, he chose to just stay down in my opinion.
Watch the tape of that fight at youtube and see it what conclusion you come to about it.
JJC