Muhammad Ali

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"Don't count the days. Make the days count."

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)

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Nothing lasts forever.

Muhammad Ali himself said that when he retired from boxing. I knew at the time that he was right, but I didn't want it to be true. I wanted him to continue to box — and to win — just as I had wanted Roger Staubach to continue playing football and how, many years later, I wanted Brett Favre to continue playing.

I knew he wouldn't live forever, either, but, again, I didn't want it to be true. His death yesterday affected people everywhere, even people attending a Paul Simon performance.

Somehow, though, it seems appropriate that he should be taken from us this year of all years — when so many have already been taken. And when many more, no doubt, will be taken from us before this year is over. It seems to be that kind of year, a deviation from the norm from politics to mortality. The political process has been the same, but it has yielded two unusually unpopular nominees.

And mortality is about the same as usual, but it seems to be taking more influential prominent people than it does in an ordinary year. Actually, that probably isn't true. It just seems that way.

Muhammad Ali was a human magnet, drawing people to him more through the force of his personality than his boxing skills (although they played a role in it, too, make no mistake about that).

The thing about magnets, though, is that they repel as well as attract. And Muhammad Ali certainly repelled a lot of people. It was a divisive time in America, the late '60s. From the vantage point of half a century later — and with a black president in the Oval Office — it is easy for those who weren't there to think that the '60s were all about civil rights, but that was really only one issue that divided Americans in those days. The war in Vietnam divided people, too, and it was Ali's refusal to fight in Vietnam that exacerbated the situation.

It was often claimed that Ali said, "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" as justification for his refusal to be conscripted into the Army, but that isn't what he said.

What he really said was, "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother or some darker people or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger. They never lynched me. They didn't put no dogs on me. They didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail."

There were a lot of people in America who didn't like Ali when he refused to go to Vietnam. They derided him for what they saw as arrogance in the ring and cowardice outside of it. Some people attributed that to racism, just as some people today dismiss opposition to Barack Obama's policies as thinly veiled racism, too. I didn't buy it then because I knew many people in my small hometown in Arkansas who supported the war and spoke critically of antiwar demonstrators, too, and most of whom were white.

Race can be a convenient scapegoat, and I have no doubt it plays a role for some people but not all. For most of the people in my hometown in the late '60s and early '70s, race really had nothing to do with it. It was all about politics.

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When Ali fought Joe Frazier for the first time, in what was widely called the Fight of the Century, it became more than just a fight for many people. Folks who were against the war tended to support Ali, and folks who supported the war effort tended to support Frazier.

That, too, was called racism by many people, which never made sense to me, either. How could it be racist? Both Ali and Frazier were black.

Maybe it is true what they say about time healing all wounds, though, because I have heard nothing said about that time in Ali's life and career — except for the facts that he refused to serve and was stripped of his title. Nothing more than that.

Even from people who probably would be expected to be critical of Ali for his politics.

Remarkably, considering his chosen profession, Ali was a peacemaker. At the very least, that seems odd for a professional fighter, doesn't it? In trying to resolve this contradiction, comedian George Carlin described Ali's refusal to serve this way: "That's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up, but I don't wanna kill 'em."

Now, at the end of his life, Ali is being remembered for his pursuit of peace after his violent career. Part of his refusal to fight in Vietnam was grounded in his recent conversion to Islam, and he maintained his core beliefs throughout his life.

Last December, after the shootings in San Bernardino, California, Ali told NBC News, "I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino or anywhere else in the world. ... True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so–called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion. ... We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. ... They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody."

There was a time when Ali was regarded as the most recognizable man in the world. Many saw him as an heroic figure.

Heroes usually need a reliable sidekick (i.e., Robin to Batman) or an arch rival (here I guess Larry Bird and Magic Johnson would fit the bill). Solitary heroes tend to have short lives in the spotlight.

In the ring, I suppose, Ali will always be remembered for his three epic fights with Frasier. As for sidekick ...

Broadcaster Howard Cosell was Ali's reliable sidekick, I suppose. He wasn't part of Ali's entourage, his traveling roadshow, but he always seemed to be ringside, providing the commentary at Ali's fights. It wasn't unusual to see the rich and the famous attending Ali's fights, but Cosell owed much of his fame and personal fortune to his association with Ali — as well as his Monday Night Football gig.

If you ever saw Cosell interviewing Ali, you could see what a symbiotic relationship they had. Ali had considerable skills and probably could have succeeded without Cosell. Cosell, though, might have found it much more difficult to succeed alone, being limited to only four months per year of Monday Night Football and Dandy Don.

Together they were an iconic pair, and now they're both gone.

Time doesn't march on, folks. It sprints.

No Mas

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"It would require a deal of convincing to shake the conviction here that Duran had to be sick or injured because Roberto Duran was not, is not and never could be a quitter."

Red Smith

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The Belfast Telegraph recently published a list of the 10 greatest fighters of all time.

The sixth–greatest fighter, the Telegraph said, was Roberto Duran, and he beat the fifth–greatest fighter of all time, Sugar Ray Leonard, for the welterweight title in Montreal on June 20, 1980.

They met in a rematch in New Orleans on this day in 1980 in what became one of the most famous fights ever. It is known to history as the "No Mas fight" because that is what Duran said to the referee at the end of the eighth round, indicating that he was conceding the fight. In case you aren't fluent in Spanish — and I certainly am not — "no mas" is Spanish for "no more."

After the fight, Duran tried to save some face by insisting that he was suffering from stomach cramps, but I always thought it was because he just couldn't reconcile the Sugar Ray he fought in New Orleans with the fighter he fought in Montreal five months earlier.

It was a moment that really defined both men.

My memory of Leonard is that he was like Muhammad Ali, light on his feet in the ring, always moving. But Leonard, in the face of Duran's prefight taunting, adopted more of a flat–footed style and went toe to toe with Duran in that first fight. He wanted to beat Duran at his own game. He didn't. Duran won by a decision.

Five months later, they met again in New Orleans, and the old Sugar Ray appeared to be back.

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Gone was the plodding flat–footed style. It was like watching an entirely different fighter in the ring, one who looked like that other Sugar Ray Leonard but certainly didn't fight like him.

Apparently Duran was baffled by it as well. He shouldn't have been, though — if he prepared for that first fight by observing footage of Leonard in the ring. That Leonard was back.

Leonard was always the good guy in the equation. Duran was the bad guy, known at one time as the meanest man in boxing. He was said to have knocked out a woman and a horse.

Boxing is a macho sport, and Duran, with his cold, demonic eyes, was the most macho man in boxing 35 years ago. My guess at the time was that Leonard didn't just want to win the fight. He wanted to seize the crown of most macho fighter from Duran as well.

I didn't see either fight in progress; I saw them after the fact, in replays on TV, but what stands out in my mind about that first fight was that, even before it was over, the announcers were talking about how they could see a rematch coming in the final rounds, when Leonard tried desperately to retake ground he lost to Duran in the early rounds — resuming the style with which he had succeeded in the past. But it was too late.

Not long after he lost the fight, Leonard actively pursued a rematch. Duran had been celebrating his victory in New York, partying and overeating. Leonard felt a key to winning the rematch would be to have it as soon as possible — before Duran could lose the celebratory weight he had gained.

Nevertheless, by the time of the fight, both men were in great condition.

Millions of dollars were offered to both fighters for a rematch, and the agreement was reached. The fight would be in the New Orleans Superdome.

