Bumbling Champ

The heavyweight champion of the world was off his feed. There were long faces at the Catskill Mountain training camp where Rocky Marciano was getting ready for his fight with Challenger Ezzard Charles. In that green corner of the "Borscht Belt," most men are measured by the size of their appetites. Rocky, ordinarily a first-rate trencherman, was pushing away from the breakfast table after downing only two eggs and a pair of lamb chops. To make matters worse,

Charles (in training at nearby Monticello, N.Y.) was reported feeling fine. "The next champ has been in perfect health since he had his infested tonsils cut out of his throat," said his manager, Jake Mintz (somewhat of an authority on medical matters, having once suffered from "coronated trombosis" himself).

Neither Jake's ready tongue nor Ezzard's health impressed the bookies. Rocky's eating habits bothered them not at all. Right up to fight-time at Yankee Stadium last week, most of those itinerant investment bankers saw the champ as a sure winner. They were giving odds of "3-to-1 and out," i.e., they would cover bets on ex-Champion Charles at the quoted odds; they would accept no Marciano money.

For half the fight the rangy Negro challenger had the bookies worried. Ex-Champion Charles was boxing so well that the champion looked like the sloppiest fighter since Two-Ton Tony Galento. More often than not Rocky's wild punches were flailing empty air. By the end of five rounds he had done little damage. In close, Charles still had strength enough to tie the champion up. At long range, he was counterpunching sharply.

In the second round flicking jabs and long-looping rights opened an old cut over Rocky's left eye. In the sixth he was bleeding badly. But by then he was warming up to his work. He waddled in, fighting the only way he knows: throwing punches from everywhere, whacking away at Charles with jarring shots that began to find the range. They hurt no matter where they hit. In the eighth, Rocky was at his brawling best. He bulled Charles against the ropes, hooked his big left paw around the back of Charles's head to hold it in position, and whaled away with a vicious right uppercut to the Adam's apple. Charles never recovered.

Hardly able to breathe, he fought back gamely. Fight fans who had doubted Charles's courage saw him stand up to every punch in the book. For the first time in years, a heavyweight bout looked like the fist fight the crowd expected.

Charles once or twice managed a clean straight right that caught the champion coming in and stopped him short. Then Rocky would shake the punch off and take up his stiff-legged charge. Stubbornly, Charles refused to go down. When the bell rang at the finish of the 15th round, he was still swinging. But the bumbling, ham-handed strongman from Brockton, Mass, was still the heavyweight cham pion of the world -- a world in which good heavyweights are rare.

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