1. Willie Pep
It was 1942 when 20-year-old Willie Pep challenged the murderous-punching Chalky Wright for the featherweight championship.
Boxing historian Springs Toledo, in his book The Gods of War, described the action like so:
“The young challenger sprinted out of his corner to center ring, put his dukes up… and disappeared. He spent round after round fighting like a figment of Wright’s imagination, offering only mirages in lieu of mayhem like a laughing ghost.”
Pep, nicknamed “Will o’ the Wisp”—homage to the elusive featherweight Young Griffo of the late 19th century—often disappeared in front of his opponents’ very eyes.
So, too, did he go missing from the public for the first six months of 1947 when a plane crash put him in a body caste for over four months.
He was back in the ring by June and defending the featherweight title by August.
Pep, the master-boxer, footwork unparalleled, and in turn a mosquito of the prize ring, floated about, drawing blood at will.
A master of angulation, Pep circled out and away from his onrushing opponents, waiting for them to overcommit and send back a stiff, not quite potent, straight right or left from either stance.
“To watch Willie Pep in action is to witness a dissertation on how to set up an opponent,” The Fight City’s Michael Carbert wrote.
The featherweight champion would lose just once through his first 136 fights, that being to the brutish Sammy Angott at lightweight.
Blood rival Sandy Saddler handed him the second loss of his career in 1948 but Pep won the return match, upsetting the 5-7 favorite over 15 rounds, boxing “beautifully all the way against his heavier punching opponent, bouncing in and out with his dazzling array of jabs, hooks and right crosses (Syracuse Post Standard).
In deep contrast, the next two fights between the two were marred in roughneck tactics—often cited as some of the dirtiest fights of all time. But amid the chaos, Pep still had his way with Saddler. Pumping out that maxim gun jab, sometimes five or six at a time, and scampering his feet across every inch of the canvas like his boots were on fire, Pep was ahead on the scorecards when the free-for-alls were eventually stopped.
Fighting past his prime into the 1960s and a record of 229-11-1 led one Sugar Ray Robinson to say that he admired Pep’s boxing ability more than any other fighter he’d ever seen (via The Sweet Science).
And that, among many things, should make fight fans proud to be an American this Independence Day.