Once the fight was in progress, it seemed pretty even — until the seventh round, when Leonard began to openly taunt Duran, and Duran had no answer for it. He seemed lost, and Leonard appeared to be in control.

It was a part of fighting that a lot of people overlook — the psychological fight. Sure you hear people speak about fighters getting inside each other's heads, but I think a lot of people just see that as descriptive speech, allegorical — when it is much more accurate than most people probably want to believe. On this night in 1980, Leonard wasn't toying with Duran. He was implementing part of his strategy, just as he did when he used the bolo punch.

He was turning the tables on Duran, making him the object of the laughter instead of the other way around. For five months, Leonard had felt as if people were snickering at him over his loss to Duran. He wanted to make Duran the object of the ridicule he had been feeling — and probably imagining. I don't recall hearing anyone — in my personal conversations or in boxing programs I saw on television — who thought any less of Leonard for going the distance with Roberto Duran and losing.

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In the eighth round, Duran had had enough. He looked at the referee and said, "No mas."

On this night in 1980, Leonard avenged his loss. Duran couldn't even go the distance. Leonard frustrated him, bewildered him. He got inside his head. It was not allegorical. It was definitely real.

The outcome was unheard of. Boxers just don't quit. They'll let their heads get beaten to mush, and they still won't quit.

Yet the most macho fighter on the planet quit. And when he did, everyone forgot his triumph over Leonard five months earlier. Few people remember it today. If you speak to a boxing fan about Leonard and Duran, the phrase "no mas" comes springing to mind, not images from that night in Montreal.

Rumblin' in the Jungle

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"If you were surprised when Nixon resigned, just watch what happens when I whup Foreman's behind."

Muhammad Ali
October 1974

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"Forty years ago this month, the eyes of the world turned to Kinshasa [Zaire] to watch the 'Rumble in the Jungle,' the legendary boxing event that saw Muhammad Ali and George Foreman slug it out for the world heavyweight title," writes Thomas Yocum for The Guardian.

Muhammad Ali was a great fighter, one of the greatest of all time, as he frequently told anyone who would listen. He wouldn't stop there, though. Often, he would tell folks who did not want to listen.

He was also a master showman, and I guess he figured — correctly — that most people believed that a 32–year–old boxer who had been prevented from competing during his prime years because he refused to fight in Vietnam would be unable to stay with the heavyweight champ.

George Foreman was young and powerful. He had grabbed the title in 1973 with a hammering of Joe Frazier, and, in his second defense of his title, he brought down one of the top contenders for the title, Ken Norton, in similarly dominant fashion. Seemed he barely worked up a sweat in either. At times, you could have sworn he was actually bored.

Frazier and Norton, it is worth noting, were the only two boxers who had beaten Ali up to that time. Norton broke Ali's jaw.

In the three years prior to his bout with Ali, Foreman fought in 11 fights — all but one were done in two rounds or less, and that single exception was finished in five rounds. Foreman was used to fights that were scheduled for 15 rounds; he simply wasn't accustomed to fights that actually went that long.

Therein lay the key to Ali's upset victory. He knew that the longer he could keep the fight going, the more he would frustrate Foreman. Foreman would make mistakes, and Ali would wait for those mistakes, then exploit them. It was his "Rope–a–Dope" strategy.

Well, there was more to it than that, but that's a pretty good summary of the strategy. The "Rope–a–Dope" strategy was to force Foreman to use a lot of his energy pounding away at Ali, who would lean back on the ropes and cover his face with his gloves while Foreman hammered his midsection. Few, if any, observers thought Ali could take punches anymore, especially the powerful punches Foreman threw, but he surprised them all.

"They told me you could punch, George," Ali taunted Foreman in the early rounds. "Is that the best you can do?" An enraged Foreman tried to throw even harder punches — but with no apparent effect on Ali.

Foreman became visibly tired, and Ali was able to bring him down in the eighth round. It may have been a bigger shock to the sports world than his triumph over Sonny Liston 10 years earlier.

Originally scheduled for Sept. 24, the bout was postponed for five weeks because Foreman suffered a cut near his right eye while he was preparing for Ali.

When the men finally met 40 years ago tonight, their fight began at 4 a.m. local time to accommodate the closed–circuit audience in the Western Hemisphere.

The postponement gave Ali an opportunity to bond a little with the locals while he spent the extra time preparing for the fight.

I remember seeing footage of Ali running Rocky–like through the streets of Kinshasa, and the locals, young and old, running along with him or watching from the side, were chanting, "Ali, bomaye!" — which means, "Ali, kill him!" It quickly became one of the most recognizable sports–oriented phrases ever.

Killing people wasn't Ali's way, though. Any boxing expert will tell you that the fighters who take that mentality into the ring with them are the sluggers, and Ali was no slugger. He was a finesse fighter, more likely to win on points than on a knockout. The ironic part is that Ali did win most of his fights by knockout. That's the thing that people often forget. It's the thing that Foreman apparently forgot, and it cost him his title.

That was the key to the success of the "Rope–a–Dope" strategy. Ali had a reputation for outlasting opponents and winning on points, even though three–quarters of his wins up to that time were by knockout, so his approach likely made sense to Foreman, probably the best slugger of the time. He didn't expect Ali to go for the knockout after Foreman ran out of gas, though. He probably expected Ali to land a lot of punches in the later rounds in an attempt to pile up points — and Foreman walked right into the trap, landing punch after punch to Ali's midsection — proving repeatedly that Ali could take a punch.

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I suppose it would be natural for him to be bitter about the outcome.

"I hated Ali," Foreman told The Daily Express. "Hated him."

Understandable. Foreman was deceived. I guess everyone was.

Ali's "Rope–a–Dope" strategy wasn't evident in the first round. It was more evident in the second round — enough that Frazier, who was sitting ringside, remarked about it and wondered on the air, in response to British TV host David Frost's question, why Ali was leaning against the ropes so much.

By the end of the third round, Frazier was criticizing Foreman for being too wild in his punches and not thinking things through. He needed to be more deliberate and strategic. The champ was going to wear himself out, Frazier said prophetically.

Tellingly, when the fight was over and Ali was mobbed at center ring by admirers, Foreman and his entourage slipped quietly away almost without notice. Foreman's head was hanging in the dejection of defeat.

Nobody wants to mob a vanquished champion.

The Brown Bomber's 100th Birthday

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"This was an hour before midnight of October 26, 1951. It was the evening of a day that dawned July 4, 1934, when Joe Louis became a professional fistfighter and knocked out Jack Kracken in Chicago for a $50 purse. The night was a long time on the way, but it had to come."

Red Smith

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I've been following boxing most of my life, and I have come to the conclusion that selecting the best who ever fought in a division is a matter that — for the most part — is in the eye of the beholder.

It is easier for me to compare fighters from different eras than it is to compare teams or individual athletes in other sports, though, because boxing is largely unchanged since the introduction of gloves. There have been some rule changes, and bouts typically aren't scheduled for as many rounds as they once were, but the length of those rounds hasn't changed, and the ring is the same size as it has been for God knows how long.

In other sports, the equipment has changed — and perhaps the playing surfaces are different. That is especially true, I believe, of baseball, which has seen the introduction of indoor games, artificial turf and protective batting helmets, among other things, as well as changes in rules designed to level the playing field for hitters or pitchers.

Comparatively, boxing is unchanged, and, when you look at Joe Louis' career, it is difficult for any beholder to say that anyone else was better.

