The main knock against Anthony Joshua vs Jake Paul is the obvious one: The perception that it’s a fight that Paul has no chance of winning.
Still, there have been many mismatches in heavyweight history. A long list of heavyweights have gone into the ring when given little or no chance of winning. In that sense, Joshua vs Paul is no different to what has gone before, except that this one has quite a high-level of curiosity about it. What of those no-hope heavyweights?
No hope. It’s such a harsh term, yet in many heavyweight fights it’s been applicable. And, sometimes, if rarely, a heavyweight given zero chance of winning can actually produce a performance that becomes that fighter’s shining moment. The obvious example here is Chuck Wepner.
No one, surely, gave Wepner any sort of a chance against Muhammad Ali when they met in Cleveland in March 1975. Wepner did have credentials. For instance, he had a world top 10 ranking and he’d won his past eight fights, which included reversing a loss suffered against New Jersey rival Randy Neumann and then winning the rubber match. He’d also won a 12-round decision over former WBA champion (and an old rival of Ali’s) Ernie Terrell.
But Wepner was now meeting one of the greatest heavyweights of all time in Ali – many would say the greatest. And Ali had knocked out George Foreman in the Rumble In The Jungle just five months previously.
The American press was critical of the Ali vs Wepner Monday-night affair. It was considered a laughable mismatch. But Wepner to a large extent made the critics eat their words, lasting into the 15th and final round and even getting credit for a knockdown in the ninth round – although he stepped on Ali’s foot. (Chuck, God bless him, insisted the knockdown was a genuine one.)
“Monday night Chuck Wepner was not a joke,” Dave Anderson wrote in the New York Times. “Chuck Wepner justified his existence as a durable, if not artistic, challenger.”
Wepner was game in the extreme. He came just 19 seconds from actually lasting the distance. “Nobody will laugh at Chuck Wepner any more,” Anderson wrote.
Nor did they. Wepner’s gutsy stand was the inspiration for the Sylvester Stallone character in the Rocky movies.
Chuck even received financial compensation (amount undisclosed) when he brought a lawsuit against Stallone relating to the movie underdog being based on Chuck’s own real-life experience.
So that was a case of a challenger deemed hopelessly out of his depth coming out of the fight a winner in life though not in the ring. What of some of the others?
Tom McNeeley and son Peter were without hope in heavyweight fights 34 years apart, with Tom losing in four rounds against Floyd Patterson in a title bout in December 1961 and Peter suffering a first-round shellacking against Mike Tyson in August 1995.
Patterson was a 1/10 favourite going into his bout with McNeeley père, which took place at the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
McNeeley, his 23-0 record largely compiled against opponents of little fistic merit, talked a great fight, telling the press he’d knock out Patterson inside six rounds.
“I’m going after him,” McNeeley said. “He won’t have to go looking for me.”
Well, McNeeley was right about the fight not lasting six rounds. BoxRec records McNeeley as going down 11 times. I counted nine knockdowns, including the fourth-round count-out, but referee Jersey Joe Walcott seemed to miss a couple – I think things were moving a little too fast for the old heavyweight champion.
And there was even a moment in the fourth round when Patterson seemed to touch down after McNeeley landed a left hook. The YouTube video shows that referee Walcott didn’t give an eight-count, but I would consider it a knockdown. There was no doubt that Floyd got clipped.
“The champion is hurt!” commentator Chris Schenkel exclaimed.
So, Tom McNeeley was beaten but not disgraced, as the saying goes.
As for son Peter, well, he was basically served up on a platter for Tyson in Iron Mike’s return to the ring after his incarceration and four-year layoff. I was ringside for that one at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Showtime TV analyst and ex-champ Bobby Czyz predicted a first-round win for Tyson. (I believe Bobby actually said it was “impossible” for the fight to get out of the opening round.)
McNeeley came out flailing, got nailed, and it was all over in a minute and 29 seconds – officially on a DQ due to McNeeley’s handlers entering the ring with the round in progress, but it was a TKO in all but name, as they were saving their man.
