No surprise to see sadistic Arthur Mercante Jr in a few of these... one of the most irresponsible referees relative to his era ever Also the Ike Williams/Beau Jack KO is one of the more ridiculous ones ever... Williams told the ref Jack was out cold and the ref was basically like "nah, he's good... keep punching" while Jack looked like a crucified man hanging on the ropes There's one I've read about but never saw which was Jimmy Carter (the lightweight champ, not the President) defending his title against Tommy Collins who was really more of a featherweight... Carter scored ten knockdowns in under four rounds! Ringsiders were shouting at the referee asking him if he was trying to facilitate a murder
word. That was the worst one, even worse than the Griffith-Paret one which ended in death. That Garcia-Benton referee was obviously sadistic, should have been charged with criminal negligence and I hope he was never allowed to ref again.
The ref in teh Dicky Eklund fight was an absolute cunt as well. Seems to me that some of these refs are scared to jump in lest they get hurt. Boxing is a tough business, no room for pussy refs. The refs have to jump in there regardless of the volley of punches.
Jesus. That should have been stopped after the first knockdown. He fell like a statue and didn't know where he was after that.
That's one of those where I read about it over the years but somehow the film actually exceeds expectations of brutality ... those were horrifying knockdowns
The announcer saying Paret collapsed from exhaustion is one of the great WTF moments in boxing history.
He took an almighty and totally needless beating. The first right hand that dropped him was a fight ender in and of itself, what he was doing in there 5 rounds later is beyond me, and probably Collins too. The article says he weighed 123lbs which means, by traditional limits, he could have been outweighed by as much as 12lbs on the night, a massive amount by todays standards but still fairly big even by the standards of the 1950's.
The article is a little misleading... he weighed in at 133 1/4 for the fight itself but he was a career featherweight and was unaccustomed to lightweight
Collins was 22... this was his 67th pro fight... floored ten times... it was a much different game back then
Just two months later he was back at featherweight where he got stopped in 10 against Red Top Davis (who's got to be the best fighter to ever finish his career with a sub .500 record) If a guy today took 1/4 the asswhupping Collins absorbed against Carter the referee would be investigated and the fighter probably wouldn't see the inside of a ring for a year if ever again at all