Thirty-two times, a world heavyweight title rivalry has involved at least two chapters. Sometimes a rematch was essential; other times, less so. Sometimes revenge was had; more often it wasn’t. Upsets and controversies abounded; drama was guaranteed.
It’s the latest in a very long line of heavyweight title rematches on Saturday, when Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois meet again. I thought it might be interesting to look back at previous examples through the ages.
Some heavyweight title rematches simply had to happen. This might have been because of the controversy in the initial meeting. It could have been because the result the first time around was so surprising that an encore was essential. Or simply because the first fight was so good that the boxing public wanted to see a sequel.
Then there are heavyweight title return bouts that really weren’t necessary, and those that happened too late. Some lived up to expectations, others were disappointing.
I’d put Usyk vs Dubois in the “had to happen” category. The first fight had controversy and Dubois has come back with three big wins in a row. He’s earned the right to a rematch. Let’s get it on.
What, though, of heavyweight title fights of the past that we had to see again? (Remember, we’re talking only of examples where both the first fight and the rematch were for the championship, so Max Schmeling vs Joe Louis I and Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier II don’t apply.) I’d put the Gene Tunney vs Jack Dempsey rematch in top spot in a “let’s see it again” ranking.
When Tunney outpointed Dempsey to win the title in September 1926, it was a result that shocked the boxing public. The fight was a 10-rounder held in front of a crowd of 120,000 in Philadelphia. Dempsey was favoured at odds of 1/3.
“Nick the Greek, Dempsey’s backer, is reported to have bet several thousand dollars on his man,” the New York Times reported.
Dempsey was confident. “I know I am ready and I know I am going to win,” he told reporter James P Dawson after his final workout.
A reporter assigned to Tunney’s training camp in the Poconos, Pennsylvania, imparted the information that Tunney had “returned to the peak of perfection” after taking a few days off, when he became too zealous in his training.
Tunney dominated the fight on a wet night at the Sesquicentennial Stadium. “Through every round of the ten, Tunney battered and pounded Dempsey,” the New York Times reported.
However, Dempsey had been inactive for three years. Perhaps it wasn’t the real ‘Manassa Mauler’ in the ring that night. Dempsey qualified for the rematch with a controversial knockout win over Jack Sharkey (later to become champion); Dempsey landed a left hook when Sharkey turned to the referee to complain about a low blow.
The prevailing view was that Dempsey would be better prepared for the return, now that he was back in harness with a win over a leading contender. Surely Tunney couldn’t do it again? Or could he? Tunney was only a slight favourite, at 5/7. A crowd estimated at 150,000 attended the big fight at Soldier Field, Chicago.
This was, of course, the famous “long count” fight when Tunney was down for some 14 seconds in the seventh round. Dempsey’s failure to go to a neutral corner immediately after dropping Tunney could have cost him the fight.
Moving on, when Max Schmeling became the first fighter to win the heavyweight title on a disqualification, against Jack Sharkey at Yankee Stadium in June 1930, a return fight seemed inevitable.
Contemporary reports tell us that Sharkey was dominating his fight with Schmeling when he landed a left hook below the belt in the fourth round, causing the German boxer to collapse to the canvas. Schmeling stayed down and Sharkey was DQ’d.
“The fistic world has a new heavyweight champion today,” United Press reported, “but the decision which brought that honor to Max Schmeling, the fortunate youth of Germany, still rankles in the breast of some 80,000 spectators who witnessed the unfortunate ending.”
It was two years, however, before the rematch took place. If Sharkey was unlucky to lose the first fight, he seemed fortunate to win the return, on a 15-round split decision, at Long Island, New York.
Of 15 boxing writers polled at ringside, only three had Sharkey winning, while two said they had scored the fight a draw. Sharkey, a former sailor from Boston, had a rocky voyage in the return bout and finished with his left eye swollen almost shut.
“When the decision was announced boos, catcalls and jeers greeted it,” UP reported. “The jeers surprised all because Sharkey had been the sentimental favourite.”
A more recent example of a heavyweight title fight with an ending so unsatisfactory that a rematch was absolutely needed would be Michael Dokes’ 63-second win over Mike Weaver in December 1982.
