Carmine Vingo fights, including a unanimous decision over highly regarded 16-2 contender Joe Modzele on a boxing card at Yankee Stadium in August 1949. A second round knockout of Al Robinson at Sunnyside Garden in Queens, New York, propelled Vingo into the world heavyweight rankings, and a crossroads bout with rising Rocky Marciano to determine a serious 'white hope' successor challenger for former world heavyweight champion Joe Louis and world heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott. On December 30, 1949, at Madison Square Garden, Vingo, then 16-1, and Marciano, 24-0, fought a slugfest. Marciano put Vingo down in the first and second rounds.
Barbados Joe Walcott in Boston. Gardner would became a world welterweight contender against Mike "Twin" Sullivan in April of that year. New York's "Evening World", wrote that Walcott's performance "did not come up to expectations", and that Gardner's win "was one of the easiest victories he ever earned." On November 2, 1911, Walcott fought his last reported bout against Tom Sawyer in Lowell, Massachusetts. He walked out of the ring before the bell at the end of the one-sided 12-round technical knockout, and said to the crowd "I'm 40 years old and I guess I'm done with this game." Walcott squandered a fortune