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Last Seconds
Of A Champion
Not without honor, Sugar Ray Robinson surrenders his title
to bull-strong Gene Fullmer in a battle of Wit vs. Brawn
by Martin Kane
Issue date: January 14, 1957
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(Hy Peskin)
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It was the 15th round. Out of his corner came Sugar Ray
Robinson with three minutes to go as middleweight champion
of the world. Blood trickled from a deep, inch-long cut
over his left eye. It had splashed down onto his white
trunks, onto his thigh
and shin. His hair, so carefully marcelled in Round One, was
a disordered shock. This was a beaten fighter but a
champion, too. He proved it during those last
seconds.
He was 35 years old by his account, 36 by the record books,
37 by the reckoning of one of his five managers. By any
calculation, he was old. Against him now, charging toward
him once more as in every previous round, was a young man
of 25, the
bullnecked, heavy muscled, powerful Gene Fullmer, a welder's
apprentice from West Jordan, Utah and, very likely, with
more talent for welding than for boxing. Fullmer ended his
charge by crashing a right into Robinson's body. Robinson
sagged back, as he had
done so many times before.
Suddenly the crowd screamed. There were 18,134 fans packed
into Madison Square Garden and just about every one of them
was howling in admiration. Few fans love Sugar Ray outside
the ring but when he is working at his trade it is
impossible not to
respect him. He is a brave and skillful man. So the crowd
howled. For Champion Sugar once more had cut loose with
one of his fabulous flurries, a blinding fast combination
to Fullmer's tough head, the kind that a few months before
had crashed Bobo Olson
to the canvas of a Los Angeles
ring.
Fullmer, of course, is no Bobo Olson. With his 17-inch
neck and powerful legs he has the durability, perhaps, of a
Jake LaMotta and something of the crude insistence of a
Rocky Marciano. The hardest punches merely shake him up a
little. He has never
been knocked out. But the crowd had not yet accepted this
truth. It did seem, for a few wonderful seconds which
revived memories of more youthful skills, that Sugar Ray's
coldly furious combinations might work. His only chance
was a knockout. He was
trying desperately to achieve
it.
He could not do it, of course, least of all after 14
rounds. Fullmer gave ground briefly, then he lunged back.
Robinson caught Fullmer with a smashing right to the head,
followed it with another, followed that with a right to the
body. Everything
about those punches reminded one of the young Robinson, whose
grace and guile and power had made him welterweight
champion and the only man to win the middleweight title
three times. Everything, that is, but their
effect.
The fight came to a close with Robinson, by some miracle of
longevity, still fighting on his toes instead of in an old
man's flat-footed stance, his miraculous dancer's legs
still taking him wherever he wanted to go without ever a
sign that age had
weakened them. The boxing bromide has it that a fighter's legs
abandon him first and his punch goes last. In the case of
Sugar Ray Robinson the reverse may well be
true.
So the last round ended, with Fullmer so confused that he
continued to fight. He didn't hear the bell or see the red
lights flash on the ring posts. Referee Ruby Goldstein
stepped between the
fighters.
It was Sugar Ray's round, last stand of a champion. It was
Gene's fight.
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