Jersey Joe Walcott

He was born Raymond Arnold Cream in Merchantville, New Jersey, on January 31, 1914. When he was only thirteen years old, his father, an immigrant from Barbados, died. Young Walcott quit school and began looking for any kind of work he could find to help

Jersey Joe Walcott

support his family. Not long thereafter, he stopped in one day at Battling Mac's Gym in Camden, New Jersey, where he soon became a regular, sparring with some of the fighters who called the gym home. He was just a skinny kid and nothing particularly remarkable as a boxer in those early years, but he stayed with it and began fighting on the club circuit of southern New Jersey and nearby Philadelphia.

Walcott made his professional boxing debut in 1930 at the age of sixteen, knocking out Cowboy Wallace in the first round of a match in Vineland, New Jersey. He won his next five matches before losing, on November 16, 1933, in a rematch with Henry Taylor in Philadelphia. Early in his professional career, the young New Jersey boxer decided his last name of Cream seemed wholly inappropriate for a fighter who hoped some day to be a champion. He decided to borrow the name of his father's favorite boxer from the islands, Joe Walcott, a former welterweight champion who was also known as the "Barbados Demon." To personalize his new name, he added "Jersey," to signify the state of his birth.