Cerdan Ko's Zale

Cerdan Captures World Middleweight Title by Knocking Out Zale in Twelfth
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DEFENDER IS DOWN
AS ELEVENTH ENDS
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Zale Collapses Under Cerdan's
Left Hook And Is Unable
To Continue Fighting
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AMERICAN BADLY BEATEN
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French Boxer Subjects Rival
To Ceaseless Battering In
Annexing World Crown
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By JAMES P. DAWSON
Special to The New York Times

   JERSEY CITY, N.J., Sept. 21--The world middleweight championship in boxing, an exclusive American property since Ruby Robert Fitzsimmons gave up the title, went to foreign lands tonight when Marcel Cerdan, doughty French gladiator from Casablanca, knocked out tough and rugged Tony Zale of Gary, Ind., in the twelfth round of their championship battle in the Roosevelt Stadium.
    Before a crowd of 19,272, paying receipts of $242,840, Zale collapsed after one of the most futile battles of his glorious career. He had gone as far as he could in a pitifully weak defense of the crown he regained so spectacularly when he knocked out Rocky Graziano in Newark last June.
    His strength sapped, his resistance at an ebb, his face battered and bruised, his body wracked and pained from an almost uninterrupted battering to which he had been subjected from the time the bell started the fighters on a journey scheduled for fifteen rounds, Zale collapsed under a left hook to the jaw just as the bell rang the end of the eleventh round.

The New York Times - Septmber 22, 1948