Boxing History

[5bigtoes]

Any body watching A&E specials this week. All on the great Heavyweight Champs and the politics and scandals behind the scenes.

Who would have thunk it? Pro Boxing Corupt!!!!

Boxing is a big joke. A bunch of fcukin CRAP! The whole lot of them.

[Jinky]

What do you expect from a sport that is governed by sactioning bodies beholden unto the promoters. Promoters who also magage the fighters.

Don King must die.

[Captain Shamrock]

I saw that 2 hour special tonight on called the "Ins and Outs of Pro Boxing". 5BigToes couldn't have been more accurate. It is a fcuking disgrace how the sport is run and it goes to show you that money talks whereever you go in this world.

I will have to agree with Jinky. Don King is a very smart man who has made a lot of money using a lot of tactics, both legal and illegal.

[Captain Shamrock]

This is an entertaining read for boxing fans. I remember hearing about this fight happening but obviously it wasn't taken too seriously....



OWEN PIKE reports from SYDNEY

[July 7, 1998] -- Between them, the two men have lived 93 years -- and they duked it out Saturday night in a boxing match to decide the World Boxing Federation heavyweight championship of the world.

The air crackled with anticipation and the snap of arthritic joints as combatants Joe Bugner, 48, and his spry foe James "Bonecrusher" Smith, 45, carefully entered the ring.

Many have questioned the decency of allowing such comparatively elderly folk to box. Last Saturday, under searing lights at the Carrara Stadium on Australia's Gold Coast, they would have their answer.

At the opening bell, Smith tackled Bugner with surprising eagerness. A right, then a left, and yet another right smacked into Bugner's enormous head. Bugner -- who was born in Hungary, adopted by Britain, and who now rejoices in the nickname "Aussie Joe" -- seemed to be ducking the blows seconds after he'd been hit.

His early energy spent, Smith soon found himself on the end of some clubbing Bugner rights. In boxing talk, punches that are easily spotted coming are said to be "telegraphed"; Bugner's were faxed in, but the mesmerized Smith was already too weary to avoid them.

The pair circled each other like a couple of Japanese movie monsters as the round played out, occasionally essaying a slo-mo hook or nostalgic jab. How long, the crowd wondered between gulps of beer, could these giants keep it up?

Most judges gave Smith the opening round. But those punches had taken their toll. At the first-round break, there was consternation in Bonecrusher's corner. A doctor was called.

Smith had dislocated his shoulder hitting Aussie Joe. He would not be able to continue.

Fight over. The winner, and new WBF world champion: Joe Bugner, a grandfather and the oldest man ever to win a world heavyweight title. It was 1975 when Bugner lost his last match against Muhammad Ali -- 23 years ago.

As Bonecrusher was led gently away for treatment and the crowd commenced to jeer and brawl among themselves, fight fans the world over once again asked: what the hell has happened to boxing?

How has this once-noble sport -- a sport which, if not the sport of kings, was at least the sport of drunks, rapists, biters and psychopaths -- become such a farce?

Blame George Foreman. Foreman's crime wasn't that he made a comeback, but that he did it successfully, winning a world title at 45. If he could do it, his contemporaries must have dreamed, then so can I.

Foreman was Ali's opponent in 1974's celebrated Rumble in the Jungle. Although he lost that bout, Foreman was clearly the more powerful boxer, probably the strongest of his era. The comeback Foreman was an entirely different fighter.

As a younger man, Foreman had a forward-tilting stance, emphasizing his height by angling his body over that of his enemy. By the time of his return to the ring, Foreman -- who'd become a thinking fighter -- had discovered that the majority of modern fighters didn't merit such ringcraft.

Foreman now adopted a square, direct stance, banking on his ill-schooled opponents firing wild shots at his insanely exposed head to lure them into a position whereby his still-mighty fists could find an easy target. Often, they did.

But fellow comebackers Bugner and Bonecrusher -- and Larry Holmes, and Gerrie Coetzee, and Iran Barkley -- seemed simply to be older, slower versions of their former selves, not wily, Foremanesque reinventions.

These aging men have engaged in a sometimes comic, sometimes degrading chase for glory and cash. With 13 organizations worldwide now sanctioning world title fights, there are plenty of titles (and money) to go around.

Whatever the material rewards, the cost in credibility is enormous. Joe Bugner twice went the distance with Ali, in 1973 and 1975. Those heroic exploits are now forgotten. That was no Rumble in the Jungle on Saturday, nor a Thriller in Manila; it was a Coma in Carrara, and Bugner was lucky Bonecrusher got hurt so badly before he badly hurt Aussie Joe.

Bugner was born a mere five years after Adolf Hitler's death. Bugner first fought professionally one year before Robert Kennedy's unscheduled 1968 bout with Sirhan Sirhan. He is now 13 years older than Ali began his sad descent into sickness and mental slowing.

However, one benefit of only fighting fellow oldsters is that the chances of brain-breaking blows to the head are lessened. A disadvantage is that easy wins give these veterans extraordinary delusions about their ability to mix it with younger, deadlier boxers.

