"I Didn't Pay to Get In"

Well in advance, the fight had been labeled a "stinkeroo." Shuffling Jersey Joe Walcott, never a dashing crowd-pleaser, was old (35) and tired. His opponent, thin-mustached Ezzard Charles of Cincinnati, was young enough (27), but he was a second-rater without punch or drive. Just before they squared off in Chicago's Comiskey Park last week, a hanger-on wriggled in to where Joe Louis sat in the fourth row and asked breathlessly: "Champ, have you got a last-minute pick?" Deadpan Joe, the front man for boxing's new promotional monopoly, mumbled forthrightly: "Ain't doin' any pickin' . . . I didn't pay to get in."*

The surprising fact was that 25,932 people did pay to get in to watch the scramble for Joe Louis' abandoned heavyweight crown. They were sorry. For six rounds hardly a blow was struck--except a couple of low ones for which the referee cautioned Charles. In the seventh, after Charles had fallen down, purely by accident, he scrambled to his feet in a mild huff and let go a pair of rights & lefts that staggered Walcott and had him on the verge of going down. With the crowd calling for the kill, Charles suddenly slowed up his attack.

That ended the one flicker of excitement in a drab fight. The fans began booing in the ninth round and kept it up intermittently until the final bell. Someone asked Promoter Joe Louis who he thought had won. "Ain't sayin'," muttered Joe, "I didn't pay to get in." For their $246,546, the customers did not see anybody Charles' seriously manager, hit the who floor fainted in except the Ezzard ring as his lackluster leather-thrower was being proclaimed the new heavyweight cham pion of the world (National Boxing Asso ciation version, not good in New York or London). It was enough to make fans sigh even for the half-good old days of Primo Carneca and Max Baer.

*Other prognosticators repeated the crack made by Chicago Sportwriter Warren Brown when the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers met in the wretchedly played World Series of 1945: "I don't see how either of them can win."

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