Most Americans of the 21st century probably regard Louis as a figure from a bygone era — like Babe Ruth or Jim Thorpe — someone they know only through flickering images on movie screens. If they think of someone breaking racial barriers, they probably think of baseball's Jackie Robinson.

But Louis was more than a barrier buster. The Florida Times–Union writes that Louis, who was born 100 years ago tomorrow, was an American hero.

So he was.

Louis didn't break the racial championship barrier in professional boxing's heavyweight division. That distinction belonged to Jack Johnson, the "Galveston Giant" who won the heavyweight title more than a decade before Louis was born and lost it when Louis was a toddler but never really won over white Americans.

(There was more to it, of course — mostly having to do with allegations of Johnson violating the Mann Act, allegations that were clearly racially motivated — but that is a subject for another discussion. My point is, Louis was not the first black heavyweight champ.)

Louis was a popular figure from coast to coast, though, and he was talented. Among the heavyweights of all time, ESPN ranks him behind only Muhammad Ali, just ahead of Johnson and a couple of slots ahead of Rocky Marciano, who knocked Louis out in 1951 in his final fight.

Marciano, of course, is the only heavyweight champion in history to retire undefeated. But when Marciano met Joe Louis in 1951, Louis was 37 years old. Marciano was nearly 10 years his junior. One can only wonder what might have been if they had been the same age when they faced each other.

The year that Louis was 28 (Marciano's age when he fought Louis), Louis successfully defended the heavyweight title twice within a couple of months, winning the first in a one–round knockout, the second in a six–round TKO.

The year before, he defended his title four times — including the famed bout with Billy Conn, the "Fight of the Year" in 1941.

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He didn't fight in 1943 or in most of 1944 because he served in World War II, but he experienced a surge in popularity when he was quoted as saying, "We'll win (the war) 'cause we're on God's side."

I've seen several lists that have Louis rated the best heavyweight of all time. That is appropriate, considering that his reign as the heavyweight division's champion was longer than any other.

At times, he was criticized for the quality of his opposition. The lineup of his opponents was known as the "Bum of the Month Club" when he was defending his title (in spite of their nickname, most of those fighters were ranked in the top 10 among heavyweights). But he did face some very good fighters, too, some of the best of his day — Conn (twice), Max Schmeling (twice), Jersey Joe Walcott (twice), Ezzard Charles, James J. Braddock.

In many ways, Louis was produced and presented for mass consumption. His image was tightly managed — he had certain rules he had to live by, one of which was that he could not be photographed with white women — and his handlers were even responsible for coming up with his nickname, the "Brown Bomber."

(Several other nicknames were floated, but "Brown Bomber" seemed to be preferred by most.)

Louis' triumphs in the ring were greeted as symbolic strides for the black community. There weren't many black figures for black Americans to admire in those days, but they didn't admire him just because of his race. He was a heroic figure for all Americans.

"Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A., and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one–man triumphs," wrote noted author Langston Hughes.

"No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions — or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too."

"What my father did was enable white America to think of him as an American, not as a black," said his son, Joe Jr. "By winning, he became white America's first black hero."

And paved the way for those who followed.

Shaking Up the World

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"Clay comes out to meet Liston, and Liston starts to retreat.
If Liston goes back an inch farther, he'll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with his left, Clay swings with his right.
Look at young Cassius carry the fight.
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room.
It's a matter of time till Clay lowers the boom.
Now Clay lands with a right, what a beautiful swing,
And the punch raises the Bear clean out of the ring.
Liston is still rising, and the ref wears a frown
For he can't start counting till Sonny goes down.
Now Liston is disappearing from view, the crowd is going frantic,
But radar stations have picked him up, somewhere over the Atlantic.
Who would have thought when they came to the fight
That they'd witness the launching of a human satellite?
Yes the crowd did not dream when they put up the money
That they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny."

Cassius Clay (1963)

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Sonny Liston was the most fearsome fighter of his day.

Heck, he would be fearsome in any era. Sports Illustrated ranked him third among all the heavyweights — behind only Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis.

Fifty years ago tomorrow, Liston was the heavyweight champion about to defend his title in Miami Beach against an up–and–comer named Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali), and most observers believed the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Modern boxing fans who grew up knowing Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield as the fiercest fighters around would be astonished by Sonny Liston. Many of his contemporaries were hesitant to fight him. There were boxing writers who believed he could not be beaten.

How tough was Liston? His nickname was "The Big Bear."

Liston was a brawler who learned to fight while serving time for armed robbery. He was sent back to prison for beating up a policeman. Through most of his professional career, Liston's majority owner was a former Mafia hit man; because of that association, Liston had a reputation for being everything that was bad about the sport even though his criminal record was a thing of the past, a relic of his reckless youth.

Clay was known to be loquacious, young and arrogant. He had won a gold medal as a light heavyweight in the 1960 Olympics, but he had struggled as a professional. Most boxing writers believed Liston would win easily.

Liston may have thought so, too. The 31–year–old Liston was a 7–to–1 favorite over the 22–year–old Clay.

Clay did everything he could to capitalize on that. He cultivated the image of a naive youngster in an attempt to lull Liston into a false sense of security.

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Any thoughts that Liston might have had about knocking Clay out in the first round the way he had disposed of the previous heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, disappeared quickly as Clay proved to be too slippery. He constantly frustrated Liston by backing just out of range of the champion's punches.

Then, in the third round, Clay staggered the champ. Liston didn't go down, but he was bleeding from his nose and a cut just below his left eye when the round ended.

By the fifth round, Liston's right eye was beginning to swell, but Clay was having his own vision problems. Something appeared to be in one of his eyes, and he was blinking rapidly as the round began. Sensing a vulnerability, Liston tried to move in for the kill, but Clay bounced away every time Liston tried to connect, and Liston seemed to be tired by the end of the round.

When the fighters came out for the sixth round, Liston was dragging. The fight was stopped before the start of the seventh round.

And Clay jumped around the ring, repeatedly shouting, "I shook up the world!"

Clay leaned over the ropes of the boxing ring and told the working press to "eat your words." Sports writer Red Smith wrote that "nobody ever had a better right" to demand that.

"He might have been nailed if the bout had continued," Smith wrote, "but, on the evidence of 18 frenzied minutes, Cassius was entitled to crow, 'I'm the greatest. I'm gonna upset the world.' "

Smith's words were a glimpse into the mindset of many who had been skeptical of Clay before the fight. Perhaps they felt he had been lucky. He was still a brash youngster, and upsets do happen. Clay "might have been nailed if the bout had continued," Smith had written, but he won "on the evidence of 18 frenzied minutes."

Evidence, of course, is what it is, whatever it is, not what someone might wish that it is. The fight did not continue. It was the end of the Liston championship.

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Within a few days, Clay joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

It was the start of a new era in boxing. Liston got a rematch with Ali in Lewiston, Maine, in May of 1965, which he lost, and he was never to be a contender again. Less than six years later, he was found dead of what was originally ruled to be a heroin overdose. Police could find no paraphernalia that would have been necessary to inject the fatal dose, however, so his death remains officially unresolved.

For Ali, it was the beginning of a remarkable professional career.

Jersey Joe Walcott's 100th Birthday

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Jersey Joe Walcott defeated Ezzard Charles
for the heavyweight championship in 1951.

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Jersey Joe Walcott's boxing career is worthy of more study than I can give it here.

