1948 Fights:  After the Lee Savold Fight

The Fury

The reaction to the Lee Savold fight was made all the more tortuous by the way some of the press turned against Bruce. Under the headline “We Want No More Woodcock Fiascos - Why We Have No Real ‘White Hopes’”, Alan Hoby in The People delivered a vicious attack, with the casual racism of the title typical of the period’s press treatment of Joe Louis and other black sportspeople.

Alan Hoby Goes in Guns Blazing - “The People”  Article Partial Transcript

“I didn’t like what I saw at Harringay last week. At times it made me sick and ashamed. First, the public, who paid from two to ten guineas to see the Woodcock-Savold fiasco - Woodcock received £2,000 - got a deal as raw as a chapped hand. Secondly, the bottom is being knocked out of boxing by this sort of thing. With the prize ring becoming like a circus, no one knows what to believe any more.

But, at the risk of making myself thoroughly unpopular in certain places, I am going to tell the truth about this fight - as I see it.

As far as world title dreams are concerned. Woodcock is washed-up. Against Savold he seemed to me nothing but a caricature of the once-confident boxer who whipped Lesnevich. 

He should retire. He can’t take smashes to the belly. He can’t take a full-blooded clout on the jaw.

It was a cruel crack, but a wag sitting behind me said: ‘I'll take a £1 win double,’ he cried. ‘Chelsea to win the Cup and Woodcock to win the world heavy-weight championship!’

At that point, Woodcock was writhing on the canvas. I repeat, it was not a nice remark. But Woodcock was not a pretty sight. With Savold looking on contemptuously, the booing that subsequently accompanied Bruce’s departure from the ring wasn’t a pretty sound either. The crowd seemed disgusted.

Under our rules, of course, that fatal right-hand jab that ended the fight was definitely below the belt. But it didn’t look tremendously hard to me, and Woodcock’s left forearm - as revealed by the excellent film of the fight - partly blocked the punch as it travelled up the groin. Bruce was also wearing an American foulproof protector, and Savold said afterwards: ‘That punch could not have hurt him much.’

In all the circumstances, I honestly thought Woodcock might have gone on.

Meanwhile, Woodcock is the biggest example of all that is utterly and terribly wrong with the fight game over here. I am tired of being told that the Savold fight was ‘fixed.’ That is sheer rubbish. The truth is that Bruce was a great prospect, but he stayed in Doncaster too much. He had too few fights. He didn’t get around enough. Now look at him!

The last time an Englishman won the world heavy-weight championship was in 1897, when Bob Fitzsimmons thrashed ‘Gentleman Jim’ Corbett. In the present bankrupt state of Britain’s ‘Beef Trust’ it will be A.D. 2007 before we produce another Ruby Robert - or even another Woodcock as he used to be.

The ironic part about this is that Fitz, an Englishman, was the man who invented the terrible solar-plexus punch. Today we are breeding a race of heavies who can’t take heavy belly blows ....”

With eery prescience given what was to happen in Bruce’s last fight in 1950, Hoby ended: “We want fighters who can take it and dish it out. For example, at Harringay last week, a big, crude, walloping son of a gun called Jack Gardner flattened three novices in the same night. [.. . . ] Gardner is a prospect. The boy is twenty-one, has a big punch and physique. Looked after, given tough opponents throughout the country in a series of small fights for the next year or so and he might make the grade.”

Foul ?  Or no Foul ?

In his apparent advocacy of boxers putting up with foul punches, Hoby seems to condone rule-breaking. The punch in question was a short right which appeared to go below the belt, a fact which was confirmed afterwards by the five camera footage of the fight. Under British rules, this meant the referee had no alternative but to stop the fight, disqualify Savold and award victory to Bruce. American rules were different. Savold’s bravado reaction was clear: “I knew I was hurting Woodcock from the start with rights to the liver. I had shaken him with a punch on the chin and I was moving in to deliver more to his liver, when to my surprise he came at me. My punch was short and didn’t carry a lot of power. Bruce wears an American no-foul cup similar to mine and Woodcock or anybody else is more than welcome to come and kick my cup as hard as they like. It won’t hurt me.”

The ensuing uproar went beyond the technicalities of boxing and its rules. As the Hoby article and the booing crowd show, the bottom had fallen out of the adoration and optimism Bruce embodied. Ringside commentator Frank Butler, who had been so enthusiastic about Bruce after this fight for the British championship against Jack London in 1945, and had tended to favour Bruce as a genuine prospect for the world title, now also began to raise criticisms. In a piece for the Daily Express on the 7th December, under the headline “Bruce Booed From the Ring” and with two dramatic photos of Bruce “in agony” on the canvas and then being manhandled away by Tom Hurst and brother Billy, Butler reported that Savold’s manager Bill Daly “said that Savold was robbed of the fight.” He went on to comment: “It was certainly a moral win for the American. And don’t accuse me of being anti-British. For most of the 10,500 fans who booed Woodcock from the ring after his unhappy victory would support this judgement: Savold could not have lost the fight except by disqualifications. Woodcock fought as well as he could. He fought as well as he ever will. But not well enough. After his confident start, we soon realised that Savold had answered the 20-month-old question: Can Woodcock take a punch to the chin? The answer is NO.”

And the next day under a headline “No Foul Rule Needed - Louis Rejects London Fight”, with accompanying photographic proof that the punch was a foul, Butler stated “the victorious Woodcock no more belongs in the same ring as Louis than the man in the moon.” Later in the article, Butler revealed that “Tom Hurst is hoping to build up Woodcock again by taking an easy match in Johannesburg, where Bruce would defend his Empire title against Johnny Ralph. The Ralph match was also offered to Savold.”

North vs South ?

When Hurst made the announcement of the Ralph fight, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post he also stated categorically that “certain sections of the press were only too ready to tear Bruce to pieces. Had he been American instead of a Yorkshireman he would have had a much fairer hearing than he got.” It was a comment that tallied with a sense that the Southern press and ringside audiences were developing some antipathy to this Northern champion. And the Post quoted Bruce from his Sprotborough home saying “I’m as disappointed as anyone else at the unsatisfactory result. I know this - if had hit Savold like he hit me, I should have been disqualified. Believe me, I got three nasty clouts ‘downstair.’” The Post also printed a photo of the punch which finished the fight, “from the movie produced Michael H. Goodman Film Productions. The film will be generally released on Monday and will stopped for few seconds at three points, of which the above will one.”

Meanwhile Savold had to “kick his heels” in London until December when the question of his disqualification come before the Southern Council of the Boxing Board. His purse money had been withheld accordance with the rules.

Given the sour and disappointing year 1948 had proved, perhaps it’s not surprising the press, commentators and even fans were beginning to think Bruce’s days as champion were numbered. But they hadn’t reckoned with the sheer bloody-minded determination of this man, who came back again six months later with what he felt, looking back at it, was his greatest fight, a re-match against the man who stood in line as the only other British contender for Joe Louis’s title - Freddie Mills.