The same night as Patterson vs McNeeley, as part of a closed-circuit double-header (spectators at each event were able to watch the other city’s fight on four-sided screens that were lowered for this purpose), there was another heavyweight fight – this one as big a mismatch as you could possibly get – between future champion Sonny Liston, then the No.1 contender and champion-in-waiting, and Germany’s Albert Westphal in Philadelphia.
Westphal was a former German champion but he was a small heavyweight, barely 5ft 8ins, who had been stopped four times in his 24-8-3 record.
The hapless Westphal tried to move all around the ring, landing sneaky punches and getting right back on his bicycle, but a patient Liston stalked him, knowing it was just a matter of time before he caught him.
And, sure enough, a quick one-two dropped Westphal face-down to be counted out after one minute, 58 seconds.
Joe Frazier had so many wars he could be forgiven for some easy touches. One of these came when he defended his heavyweight title against local slugger Dave Zyglewicz in Houston on April 22, 1969.
Zyglewicz had a respectable record (28-1, 15 KOs) and he’d beaten some once-solid but now faded fighters. But, in one of only three bouts outside of Texas, he suffered a decision loss to a boxer named Sam Wyatt (record 6-7-2) in Los Angeles just a year before he met Smokin’ Joe.
Frazier predictably blew through Zyglewicz in the opening round. Zyglewicz claimed he’d never been floored, but Frazier dropped him twice with left hooks to win in one minute, 36 seconds.
However, Zyglewicz gave it a go. “Both fighters came out slinging leather,” AP reported.
But once Frazier landed the left hook, it was as good as over, even though Zyglewicz survived the first of the two knockdowns.
Frazier was as kind as he could be to Zyglewicz in his comments to the press afterwards: “He was all heart and he came to fight.”
Frank Bruno had a meeting with a woefully inadequate opponent in the doughy shape of Chuck Gardner, a big, shaven-headed man from Minnesota, in June 1987.
It was Bruno’s second fight after his knockout defeat against Tim Witherspoon in the first of Big Frank’s heavyweight title challenges, and the affair took place in Cannes, site of the famous film festival. Harry Carpenter told BBC TV viewers: “It’s a fight Bruno has to win.”
But Bruno’s camp were well aware of this and Gardner had been selected for a reason – which was to give Bruno a knockout win. This end was achieved, but, unfortunately, the fight was a farce. Gardner looked terrible even before Bruno had thrown a punch.
“He really does look ancient,” Carpenter said. “Even what hair there is is grey.”
Bruno landed just one punch of any note, a left hook, and Gardner went down in a heap.
“It only took one not terribly lethal-looking punch from Bruno to put him away,” Carpenter said in a disgusted tone. “The man had no chance. He shouldn’t have been in the ring.”
No, he shouldn’t, but there have been plenty of heavyweights who really shouldn’t have been in the ring with infinitely more accomplished opponents.
Take Johnny Paychek, a heavyweight from Chicago who was matched in a title fight with the great Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden in 1940.
Paychek had a built-up record of 44-4-2, 28 KOs. Writer Jack Cuddy referred to him as “a fair-skinned, semi-bald chap who professes to be 25 years old”.
Paychek had been to college for a year and according to Cuddy “brought several best-selling fiction and non-fiction volumes” with him to his training camp at Pompton, New Jersey.
But the “Illinois intellectual”, as Cuddy called him, was a 10/1 underdog (today those odds would be more like 35/1), with odds of 1/2 that Louis would win inside five rounds.
As it turned out, the fight went only two rounds.
“There wasn’t even a resemblance to a fight in this,” AP reported. Paychek was down three times in the first round and Louis finished the job after 44 seconds of round two.
One could go on, but you get the idea: There have been many mismatches in heavyweight fights. Jake Paul could hardly do any worse than some of those who have gone before him. Anything better — say a Chuck Wepner or a Tom McNeeley type of “magic moment” — will be a bonus.