Walcott, who was born 100 years ago today, doesn't tend to show up on Top 10 Heavyweights of All Time lists (although you will often find him in the Top 20). He was regarded as a bit of a journeyman, I suppose, never managing to win a title until late in his career — but he stood tall in bouts with two of the greatest heavyweights of all time, Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano.

He knocked Louis down twice when they met the first time, but Louis prevailed in a split decision on the judges' cards. There are people today who will tell you Walcott won that fight. Enough people thought so at the time that they met in a rematch about 6½ months later. Louis scored an 11th–round knockout on that occasion.

In addition to two losses in title fights with Louis, Walcott lost two title fights with then–heavyweight champion Ezzard Charles, but he took the title from Charles in his third try on July 18, 1951. He was 37 years old, the oldest to win the heavyweight championship. Charles had just turned 30 less than two weeks earlier.

Walcott returned the favor by giving Charles the first shot at the title nearly a year later. He retained his title by virtue of a unanimous decision.

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Only a handful of heavyweight champions are remembered more for fights they lost than fights they won, and Walcott is one of them. He is probably best remembered for his second title defense, which he lost to Marciano in September 1952. It does help to remember, though, that Walcott was 38 years old; Marciano had turned 29 three weeks earlier.

According to all accounts I have read and heard, it was quite a fight. It was named Fight of the Year for 1952.

As I say, Marciano won the fight with a 13th–round knockout, but Walcott challenged him. Marciano had a reputation for knocking out his opponents early, frequently in the first round, but Walcott didn't go down so easily. Early in the first round, Walcott staggered Marciano with a right, then knocked him down with a left hook.

It seemed that Walcott, who had dismissed Marciano as "amateurish" prior to the fight, may have been right in his assessment.

But as the fight went on, and the boxers began to tire, Marciano seized control and, eventually, knocked out Walcott in the 13th round.

They met in a rematch eight months later, and Marciano made quick work of his foe, knocking him out in the first round.

In 1994, at the age of 80, Walcott died less than 10 miles from where he was born.

The Fight of the Century, Part II

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Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought three times.

The first was known as the "Fight of the Century." Frazier was the defending world champion, and he defeated Ali on that occasion. It was Frazier's only victory in three bruising confrontations.

The third fight, the "Thrilla in Manila," was fought a year and a half after the second fight, which took place in New York's Madison Square Garden 40 years ago tonight.

Neither man was champion on this night 40 years ago. Frazier had lost his title a year earlier to George Foreman, and the winner of the second fight figured to get a shot at Foreman's crown.

In boxing lore, the second fight between the two men is seen as the least significant of the three, but I disagree with that assessment. It was scheduled for 12 rounds, and it went the distance — no quick decision. Ali was the winner by unanimous decision, but that does not mean it was a lopsided fight.

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It is an exercise in futility to rank the Ali–Frazier fights. It was a great rivalry, and each fight had its unique traits.

I always believed Ali–Frazier II was not the least significant of the three fights. True, no title was on the line, but the winner was expected to get a shot at the heavyweight championship — and, in fact, it did lead to a title shot for Ali later that year.

What's more, Ali cashed in on his opportunity, defeating Foreman in the famed "Rumble in the Jungle" in October.

But that was still nine months in the future. On this night in 1974, Ali got off to the kind of start that was typical for him — scoring enough points to be the unanimous winner of the first two rounds. That came as no real surprise to veteran fight watchers. Frazier always was a slow starter.

Frazier — who was thought to be seriously hurt near the end of the second round — began to score some points with the judges, winning the third round and doing well enough in the fourth to get two of the judges to score the round a draw.

The fifth and sixth rounds went to Ali, then the seventh and eighth went to Frazier. Ali was the unanimous winner of the ninth and 11th rounds while Frazier won split decisions in the 10th and 12th rounds.

It was a unanimous decision — all three judges had Ali winning — but it was far from unanimous as far as all observers were concerned. Sports writer Red Smith of the New York Times, for example, thought Frazier had won a narrow victory.

The rivalry had what any good rivalry should have — a healthy dose of good old–fashioned hate. At least, it appeared to have plenty of hate coming from the Frazier corner. Prior to their rematch, the men reviewed the tape of the first fight at the ABC studio, during which Ali called Frazier "ignorant," and a fight broke out in the studio.

That might have been a show. Ali was known to be a showman, and Frazier might have been persuaded to play along.

But, if it was a show, it was mighty convincing.

Ken Norton: The Often-Forgotten 'Giant'

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Ken Norton, who died Wednesday at the age of 70, was good enough to win the heavyweight championship in the conventional way.

Instead he was awarded the title when the champion, Leon Spinks, refused to fight Norton, the top contender, in his first title defense as mandated by the World Boxing Council after he beat Muhammad Ali in February 1978. Spinks was stripped of the WBC title, and Norton was given the title retroactively — on the basis of a fight he won the previous year.

I'm sure Norton would have preferred to win the title the old–fashioned way — in the ring. He came so close at times. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Ali, Norton's most noteworthy contemporary, did it three times.

Norton fought Ali three times and won the first one — when Ali was in his prime. The only other fighter to do that was Joe Frazier.

Like Frazier, Norton lost his next two bouts with Ali, but Ali's victories against each fighter were different. In each succeeding fight with Frazier, Ali seemed to get better but Frazier did not. Norton — competing "in what can now be viewed as a golden era of heavyweights," writes The Telegraph — maintained his level of excellence.

Norton came into his third fight with Ali supremely confident, and he was confident he had outfought Ali when the final bell rang. There were even those who thought Norton won that final bout with Ali. A victory would have given Norton the title, but he came up short, just as he did against George Foreman.

As I say, he eventually won the title, anyway — but not in the ring. I guess, for some fight fans, that diminishes the accomplishment, even though the WBC insisted it was based on a real victory in the ring. It just wasn't recognized at the time as a title fight.

Perhaps that is, to a degree, why the only Ken Norton who is recognized by many modern–day sports fans is Norton's son and namesake.

There was an embarrassment of riches in the heavyweight division in those days.

Or, as Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports writes, that was when boxing was "the most amazing sport around."

I read Doyel's piece on Norton a couple of times, and, both times, I found myself nodding in agreement when I read this: "[O]nce upon a time boxing was full of true sporting giants," one of whom was Norton.

It must have been hard to stand out among all those other giants.

Muhammad Ali's Third Heavyweight Crown

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Thirty–five years ago today, Muhammad Ali did something no one else has ever done. He won the heavyweight title for the third time.

Seven months earlier, Ali got sloppy and lost his title to Leon Spinks, a newcomer fighting in only his eighth professional fight. The 36–year–old Ali clearly expected an easy time with Spinks, but he wound up losing a 15–round decision.

Ali took the rematch seriously and came into it in much better shape. In many ways, he looked like the Ali of a few years earlier when he won bouts with George Foreman and Joe Frazier.

The Spinks fights were televised in those pre–cable days by one of the networks. That was one of the great things about the years when Ali was the champ. He made boxing accessible to everyone. Before and after Ali's championship years, heavyweight title fights were televised in that era's version of pay–per–view telecasts. They were shown via closed circuit in theaters, and, as I recall, tickets definitely were not cheap (in the financial context of the times).

But Joe Six–Pack could watch heavyweight title fights from the comfort of his own living room — and without paying a penny for the privilege — when Ali was champ.

