Who in the hell was willie joyce?

**marbleheadmaui** · 04-29-2011 07:58 AM

Often times across various boxing forums one reads the following (or some variation thereof).

Those greats of yesteryear didn't accomplish anything more than fighters today, they just defeated a bunch of journeymen/stiffs.

Let's look at a guy who upon first examination might fit that journeyman description for a casual fan. He never won a championship. His name? Willie Joyce. An orthodox boxer from Gary, Indiana, he fought in the 1940's and finished 72-21 with 16 KO's. Looks competent but ordinary, right? Let's look a little bit at Joyce's competition.

Here are the HOFers Willie Joyce faced:

Lew Jenkins
Henry Armstrong
Ike Williams
Chalky Wright
Beau Jack
Willie Pep

His cumulative record against them? 7-5-1.

In a time of ten divisions and one champion per, each of the above was a champion. Joyce also fought the following additional champions:
Tippy Larkin
Johnny Bratton

Cumulative record against champions? 7-8-1.

He also fought, at a time when the sport had 99 ranked fighters, ranked guys at lightweight and welterweight thirteen times. His record? 8-3-1.

So let's add this up. Joyce went 15-11-2 against HOFers, THE MAN champions and ranked fighters. That's twenty eight fights against tip top competition. In one six month period, Joyce faced HOFer five times.

One last thing. Against that quality of competition? He was NEVER knocked out. In other words he was never just overwhelmed and couldn't compete.

Is Willie Joyce special somehow? Not really. There are plenty of guys like him that only boxing lunatics today can talk about, men like Jose Basora, Bert Lytell, Curtis Sheppard, Gaspar Ortega, Tiger Jones, Mike Belloise, Jackie Wilson and I can go on and on.

So why talk about this at all? Well, when we talk about fighters today and who is "great" and who deserves a slot in the HOF etc? Maybe things like beating HOFers half a dozen times, beating ranked guys fifteen times, fighting ranked guys almost thirty times, things like that can be benchmarks for being able to say "He was more accomplished than Willie Joyce."