THE 100 GREATEST BOXERS OF ALL-TIME #55: JOE WALCOTT
“THE BARBADOS DEMON”
87 WINS (57 BY KO), 24 LOSSES, 24 DRAWS, 17 NO-DECISIONS
World Welterweight Champion 1901–1904
International Boxing Hall of Fame Inductee 1991
Venerable boxing historian Nat Fleischer, who had followed the sport and seen fights dating to the first decade of the twentieth century, insisted that Barbados' Joe Walcott was the finest welterweight of them all up until his dying day in 1972. With his compact body rippling with muscle, Walcott possessed athleticism and power that helped him become only the second Black man to win a world boxing championship.
He was born in Barbados but raised in Boston. He was a natural athlete from childhood, and once he took up boxing, he was a natural at that, too. Joe’s first recorded bout happened in 1890 when he was just 16 years old. He stood just 5’1” tall and never weighed more than 150 pounds but took on the best men willing to get in the ring with him, including Hall of Famers who fought at lightweight, heavyweight, and everything in between.
In 1897 and 1898, Walcott failed in challenges for the lightweight (135 pounds) and welterweight (147 pounds) championships, but he hit his prime just as the new century dawned. Between 1899 and 1900, Walcott picked up knockout wins over middleweight contender Dan Creedon, Hall of Fame heavyweight Joe Choynski, and former welterweight champ Mysterious Billy Smith. He was an endlessly aggressive fighter always pursuing the knockout. Against much bigger men like Choysnki, he sometimes leaped completely off his feet to pummel his foes with his uncannily powerful blows.
It was not that Walcott enjoyed putting himself at such a disadvantage by fighting much larger foes; men his size routinely avoided him. White champions often used the excuse of his skin color to allow them to avoid a confrontation with the “Barbados Demon.” There were times, too, when Walcott was forced to throw fights under threat of violence from gamblers, gangsters, and racists. He had to accept extreme physical disadvantages to get any kind of payday in a fair fight.
Choynski, who outweighed Walcott by 16 pounds in their February 23, 1900 match at the Broadway Athletic Club in New York, was a future Hall of Famer who had previously given heavyweight champions Jim Corbett and Jim Jeffries all they could handle. He would knock out heavyweight legend Jack Johnson in three rounds one year later, yet Walcott dispatched Choynski inside seven rounds. Walcott promptly called out reigning heavyweight champ Jeffries for a title fight, but Jeffries dismissed the challenge by drawing the “color line.”
After picking up a win over future light heavyweight champion George Gardner, Joe got another shot at the welterweight belt, then held by James “Rube” Ferns on December 15, 1901, and he won inside five rounds. He made two successful defenses before losing by disqualification to future Hall of Famer Aaron “Dixie Kid” Brown in 1904. That was the first world title match held between two Black men. Later that year, he held fellow legends Sam Langford and Joe Gans to draws. A subsequent accident with a gun damaged his right hand, effectively ending his prime, but Joe fought on until 1911, retiring at the age of 38.
Years later, an aspiring boxer from Camden, New Jersey named Arnold Cream started entering contests under the name Joe Walcott. “I chose the name because Joe Walcott was the greatest fighter who ever lived,” he told the press later. “If I use his name maybe I can hope to be one-tenth as good as he was.” The self-proclaimed Jersey Joe Walcott would go on to become heavyweight champion of the world in 1951.
Joe Walcott’s record vs. Hall of Famers and lineal world champions:
3/1/1895 — D 15 — Billy Smith
12/2/1895 — L 15 — Kid Lavigne
10/29/1897 — L (TKO) 12 — Kid Lavigne
4/14/1898 — D 25 — Billy Smith
12/6/1898 — L 20 — Billy Smith
2/23/1900 — W (TKO) 7 — Joe Choynski
5/4/1900 — W 20 — Billy Smith
9/24/1900 — W (DQ) 10 — Billy Smith
9/27/1901 — W 20 — George Gardner
12/18/1901 —W (TKO) 5 — Rube Ferns
4/11/1902 — No-Decision 6 — Philadelphia Jack O’Brien
4/25/1902 — L 20 — George Gardner
4/20/1904 — D 10 — Philadelphia Jack O’Brien
5/28/1904 — W (TKO) 4 — Billy Smith
4/29/1904 — L (DQ) 20 — Dixie Kid
9/5/1904 — D 15 — Sam Langford
9/30/1904 — D 20 — Joe Gans
10/16/1906 — L 15 — Honey Mellody
11/29/1906 — L (TKO) 12 — Honey Mellody