I didn't get to see Ali lose his title to Spinks in February 1978. It was regarded as a foregone conclusion that Ali would win, and I accepted a social invitation of some kind — and, as a result, missed one of the great upsets in boxing history.

Seven months later, when the two of them met in a rematch, I was in front of the TV watching. I wasn't about to miss it. The Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila get all the attention in the Ali story, but, for me, the fight that took place 35 years ago tonight was the most anticipated fight of my life.

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As I watched the rematch, it was hard for me to believe Ali could have lost to Spinks in that first fight. Ali was sharp. He was crisp. He was in charge of the fight from the beginning.

Long before the final bell sounded, I knew Ali would recapture his title that night — barring some totally unexpected development. Not only did Ali look like he was in charge of the fight, but Spinks appeared hesitant, sluggish, even confused at times. In the later rounds, maybe that confusion was due to all the blows Spinks had taken from Ali. But I could not explain why he was that way in the early rounds.

I thought it was a mismatch. It was hard for me to believe the fight went the distance. True, it resulted in a unanimous decision for Ali, but his age was catching up to him. The Ali of even two years prior would have finished off Spinks in a few rounds, as he did Jean–Pierre Coopman and Richard Dunn (with a 15–round decision over a more highly regarded challenger, Jimmy Young, in between) in a three—month span in 1976.

But, after beating Spinks, Ali went more than two years before unsuccessfully defending his title against Larry Holmes in October 1980.

The Era of Ali was over.

It Was Over Before It Began

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Whenever I think of the Mike Tyson–Michael Spinks fight that took place in Atlantic City, N.J., 25 years ago tonight, I always think of my friend Steve in Little Rock. Never fails.

Neither of us saw the Tyson–Spinks fight when it was happening, but, about a week after it was over, sometime around the Fourth of July, a cable channel (I think it was HBO) aired a delayed recording of the fight, which I recorded on videotape.

Steve and I watched that tape together in my living room. Several times. We had a lot of fun with it, too.

The fight was scheduled for 12 rounds, as I recall. But it didn't even last one.

In fact, it lasted about 90 seconds. Didn't take long to watch — or analyze.

Before the fight, Tyson had something of a reputation for finishing bouts quickly, frequently in the first round. But that reputation had been achieved largely against clearly inferior foes — which made it all the more puzzling when he continued to pad his record after winning the heavyweight title from Trevor Berbick in 1986.

In the next 19 months, Tyson defended his title half a dozen times. Most of them ended the same way. Tyson would hammer away at some poor slob for a round or two, then his opponent would be knocked out or declared the loser by TKO.

I worked on the sports desk at the Arkansas Gazette in those days, and I used to keep a cooler in my car to save money on soft drinks. Periodically during my shifts, I would go out to my car to retrieve a can of Coke or Dr Pepper or whatever had been on sale the last time I went to the grocery store.

I vividly recall one night when, on such an excursion to my car, I heard two men talking as they walked from a nearby theater where a Tyson fight had been featured on closed circuit. Tyson won that fight in the first or second round, and the men were complaining about how little action there had been. I remember being pleased by the news. It meant the wire accounts we would run in the next morning's paper would be ready far in advance of our deadline.

As far as I was concerned, that was the good thing (maybe the only good thing) about having Tyson as the heavyweight champ in those days. His fights usually didn't last too long, and those of us who were responsible for editing the wire copy and sizing the photographs and writing the headline for the next day's paper — all that stuff we used to do by hand but now is done on a computer screen — had the rare luxury of time to do it.

(Unless, of course, Tyson was fighting in Vegas. If he was, the fight probably wouldn't begin until around 9 or 10 Arkansas time. But the fight with Spinks was on the East Coast.)

For others, like Bernard Fernandez of The Sweet Science, thoughts of boxing events in those days are linked to bittersweet memories of a time and a place that are gone. Fernandez writes that the annual meeting of the Atlantic City All Stars Boxing Gala is "like a gathering of ... the Flat Earth Society."

And he is right. When one speaks of the Tyson era today, it has a tendency to sound like a discussion among members of a Good Old Days club about the Jurassic period — with Tyson being the T rex in the analogy.

Perhaps Tyson's most noteworthy foe since winning the title had been a past–his–prime Larry Holmes, who was lured out of a nearly two–year retirement by the promise of a multimillion–dollar payday.

Holmes hung around until the fourth round before Tyson finished him off. As pitiful as that may sound, though, it was true grit compared to the speed with which Michael Spinks went down 25 years ago tonight.

Now, lots of fighters went down in the first couple of rounds against Tyson, but those guys were tomato cans. People expected more from Michael Spinks. They probably didn't expect him to win — it was a given in those days that Tyson would win his fights — but I guess they expected him to last longer than Holmes did.

Spinks had been, at one time, the holder of a portion of the heavyweight crown, but he was stripped of it by the International Boxing Federation (IBF) in 1987 when he refused to fight the IBF's mandatory challenger. Spinks' bout with Tyson 25 years ago tonight was his opportunity to recapture the now–unified (under Tyson) heavyweight title.

I will always remember how Steve and I slowed down the playback of the tape, freezing it a few seconds before that first — and only — round began.

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"He still has a chance," one of us would say. Then we would start the tape again and let it run a few seconds until the bell sounded to begin the fight.

As Spinks strode to the center of the ring, we would pause the tape again, and the other one would say, "It's over now" even though no blows had yet been exchanged, which sounds funny, but it really was over. Watch the video that is attached to this post, and you'll see what I mean. Spinks was toast when the round began.

Before you can string together three or four grammatically correct sentences — or blink a couple of times — Spinks will be on his back.

Every time we saw it happen, Steve and I simply dissolved into helpless giggles. Eventually, the laughter would die down, and then one of us would look at the other, and the laughter would begin all over again. Embarrassing, really. Two grown men laughing like children watching a road runner cartoon. It's probably a good thing none of our mutual friends ever watched that tape with us.

About a month after that Tyson–Spinks fight, I left Arkansas and moved to Texas where I began working toward my master's degree. I'm not sure if Steve and I ever watched that tape together again after I moved away. I came back to Little Rock for visits, but I don't remember bringing that tape with me.

Steve visited me in Texas a couple of times. We may have watched that tape on one of those occasions. I don't remember.

I wish I could watch a tape of that fight with Steve again. It wouldn't take long, and it would be so much fun to remember those times together.

I'll never be able to do that, though. Steve died in March.

I wish I could get Steve's perspective on boxing since that night. He was pretty knowledgeable about a number of topics, and we had some good conversations about boxing. Perhaps he would assess things differently.

In hindsight, I am inclined to think it represented the pinnacle for Tyson, who went on to lose his title to Buster Douglas less than two years later in what was viewed at the time as an astonishing upset.

For Spinks, it was his first professional defeat, but it was more than that. It was not just the end of his championship hopes. It was the end of his boxing career.

Perhaps that is a bit harsh. After all, I can't say that I actually know if that half–round knockout was the reason for it, but I can say this:

Whether it was a result of what happened 25 years ago tonight or not, the fact is that Michael Spinks never fought professionally again.

Joe Louis' Redemption

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"Joe Louis is the hardest puncher that I've ever seen. ... He's a good man. Anyone who plans on beating him had better know what they're doing."

Max Schmeling

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Sometimes a sport needs a shot in the arm from an individual or a team to restore its lost luster.

So it was with heavyweight boxing in the 1930s. The legendary Jack Dempsey had been its champion through the mid–1920s, but he had been succeeded by a string of relatively nondescript fighters, one of whom was Max Schmeling, a German fighter.

