Word: walcott
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...didn't. He ticked off the seconds by pounding on the ring mat with a wooden mallet. When McDonough reached twelve, he quit. Liston was still on the floor, and Clay was still in the middle of the ring. Unable to pull Cassius away, Referee Jersey Joe Walcott, who seemed even more confused than the spectators, gave up and walked away. He never got Clay to a neutral corner; he never picked up the count. Another eight seconds passed. At ringside Nat Fleischer, editor of The Ring and high priest of boxing, screamed at Walcott...
Payday. It was nothing of the kind. Referee Walcott stopped the fight at 2 min. 12 sec.-which would make it only the seventh fastest. That was the least of the problems. Most of the fans in the arena had not seen the knockout punch; neither had the 500,000 others watching on closed-circuit TV. "Fix! Fix! Fix!" they chanted. "Fake! Fake! Fake!" At ringside, Joe Louis conceded that Clay had landed a right, "but it wasn't no good." Snapped Canadian Heavyweight George Chuvalo: "It's a phony, a real phony." Even Cassius was confused...
Referee Jersey Joe Walcott waited several seconds before starting the countdown--perhaps Clay's punch was so undiscernible that he thought Liston had slipped on a banana peel, or maybe Old Jersey Joe is still a little punch-drunk from the Marciano fight. At any rate, Liston was required to stay down for an eight count. He got up before he was counted out--and naturally he would wait till the last second to conserve his strength...
...Walcott hastily consulted with the timekeeper, learned that twelve seconds had elapsed while Sonny was decked, and proclaimed Clay the winner...
Whether Clay's victory were the result of a fix, of Walcott's utter ineptitude, of the winds of fate, or of Clay's prayers to Allah, I don't know. The only result of the fight not wrapped in enigmas is the obvious fact that boxing may have suffered a fatal blow last night...