Sept. 27, 1946

Tony Zale won the middleweight championship in 1941, but he hadn't had a title defense in almost five years because he enlisted in the Navy. Though still champ, Zale is a 12-5 underdog to Rocky Graziano for tonight's fight at Yankee Stadium.

Chapter I of the Zale-Graziano trilogy is a war. Zale knocks down the challenger from the Bronx in the first round, but Rocky recovers and knocks down Zale at the end of the second. Graziano continues to pound away savagely, and after five rounds Zale looks like a beaten fighter.

But then comes the unexpected in the sixth round. Showing the heart of a champion, Zale, though having suffered a broken thumb earlier in the bout, gathers the strength to somehow fire a terrific right to Graziano's solar plexus and follows it up with a left hook to the chin. Graziano goes down, and he doesn't rise until just after referee Ruby Goldstein completes the count of 10.

"The count came up on me awful fast," Graziano says. "I heard eight, nine and 10, but I couldn't do anything about it. The blow to the body knocked the breath out of me. Fight him again? He'd knock me out again."

But not before Graziano will win the rematch in 1947 with a sixth-round KO. Obviously, somebody up there must like Graziano. Zale, though, will take the savage series by regaining the title with a third-round knockout in 1948.