(Schmeling was the first to win the heavyweight title by disqualification — his opponent floored him with a low blow. He resented the fact that this was what he was remembered for in the record books.)

But Schmeling played an important role in the development of one of boxing's most beloved figures, Joe Louis.

Schmeling didn't hold the title long. In fact, he lost it a couple of years after he won it — to the same fighter whose disqualification gave it to him in the first place. After that, his career followed a downward trajectory, but he was still considered a contender (albeit one who was past his prime) when he fought Louis for the first time in 1936.

In the tensions of the pre–World War II world, Schmeling and Louis were (unfairly) treated as symbols of their countries. And Nazi Germany celebrated when Schmeling knocked out Louis, then the #1 contender, in June 1936. The victory was heralded in Germany as proof of the validity of the Nazi belief in Aryan superiority.

The result undoubtedly shocked many casual boxing fans, but, from what I have read, the fight was much like the plot of the original "Rocky" movie. Schmeling, like Rocky, trained intently for the fight while Louis, assuming he would win, spent more time on the golf course than he did in the gym.

After the 1936 bout, Schmeling apparently felt entitled to a shot at the championship, having defeated the top contender, but global politics interfered. Fight organizers were reluctant to give a German fighter a shot at the title (and the propaganda opportunities that would come with it).

Germany kept on cheering as Schmeling won his next three fights, but then, 75 years ago today, Schmeling met Louis in a rematch in New York's Yankee Stadium. The Ring magazine would call it the "Fight of the Decade."

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Since they had met the first time, Louis had won 11 straight fights, including an eighth–round knockout of then–champion James Braddock to claim the title a year after his loss to Schmeling. But even though Louis had won the title in the ring, he said he would not consider himself the champion until he avenged that loss.

It was a boxing match, but it was more than that, as Nigel Collins wrote for ESPN. That second Louis–Schmeling fight "just might have been boxing's finest hour," he wrote.

It was also a symbolic battle between democracy and fascism, just like the first bout had been. "It was," wrote Collins, "the fight's cultural, racial and political ramifications that set it apart and led historian Bert Sugar to label it 'The greatest sporting event of the 20th century.' "

It wasn't just a fight in black America. Like it or not, as Avis Thomas–Lester wrote in the New Pittsburgh Courier, Louis carried black pride into the ring with him, but it really went beyond that. It was, wrote Thomas–Lester, a "a grudge match — Black against White, African American versus Aryan, the so–called 'Land of the Free' battling Nazi Germany."

Louis was the unofficial representative of the black community in America. There had been a black champion before — Jack Johnson — but his reign had been tainted in the public's perception, and Louis was the new hero of the black community.

It wasn't symbolic for Louis. It was the rematch with Schmeling, the only man to defeat him in three dozen professional fights, for which he had been waiting. It was his chance to redeem himself, and he did so with a vengeance.

The fight was scheduled for 15 rounds, but Louis, who took nothing for granted this time, kept his focus, and he knocked out Schmeling before the first round was over. Symbolically, it was an important moment in the histories of both nations. I know from the accounts I have read that there was a lot of rejoicing in Harlem when Louis beat Schmeling — and probably in black neighborhoods all across the country. My guess is that, in the domino–like way of history, Louis' triumph paved the way for public acceptance and support of black athletes like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and so many others.

Louis didn't lose again until Ezzard Charles defeated him in a unanimous decision in that same Yankee Stadium in 1950. His tenure as heavyweight champion was longer than anyone else's.

It might have been that way, anyway — but, for Louis, it all really began on this night 75 years ago.

Jaw Breaker

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For nearly 40 years, ABC's Wide World of Sports was a fixture on Saturday afternoons.

Its mission was really twofold. Ostensibly, I believe it began its existence as a catch–all for offbeat sports that were rarely, if ever, shown on the Big Three networks, but it also showed popular sports, primarily individual competitions, like boxing or figure skating or gymnastics.

As such, it filled a niche in those days before cable.

Everyone knew the intro in which the narrator spoke of "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

As a boy, I often watched Wide World of Sports. The sports it showed really were off the wall most of the time, but, once in awhile, there was some good mainstream sports event on the program.

Such was the case 40 years ago today.

I don't remember much about that day except that my parents went somewhere that afternoon — they probably went to Little Rock to see a movie and have dinner — and a young couple had been hired to look after my brother and me.

As a college professor, my father often recruited his students to look after us when he took my mother out. My memory was that one, if not both, of the young people who came over that day had been in at least one of his classes.

Anyway, as I recall, the four of us started playing a board game of some kind after my parents left. Then, an hour or so later, the young man suggested that we watch Wide World of Sports. Muhammad Ali, who was only two years removed from his first fight with Joe Frazier, was to fight Ken Norton that afternoon.

That was fine with me.

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I don't recall if I had ever seen Ali fight live before, but I had seen him on TV. Interviews. Fight highlights. That sort of thing. I liked him. He always seemed to be symbolic of the era in which he competed.

On this occasion, I got to see him fight — impressively, too, even though he didn't win.

It was a competitive fight, one that Ali lost in a split decision. It went the scheduled 12 rounds, and, after the fight had been awarded to Norton, it was revealed that Ali's jaw had been broken at some point. Norton has always contended that it happened near the end of the fight, probably in the 11th round. Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer, insisted it was earlier.

Ali and Norton fought two more times. Ali won both — even though some observers will tell you they thought Norton actually won their last fight in 1976 — when Ali was heavyweight champion for the second time. If Norton had won on that day, he would have been heavyweight champ.

As it was, Norton did join that elite club of men who have been heavyweight champion. The title was awarded to him retroactively a couple of years later — after Ali had lost his title to Leon Spinks in early 1978. The crown did not remain on his head for long. In his first title defense, Norton was defeated in a very tight decision against Larry Holmes.

On this day 40 years ago, Norton was only the second professional fighter to defeat Ali (Joe Frazier was the other).

Talk about an exclusive club.

Down Goes Frazier

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Ever since his victory in his much–anticipated bout with Muhammad Ali in 1971, Joe Frazier had stood atop the boxing world.

He defended his title twice in 1972 but against inferior opponents who required him to spend little time in the ring before stopping both on TKOs. I remember hearing nearly all the grown–ups in my world say that, since Ali had been turned back, no one could topple Frazier.

(That was just fine with many of the men I knew, too. Many had pulled for Frazier against Ali, largely because the majority of adults in Arkansas supported the Vietnam War. Ali, of course, had spoken against the war and refused to fight in it.)

Always in the distance, though, was the imposing figure of George Foreman, the gold medal winner at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. He turned pro the following year, and, once in awhile, I heard a grown–up speculate that Foreman could beat Frazier.

Even though Foreman was five inches taller than Frazier (who won an Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in 1964) and enjoyed a 10–inch reach advantage, Frazier was a 3–to–1 favorite when the two men met in Jamaica 40 years ago today. I suppose that was based on his years of experience as a pro — as well as his triumph over Ali (who was in every boxing conversation in those days, even if he wasn't on the fight card).

But both men entered the fight undefeated. And it didn't take long for observers to conclude that Foreman's height and reach advantage really did make a difference.

I've heard people ask if Foreman's victory on that night was an upset. I can't really say it was a big upset, even though it was regarded as an upset by many. I presume that was because Frazier was the champion and Foreman was younger, less experienced but already seen as a man who would one day be heavyweight champion of the world. Whether his win 40 years ago tonight was seen as an upset depended, I suppose, on whether the observer believed his time had come.

