Things that were not immediately obvious to me

This is an entry in an occasional series of posts looking back at the Ring Magazine Fights of the Year from 1970 to 2009.

In 1978, Muhammad Ali defended his unified (WBC & WBA) Heavyweight championship against Leon Spinks in Las Vegas. Spinks came in as an underdog (with a 6-0-1 record) and shocked everyone by winning a majority decision (140-145 and 141-144, vs. one judge’s 143-142 for Ali). I scored it a bit wider (139-146), but recognize even the dissenting judge’s score as reasonable; there were a lot of close rounds in this fight.

This fight was arguably the high point of Spinks’ professional life. As for Ali, it was the penultimate fight to his legitimate career: only a rematch (which he would win) and an ill-advised 2-fight comeback (both losses) remained ahead of him.

Overview

The cliche about history repeating as farce might have some relevance here. This fight had more than a few echos of Ali / Frazier III. Ali was fighting a faster, more agile opponent whose goal was to close, trap, and attack, and Ali’s strategy relied upon a mix of tactics: circling and jabbing, trading, and the infamous rope-a-dope.

The outcome here would be different.

Reaction

The differences in this fight sprang from the facts that Ali was far over the hill, and that Spinks, for all his virtues, was no Joe Frazier. So you were left with a pale imitation of the great Ali / Frazier fights, in which Ali deployed the old tricks, but couldn’t make them stick even against a lesser opponent.

(I should add that I hate to run down Spinks, because he was a very good fighter in his own right. To give him his due, he was better at fighting on the outside that Joe Frazier ever was. Frazier, however, was one of the all time greats, and Spinks was not.)

All that said, the 15th round was a magnificent display of skill, endurance, and spirit, and the equal of any round in the Ali / Frazier trilogy.

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This is an entry in an occasional series of posts looking back at the Ring Magazine Fights of the Year from 1970 to 2009.

In 1977 Jimmy Young fought George Foreman for 12 rounds in San Juan, Puerto Rico. No title was at stake. Foreman’s career was: after being outboxed by and losing a unanimous decision to Young, Foreman would retire from the ring for the next 10 years.

Overview

The pattern of this fight was simple: Foreman came forward, attempting to corner and land power shots on Young. Young looked to score points while maneuvering away from Foreman. The ebb and flow of the fight was even through the first 6 rounds. The tide turned for the last time in the 7th, after Foreman wobbled Young and battered him around the ring for the better part of 90 seconds. Once Young steadied himself, he began to win the fight against Foreman. His counterpunching grew more and more dominant, ultimately leading to a 12th round knockdown.

The major subtext of the fight was Foreman’s roughhousing, and Young’s incessant griping about it. Both fighters gave the appearance of feeling hard done by, but the dynamic seemed to favor Young. In the first place, Foreman lost a point for tactics which the referee saw as illegal. Potentially more seriously, his frustration might have caused him to become reckless in his attack, leaving himself more open to Young’s counters. (Foreman’s failure to get the KO in the 7th might have exacerbated this phenomenon.)

Reaction

This fight is a great demonstration of how a better boxer can defeat a stronger man — it’s a particularly good demonstration because Foreman was himself an excellent boxer. I agreed with the judges’ verdict, scoring it 115-112 for Young, but was more impressed with how completely Young controlled the last part of the fight; I believe that he would have gotten a knockout over 15 rounds. On this night, Foreman couldn’t come to grips with Young: He couldn’t corner him, couldn’t land consistently, and couldn’t avoid his counterattacks. Young was one of those rare fighters who could win a bout backing up, and it’s great to see him at his best.

In the 8th round, Cosell said this as the crowd chanted Young’s name:

That’s one of the things that’s so emotionally disturbed Foreman his whole career. “What”, he kept saying to himself, “do I have to do to be a crowd-pleaser? Why won’t they give me their cheers?”

Foreman ultimately answered these questions. When he returned to the ring 10 years later, he was a crowd-pleaser. And when he won a unified championship by knocking out Michael Moorer in 1994, everyone cheered.

For his part, Jimmy Young did not go on to enjoy much success. Although undoubtedly one of the best 34-19-2 boxers to ever fight, this bout might have represented his finest hour. Young fought many of the top men of his era, but always seemed to come up a little short: A disputed UD loss to Ali, a draw with Earnie Shavers, an SD loss to Ken Norton. But on this night, he was masterful.

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