Willie Pep is my favourite all-time, old-school fighter. Two-hundred and twenty-nine wins in opposition to 11 losses and one draw, gained and regained the featherweight title, competed in three many years and, that is my favourite, defended his title six months after being in a aircraft crash and having docs inform him he’d by no means field once more.
His protection and motion had been legendary. He carried the nickname “The Will o’ the Wisp” as a result of he glided out and in of hurt’s manner within the ring whereas stopping to counter and do harm. He was stunning to observe and price a deep dive on YouTube to will get some appreciation of his mastery.
Like with many larger-than-life figures, legend surrounds Pep. Perhaps essentially the most enduring legend is that Pep promised writers that he’d win a spherical with out throwing a punch. Earlier than preventing Jackie Graves, a really strong opponent, he supposedly introduced within the third spherical that he’d win whereas mounting zero offense. It’s usually reported as fact in documentaries about Pep and that he even carried two of the three scorecards within the third that evening.
The reply is a decidedly, most likely not.
We all know Pep gained the struggle however no movie of it exists. It was earlier than reporters and filmmakers reported on the official scorecards so we are able to’t depend on that both. The truth is, reporting was so inconsistent in that period that the AP and the UPI disagreed on what number of occasions Graves went down within the struggle – one information service mentioned twice and the opposite reported 4 knockdowns.
Pep preferred to speak in regards to the spherical and it was mentioned that he even carried round an article on the struggle that supposedly verified that he gained the spherical with out throwing a punch. Some even claimed that Willie wrote the article himself. Late in life, Graves mentioned he didn’t bear in mind if he misplaced the spherical with out Pep throwing a punch however mentioned it was potential as a result of he was that onerous to hit.
“I imagine he did it. The person was a legend and a star past boxing. He frolicked with guys like Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra—why would he must make up something to make himself appear larger?” James Madio says. Madio starred in The Featherweight, the 2024 Pep bio-pic. The New Yorker mentioned in its Academy Awards concern that Madio ought to’ve been nominated for finest actor.
No matter whether or not the parable is true, the very fact stays that Willie Pep was one of the vital elusive boxers to ever step into the ring. His defensive expertise had been really one thing to behold and you might see his affect on fighters like Ali, Camacho, and Whitaker. His footwork and lateral motion, his feints and misdirection and his head motion left opponents bewildered and infrequently frozen. He slipped, bobbed and weaved and parried with ridiculous steadiness.
Nonetheless, can all of that, with out throwing a punch, win you a spherical?
“Except the opposite boxer didn’t throw any punches both you possibly can’t win a spherical with out throwing a punch,” Joe Cusano says. Cusano is a long-time professional ref and choose who made a cameo look within the film – enjoying, after all, a referee. “He would have needed to have thrown one thing.” (Cusano’s guide, Uppercuts, will likely be launched later this 12 months.)
May Pep’s charisma have helped him to win a punch-less spherical? One a part of the legend is that he informed the judges what he was about to do.
“Hey, if Willie leaned over the ropes and talked to the judges that may’ve bought of their heads and possibly that influenced them,” Madio says. It wouldn’t be the primary or final time {that a} fighter influenced judges.
To justify scoring a spherical for a fighter who didn’t throw a single punch would contain some fairly summary pondering. While you apply the 4 scoring standards it could imply there could be no clear punching and nil aggression, not to mention efficient aggression. I suppose you might earn factors for protection and ring generalship however normally these two supportive standards rely after they result in clear punching. If a fighter simply evades with out countering that’s probably not worthy of factors.
The opponent, as Joe Cusano factors out, must be complicit in his passivity by lacking all of his punches and maybe not even throwing any. I believe if one fighter didn’t throw any punches in any respect and the opposite boxer threw punches that didn’t land that may most likely be sufficient to present that fighter the spherical.
“I spent an entire day with Willie on the Corridor of Fame and we talked quite a bit about this,” Mark Baker, Pep’s biographer, says. “It at all times sounded shaky and the extra I prodded the extra the story form of fell aside. Ultimately, Willie mentioned he most likely jabbed or he threw punches however didn’t land.”
Jabbing and throwing punches that may not have landed is an entire lot totally different than not throwing any punches. You would actually win a spherical doing these issues.
“Willie was fairly a personality and he was given a bit to telling tall tales,” Baker says.
Baker additionally has some perception into how the article bought written and the way the legend developed.
“In these days reporters and writers despatched their accounts over the wire,” he explains. “Their accounts of the fights had been usually fairly inaccurate. On the evening of the Pep-Graves struggle there was fairly a little bit of solar spot exercise that may have interrupted the transmission. That will have left a variety of holes within the account of the struggle. The man who wrote the article that Willie carried with him was a fairly obscure reporter and will have taken the chance to write down one thing sensational.”
The Featherweight could have a large launch in Might on varied streaming shops. Mark Baker’s guide Willie Pep: A Biography of the 20th Century’s Best Featherweight is out there on Amazon, and the identical goes for Joe Cusano’s forthcoming boxing guide Uppercuts.
