The Challenger

The word went round Jersey Joe Walcott's training camp that Champion Joe Louis was worried. He actually sent a spy over to scout the enemy. But when the champ's agent arrived, Walcott's men gave him the eye--and the bum's rush. They had him halfway out the door before Jersey Joe intervened. "Let him watch," he ordered. Then Challenger Walcott, using pillowy 16-oz. gloves, neatly flattened a sparring partner. Said he: "Tell Nicholson to take that back to Louis."

Since December, when he punched Big Joe to the floor twice (and lost the fight on a controversial decision), Jersey Joe has acted like a kid cheated out of his marbles and determined to get them back. He began training far ahead of schedule--while Big Joe, eating his way to a blubbery 225 Ibs., was seeing London and Paris. He hired the roughest & toughest sparring mates he could find. He pulled no punches in sparring sessions at his New Jersey camp.

Last week, he unwrapped a new left hook. It put one sparring mate on the floor with his ears humming. Another got knocked flat twice. The boys who dropped in for a look hustled back to town to find a bookie and make a bet. Walcott's odds, once a tempting 4 to 1, fell sharply. By week's end, they were 11 to 5, and would probably be lower by next week when Jersey Joe takes his second shot at Joe Louis' crown.

The Fever. In his training camp at an amusement park overlooking a pond, Jersey Joe (real name: Arnold Cream) likes to sneak off to his room and play the phonograph, singing along with his favorite Ink Spots and Savannah Churchill records. At night he talks by telephone with each of his six kids. When he's a little low in spirits, he reads his well-thumbed Bible: "The Bible gives me lots of imagination ... it really picks me up." Nobody heard much about him until he was an old man of 34 (the same age as Louis*) because, he says, of that case of typhoid fever. He came down with it 14 years ago, just when he was beginning to go places as a young fighter. "I could always punch," he is quick to say. But the fever left him weak. Undertrained and undernourished after living on relief, he made a try at a comeback, finally quit because he could make more money ($85 a week) as a wartime shipyard worker. It took a lot of talking by glib Felix Bocchiccio, a small-time Camden promoter, to lure him back into the fight racket. Bocchiccio supplied two vital things he lacked before--management and money--and Jersey Joe began punching his way into the headlines.

The Future. Even with Bocchiccio picking up the tab, Walcott is one of the skimpiest eaters big-time heavyweight boxing has ever known. After a five-mile run he breakfasts on prunes, two eggs, a lamb chop, tea and toast. Then comes a mile walk, a nap until noon (he eats no lunch) and seven rounds' workout in the afternoon. For supper he does not wolf a 3-lb. steak (as Billy Conn used to), but settles for a smaller one. He looks lighter than his 196 Ibs. Most remarkable about him is the fact that he seems to get better just when most boxers get worse--after 30.

In the ring, he annoys foes with a shuffling, eccentric style that is really no style at all. He is apt to turn on his heel and walk away, drop his gloves or scramble crab-fashion to left & right. When Joe Louis tried recently to hire one of Walcott's old handlers to study Walcott's style, one of Jersey Joe's sparring mates burst out laughing at the idea. He explained: "Why, I've fought a hundred rounds with Walcott and know less about his style now than when I started."

Walcott's big advantage over the Champ, who has been on top too long to be hungry, is incentive. No one doubted that the old Joe Louis could knock Joe Walcott stiff in a round or two. The big question, to be answered next week in Yankee Stadium, is whether the present-day Joe Louis can still beat anybody--even a deserving never-was like hungry Jersey Joe.

* And as Middleweight Champion Tony Zale (see below). Light-Heavyweight Champion Gus Lesnevich is 33.

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