Referee Joey Curtis jumped in with Weaver covering up on the ropes. It was widely felt that Mr Curtis was quick on the trigger due to the tragic ending of the Ray Mancini vs Deuk Koo Kim fight in Las Vegas a month earlier.
The return fight between Dokes and Weaver took place five months later, a 15-round draw that had ringside opinion divided, some writers preferring Weaver’s pressure and body punching, while others liked Dokes’ jabs and sharpshooting.
Joe Louis was the king of rematches in heavyweight title fights, winning all five of them, all more convincingly than the first time around.
Louis against Billy Conn cried out for a rematch after the first fight when the Brown Bomber, behind on points, knocked out an overconfident Conn in the 13th of the scheduled 15 rounds.
The first meeting was in 1941, but the return bout was delayed until 1946 due to the Second World War. Louis won by KO in the eighth round of a disappointing affair, with both men past their prime.
Staying with Louis, a rematch was needed to clear the air, so to speak, after Louis’ 15-round split-decision struggle against Arturo Godoy, a rugged battler from Chile with an awkward, crouching style, at Madison Square Garden in 1940.
Louis knocked out Godoy in the eighth round of the return fight at Yankee Stadium four months later, a fight that according to the Associated Press report was “too brutal and bloody to witness with any relish”.
A faded Louis had to survive two knockdowns to win a much-disputed split decision over Jersey Joe Walcott at Madison Square Garden in December 1947. Louis, face bruised and puffy, tried to duck between the ropes before the decision was announced – a clear indication that he thought he had lost.
Louis won the rematch the following June, this time at Yankee Stadium, when he knocked out Walcott in the 11th round. However, Louis’ decline was obvious. Walcott knocked him down in the third round in a clash of 34-year-olds, but apart from this, there was little for the 42,000 crowd to get excited about until the 11th-round ending.
Reporter Jack Cuddy described the first 10 rounds as “an extravaganza of ineffectiveness”. But Louis’ 11th-round onslaught was dramatic – “a blazing, vicious, man-killing half minute” in the colourful prose of British sportswriter Peter Wilson.
Ingemar Johansson’s stunning upset win over Floyd Patterson in 1959 was another heavyweight title fight where a rematch was decreed virtually by public demand, simply because the result first time around was so unexpected.
Lennox Lewis’ return with Hasim Rahman was much the same; Lewis’ KO defeat in the first fight seemed borderline unbelievable. Lewis vs Oliver McCall II should have happened immediately after the London shocker; the rematch had lost its immediacy when it finally happened three years later, with McCall now an ex-champ and going through mental anguish.
And then there was Evander Holyfield’s remarkable two-fight series with Mike Tyson. An immediate rematch was essential after Holyfield stunned Tyson in one of the biggest upsets in heavyweight history (Tyson was a 1/25 favourite), and then Tyson was disqualified in the rematch when he bit off a chunk of Holyfield’s ear.
Rocky Marciano’s come-from-behind KO win over Jersey Joe Walcott definitely needed an encore, although I believe a return-bout clause was in effect anyway, while Marciano’s bitterly hard-fought win over Ezzard Charles was so compelling that a return bout was the only fight that made sense for Rocky.
Tyson Fury’s back-from-the-dead last round against Deontay Wilder made a rematch a must-see attraction, although it lost some of its lustre due to a 14-month gap between the first and second fights.
Usyk vs Fury II was essential after the split decision in the first fight, and the timing for the sequel was spot-on, just seven months after the initial encounter. And a rematch between Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield was another “must” rematch because the first fight had been so good, even though Bowe was a clear winner.
Heavyweight title fights where a return was hardly necessary would include Joe Louis vs Abe Simon, Sonny Liston vs Floyd Patterson and Deontay Wilder vs Bermane Stiverne.
Most disappointing heavyweight title rematches: Joe Louis vs Billy Conn, Rocky Marciano vs Jersey Joe Walcott (a one-round letdown) and the Muhammad Ali vs Sonny Liston first-round ‘Phantom Punch’ fiasco.
Heavyweight title rematches, then, have given us something of everything — and on Saturday, Usyk and Dubois will write another chapter in a long and captivating history.
