Missing: a Cruncher

Jersey Joe Walcott, a famously shifty old party, did everything but Cakewalk. He jigged and jogged, ducked and bobbed, occasionally threw a solid punch. It was a typical Walcott performance, one that the aging Joe* has down pat. It was also precisely the kind of performance expected by Heavyweight Champion Ezzard Charles, 29, and from the opening bell, Charles set about the task of wearing old Joe down. It was more than he was up to.

Fortunately for Ezzard, his plodding competence did pile up points for eight rounds. In the ninth, one of his left hooks sent Walcott tumbling to the canvas. An old-fashioned Joe Louis one-two would have finished the fight; the crowd at Detroit's Olympia last week waited expectantly for Ezzard to deliver it. But the cruncher never came. Walcott took a count of nine, then bobbed up to take the offensive away from Charles. By the still full of fight, Walcott was belting the glaze-eyed champion around the ring.

Ezzard Charles came out of the fight with the decision (on accumulated points) and a cauliflowered left ear that will keep him out of action for two months. Left in the ring: some of the modest stock of prestige he had built up in two years as the lackluster successor to Joe Louis.

*Thought to be 37, Walcott told the Chicago Tribune after the fight that he is really 41.

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