As it turned out, Foreman's "time" to be heavyweight champion came twice — on this night in 1973 and again 21 years later. He lost the title to Ali about a year and a half after winning it from Frazier.

The three–knockdown rule had been waived for the bout, but Frazier almost immediately became the poster child for why such a rule has a valid purpose. He went down three times in the first round and three times in the second before the fight was stopped.

"Foreman's last punch, a perfect right uppercut, lifted Frazier's stocky body into the air for an instant before he hit the canvas yet again," recalls The History Channel. "Frazier struggled to his feet, but at that point, 1:35 into the second round, the referee Arthur Mercante called an end to the bout."

It was during that brief bout that sportscaster Howard Cosell, doing the blow–by–blow for that era's equivalent of a pay–per–view audience, uttered what may well be the most memorable line of his career:

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!"

Years later, Foreman confessed that Frazier was the only fighter he ever feared.

The End of the Macho Man

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During his lifetime, I sometimes heard Hector "Macho" Camacho compared to Muhammad Ali.

And I could see certain similarities. Both were dynamic and charismatic. Matt Schubel writes in the Washington Post of Camacho's "theatrical presence" in the ring.

Like Ali, he was also a gifted fighter, faster than any of his contemporaries and possessed of a style unlike any of his rivals.

Some people would even extend the comparison to include both fighters' brushes with the law — but, while the law is the law and, technically speaking, there is no real difference between a violation of one law and a violation of another, there are differences between Ali and Camacho.

Justice is supposed to be blind. In that sense, all laws are created equal.

But not all crimes are created equal.

With the exception of claiming conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, Ali has — to my knowledge — observed the laws of his homeland, even those with which he may have disagreed.

He became a cultural lightning rod with his refusal to fight in Vietnam, and there are still those who berate him for it. He served no time in prison, but he was stripped of his title and did not fight for nearly four years — a boxer's prime years — until the matter had been resolved in court.

No court ruling could restore to Ali what had been taken from him, but he went on to become the first three–time heavyweight champion, anyway.

Camacho, on the other hand, "was continually shadowed by drug problems and legal entanglements," writes Schubel. That may well have been what brought about the end of his life.

Camacho was shot in the face Tuesday while he sat in a car in Puerto Rico and was taken off life support yesterday. A companion also was killed in what was an apparent ambush, and cocaine reportedly was found on the scene.

He embraced the persona of the "Macho Man" with the same relish that Ali boasted that he was "The Greatest," but there was a difference between them.

When he was growing up, Camacho was always getting into trouble of some kind. He claimed to have been expelled from half a dozen schools by the time he was 15. He had served time in jail by the time he was 17, and the self–professed "gutter kid" brought the behavior he had learned to the ring.

He was often criticized for using dirty tricks in the ring, but he was also capable of extraordinary things — like the time Julio Cesar Chavez won a brutal decision over him 20 years ago. Chavez was on a mission to knock out Camacho, but Camacho took everything that was thrown at him and was still standing at the end — "snarling through the blood," wrote Sports Illustrated's Pat Putnam.

Ironically, street crime did play a role in Ali's decision to take up boxing. At the age of 12, Ali had a brand–new bicycle, which was stolen when he left it unattended, prompting him to rant about what he would do to the thief if he caught him.

Ali was encouraged to "learn something about fighting," and Ali had found his path in life.

I always felt Camacho had more in common with Mike Tyson than Muhammad Ali.

Bert Sugar Dies

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Unless you follow boxing, you may not know who Bert Sugar was.

Bert Sugar was a sports journalist. I prefer that term to sports writer because sports writer sounds like the writer in question could have written about anything but settled for sports — or was forced to do so by circumstances.

Sugar may have chosen to write about sports, but he didn't settle, and he wasn't forced into it. I always felt he was born to write about sports, particularly boxing. It was his passion, the way it is some sports journalists' passion to write about horse racing.

How ironic it was that he should die a couple of days after the 50th anniversary of the fight that, reportedly, led to boxing's first televised fatality.

I'm tempted to compare him to Red Smith, but Smith was a true sports journalist, writing about every sport with equal enthusiasm — whereas Sugar really was more of a specialist.

Sugar wrote more than 80 books, but most of them dealt with boxing. He was a boxing historian. Some of his books were about baseball — one was even about early 20th century escape artist Harry Houdini — but most were about boxing — the great fights, the great fighters — filled with nuggets that most casual observers would never know otherwise.

I read some of his books. I saw him on TV more frequently, commenting on the sport, offering insights no one else could. He was always easy to spot with his tradmark fedora hat. He was kind of an amiable, informal version of Tom Landry, I suppose.

He was afflicted with lung cancer — no doubt an outcome of his long cigar habit — and that, apparently, was what finally took his life.

He will be missed, especially whenever a significant fight comes along.

The Tragic Tale of Benny Paret

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"Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing — but none of them serious."

Alan Minter
Former middleweight champion

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I don't know when Minter made that comment — perhaps it was before a fellow named Angelo Jacopucci died from injuries suffered in a 1978 fight with Minter. Perhaps not.

Whenever it was, though, I doubt that it was prior to this day in 1962. Minter was only 10 years old.

Neither do I know if Minter's family owned a TV in 1962. TV ownership was still something of a novelty in those days. But if the Minters did have a TV in their home, it may have been set to ABC on this night 50 years ago — when Benny Paret and Emile Griffith met in a fight for the welterweight crown.

Paret and Griffith, who were both in their mid–20s, had fought twice before. Griffith won the first by a knockout, and Paret won the second in a split decision. The bout in New York's Madison Square Garden, scheduled for 15 rounds, was to be their rubber match.

In the 12th round, TV viewers had just heard the announcer say it had been a "slow round" when Griffith unleashed a furious flurry of blows to his opponent while he was pinned against the ropes. Referee Ruby Goldstein stepped in to stop the fight — somewhat belatedly, some thought — and Paret lapsed into a coma.

He died on April 3.

Many reasons have been suggested as contributing to Paret's death; all may have played roles.

New York's boxing authorities, for example, were criticized for clearing Paret to fight again four months after he was knocked out by Gene Fullmer.

Goldstein, it was said, should have stopped the fight earlier. Goldstein, who died in 1984, never refereed a professional bout again.

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"Prodded by fear or maybe by conscience, Manny Alfaro, Paret's manager, gave a disgraceful performance trying to pin the blame on Ruby Goldstein, the referee. Nobody involved has any right to blame anybody else for a tragic accident, least of all a manager who gets his boy cruelly beaten by Gene Fullmer, then sends him back against a man who has already knocked him out."

Red Smith

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Paret himself was blamed. At the weigh–in, Paret reportedly used a Spanish slang word for faggot in reference to Griffith — with the implication being that Griffith was homosexual. At the time, the suggestion that any athlete was homosexual would wreck his career, and it was especially egregious in the Spanish culture from which they both came.

Paret's death is often said to have been boxing's first televised fatality. And, although the cause of death was clearly the brain injury he suffered, there are many theories that attempt to explain why it happened at all. Some are plausible, some are not.

Deaths do occur in the ring, but they have not been as frequent as you might expect.

It is worth noting, though, that, after Paret's death, and the death of featherweight Davey Moore in 1963, commercial television did not carry fights regularly again until the 1970s.

