Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Flashy Sebastian

Ray Robinson 152 lbs beat Flashy Sebastian 147 lbs by KO at 1:02 in round 1 of 10

• Date: 1947-08-29
• Location: Madison Square Garden, New York, New York, USA
• Referee: Ruby Goldstein

• Photo#2

Notes

• Flashy Sebastian was a 5-1 underdog coming into the bout.
• Only Legionnaires and their relatives were admitted into Madison Square Garden to see the fight, which was being staged as an entertainment feature of the American Legion national convention. They were free spectators.
• There was a crowd of 16,000.
• The November 1947 issue of The Ring (page 7) shows a photograph of Sebastian "floating through the air before dropping like a log." Also, it is stated that the fight lasted only 20 seconds and Sebastian was unconscious for half an hour. Coming just two months after the death of Jimmy Doyle in a welterweight title fight against Robinson in Cleveland, "the manner in which Flash was kayoed brought shudders to the scribes" who had seen the Robinson-Doyle fight.
• Robinson announced that he would give all but $1,000 or so of his $15,000 purse to the family of Jimmy Doyle. [1]