More Than a Trainer

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I've heard it said — by more than one person — that Muhammad Ali never would have become who he was if not for trainer Angelo Dundee.

I guess Dundee, who died yesterday at the age of 90, will always be remembered as the man who was in Ali's corner in all but two of his fights, but, in fact, Dundee worked with many noteworthy fighters, including Sugar Ray Leonard and George Foreman.

He left his fingerprints all over the sport of boxing. While his name probably will always be linked to Ali's, he was really so much more than that. He was even more than a man who trained more than a dozen champions.

Did you happen to see "Cinderella Man," the movie about the life of James J. Braddock starring Russell Crowe? Dundee was too young to have trained Braddock — but he was hired to train Crowe to portray Braddock in the film.

" I think I would have to go so far as to say Russell is Jim Braddock," Dundee said. "I'm amazed the way Russell picked up his mannerisms, his smoothness, the legs, the way he slides, that slip, slide, block, slide, jab — boom! Like Jim, he has just about the greatest left hook I've ever seen. He's got the speed, the rhythm, the determination and especially the will. Best of all, he has learned to think like a fighter. One thing about Braddock is that he was a smart fighter, and Russell uses his noodle just like Braddock did. I do think if he wasn't an actor, Russell could have been a great fighter."

Dundee was generous with his praise, but he just might have been able to train anyone.

A decade ago, he was portrayed on the silver screen by Ron Silver in the 2001 biopic "Ali."

Ali was certainly the most high–profile fighter with whom Dundee worked, but he might never have become the figure he became if not for Dundee.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Steve Springer describes the scene: "At the end of the fourth round of a 1963 fight against Henry Cooper, Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, was surprised by a left–hand punch that floored him and left him dazed. Fortunately for Clay, it was the end of the round, allowing him to stagger back to his corner.

"It was there that Dundee, trying to buy time until his fighter's head cleared, stuck his finger in a slight split in the seams of one of Clay's gloves, causing a slightly bigger split. That allowed Dundee to ask the referee for another pair of gloves. None were available, but the incident added valuable seconds to Clay's rest time, allowing him to recover and go on to win on a fifth–round technical knockout.

"His next fight, against heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, might not have occurred if Clay had lost to Cooper."

Springer goes on to observe that Dundee applied more creativity when Ali fought Sonny Liston for the title in 1964.

Dundee was an old–school kind of guy.

The Greatest Is 70

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When I was growing up, Muhammad Ali — who was born in Louisville, Ky., 70 years ago today — was an inspiring figure.

In the eyes of many, he was a braggart, a smart aleck, the embodiment of the antiwar movement — even though, to my knowledge, he never participated in an antiwar march or protest after being stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing military induction during the Vietnam War.

It is appropriate, I suppose, that this milestone birthday comes one day after the national observance of Martin Luther King's birthday. Ali's stand, it was said, persuaded King, who had been hesitant to speak out against the war, to reverse his policy.

He took his share of scorn from those who supported the war, though, and, as I wrote last year on the 40th anniversary of Ali's first fight with Joe Frazier, the war was the reason most of those people rooted against Ali when he was in the ring.

They said he was arrogant, and they called him names like "the Louisville Lip" — an anti–Ali spin on his own declaration that he was "the Greatest" — but I always felt it was mostly a case of transference. The war was the real reason for their opposition.

Maybe they really did dislike Ali — he could be abrasive at times — but the war was their excuse.

I don't know if Ali was the greatest of all time, as he claimed. Perhaps the very suggestion was offensive to those who remembered Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano.

But I felt then — and I still feel today — that he was the best in my lifetime. Admittedly, some of that may have been due to my youth and susceptibility. But not everyone who saw him fight was as young as I was — and even many of those who disagreed with his politics acknowledged, however grudgingly, how talented he was.

His talent was never an issue for me. When Ali said he was "the Greatest," I never thought he was boasting. I thought he was stating a fact.

And today he is 70. And, strangely, I am the one who feels older.

Happy birthday, champ.

The Dawn of the Iron (Mike) Age

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My overwhelming memory of Mike Tyson's reign as heavyweight champion is that he was reckless in the ring.

But the problem is that reckless doesn't really seem to be the right word for "Iron Mike" in his heyday.

See, reckless — for me — conjures up the image of the Tasmanian devil from the old cartoons spinning his way through whatever happened to be in his path — trees, houses, mountains, whatever.

Tyson — for those of you who are too young to remember or may not have been born yet — was a powerful man, all right. When you watched him in the ring, even if he was simply standing in his corner of it, you saw muscles rippling all over his body — in his arms and legs and his torso.

Boxing's aficionados have mentioned Tyson with history's greatest punchers — comparable to Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston, Rocky Marciano, George Foreman. He was entirely capable of ripping into anyone and anything that got in his way.

To be sure, he looked reckless at times. But he was no Tasmanian devil. That was just his way.

I never really got the impression that Tyson was much of a thinker or strategist in the ring. To me, he seemed somewhat disdainful of pursuits of style points.

Style points were for fighters who didn't expect to knock the other guy out, who expected both fighters to still be standing at the end of the final scheduled round.

And Tyson always gave the distinct impression that he expected to knock the other guy out. I don't think he ever believed that an opponent was capable of going the distance with him.

He acted more on instinct, like a wounded bear defending his turf. His objective was never to outwit a foe. His objective was to hurt his foe and finish the fight as quickly as possible.

He never seemed to care if his opponent knew what he was going to do. He did it, anyway.

And most of the time, Tyson did finish off his opponent in a round or two.

That's what happened 25 years ago tonight. Tyson was in his prime and as disciplined as he was ever going to be during his boxing career, finishing off Trevor Berbick quickly to become the youngest man to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles.

It was a "watershed moment," writes Tim Smith in the New York Daily News.

"Not since Tyson," Smith writes, "has any heavyweight champion captured the attention of the sporting public with a unique brand of ring menace and concussive force."

Tyson was barely 20 when he defeated Berbick by a second–round technical knockout. When I watch the film of the fight, I can see the intense focus in Tyson's eyes. Maybe it was really naivete — maybe he was just too young to comprehend that he was trying to do something no one his age had ever done before.

And I can sense growing trepidation in Berbick's eyes.

When Tyson lost the title forever in a stunning upset at the hands of Buster Douglas in 1990, it was in large part due to the fact that Douglas used his own version of Muhammad Ali's famous rope–a–dope strategy that forced a fighter who was accustomed to getting the job done in a round or two to wear himself out. Douglas wore Tyson down, then put him away in the 10th round.

It was reminiscent of the night in 1974 when Ali took the heavyweight title from another two– or three–round specialist by the name of George Foreman.

By the time Douglas beat Tyson, many things had changed in Tyson's world. His mentor, Cus D'Amato, died about a year before Tyson claimed the title in his fight with Berbick, but Tyson was still fighting under D'Amato's influence with his protege, Kevin Rooney, stepping into the void after D'Amato's death.

Tyson and Rooney came to a parting of the ways in 1988, and Tyson's career, and life in general, started spinning out of control.

But, on this night in 1986, it was vintage Tyson. Bleacher Report calls it one of the 10 strangest knockouts in boxing history, but I never saw it that way.

Granted, it wasn't pretty. In fact, it was often primitive. But it got the job done. Tyson was disciplined enough to do that much.

And when one watches the footage of the Berbick fight, one can only wonder what Tyson might have been if he had continued to be as disciplined long after D'Amato was gone.