Mike Tyson will shortly complete a 12-month suspension from boxing incurred after he chomped Evander Holyfield's ears in Las Vegas. Bugner -- a decent, talkative fellow, according to anybody who's ever dealt with him -- immediately declared after the Bonecrusher debacle that Tyson is his next target.

"The fact of the matter is that he can be beaten," said Bugner. "Holyfield has proven it, Buster Douglas has proven it, and I'll prove it."

Many would love to see Aussie Joe try to prove it, which would probably make for a huge Bugner payday should the bout ever take place. But anyone with any reason would rather Bugner, and all his pals, just went home and told stories about the old days.

And not just out of a sense of decency. I was ringside in Britain in 1987 when Bugner, then on an earlier comeback journey, encountered Frank Bruno.

Bruno was rated by many an equal to Tyson in strength, but he lacked -- who doesn't? -- Tyson's lust for the kill. Even so, within eight rounds Bruno turned Bugner into a bloodied human cabbage. They hauled Bugner out of that ring like a body from a train wreck.

You were 37 then, Joe. You're 48 now. Give it away, old man.

[ParkHead]

To make this worse Big George Foreman has stated he is going to go into training to hopefully fight one more time. He says he has a point to prove. What that point is I have no idea other than a 55 year old fighter does not know when to give it up. He is serious but who in there right mind would pay to see him fight anyone at that age.



Parkhead

[Fastshow]

Britain's third favourite Canadian retired from boxing today.

I shall remember him for knocking fcuk out of Tyson and for his suggestion that he was desperate for the British side to win the World Cup of football.

The following is 'interesting'.

I should add for any moron out there who thinks I wrote this myself and feel the need to satiate my burning need for the approval of people on TTP, I didn't write this.

Ian Chadband did.

Lennox deserves more respect
By Ian Chadband, Evening Standard
6 February 2004

Think of the great heavyweight champions. Seemingly larger than life, they all came festooned with exotic nicknames - the Manassa Mauler, the Brown Bomber, Smokin' Joe, the Louisville Lip.

So one night after one of his 16 world title triumphs, a few of us sat around desperately trying to think of one for our man. The best we could come up with was 'Interesting' but the dullest snooker player on the planet had already nicked it. In the end, we accepted defeat. It would always be his lot to be plain old Lennox Lewis. As he prepared to announce his retirement from boxing in London today, it was to be fervently hoped that perhaps now he'd finally receive his proper due. Not with the bestowal of a nickname but perhaps with a title which would provide a true reflection of his achievements for British sport. Wouldn't Sir Lennox be better late than never?


The weight of those achievements - to be the only British man in a century to win the undisputed version of professional sport's biggest individual prize really was monumental - was never marked by the acclaim, either from his country or his sport, that it merited.


Why? Because he triumphed in the era when, seemingly, it wasn't enough just to prove yourself the best fighter around, run out of opponents to beat and retire with belt, money and marbles intact. No, you had to be a character, too. You had to be quotable, outrageous and charismatic.

In public, Lewis was none of those things. Out of the ring, he didn't threaten to murder opponents or chuck championship belts in the bin as a gimmick or get slung in the slammer. In the ring, he didn't try to bite off ears or burst into tears.

He didn't bring the whiff of danger that Mike Tyson brought and some of his US critics never did forgive him for being more likely to dismantle an opponent than destroy one.

They tried to make him seem interesting by asking questions about his nationality and his sexuality. It didn't work - he just went on being a dignified presence, a nice guy and a supreme athlete. Only Lewis could end his career on the strength of advice from his mummy.

He was undervalued in the way Pete Sampras was in tennis. Both towered above their contemporaries; both dealt in excellence over showmanship; both revealed the hardness of their character without ever having to pretend to be a character. Yet, somehow, they were always easier to admire than love.

It's certainly fair to say British audiences never completely fell for Lewis. Did people, right to the end, find it hard to totally embrace someone who had won Olympic gold for Canada even though he was actually a true East Ender? Maybe it was the old Greg Rusedski-Tim Henman thing. Lewis never enjoyed the same affection that a nation had for, say, Frank Bruno.

Don King was in London recently, again boasting how he could have transformed Lewis's public image if he'd ever had the chance to sell him to the world. He might have done, too, if he'd managed to get him to shed the bland public persona and showcase the real Lewis.

One night, I saw what Lewis could be like with his guard down when invited to play a marathon chess match with him a few days before his world title fight in London. He was great fun, cracking jokes and leaping to his feet every time he made a good move, far more energised than the bloke who could come across as a robotic customer in press conferences.

It must have made King want to tear his electric hair out when Lewis constantly proved the only significant heavyweight that he couldn't get his clutches into. It wasn't for want of money-noobject trying, of course, which makes Lewis's escape seem the most significant of all his achievements.

King would have tried to reinvent him but would have failed because, though Lewis could always seem so laidback, his greatest strength became his stubborn, iron will. Those who always throw the names of Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman at him as reasons why he does not belong among the game's immortals conveniently forget how he scolded himself for carelessness and gave them fearful rematch beatings.

In one sense, he may have been an unlucky fighter. If he'd fought Riddick Bowe or Tyson in their prime, I believe he would have earned that career-defining triumph long before his merciless disposal of the spent Tyson.

It was somehow typical of his luck that by the time he did beat up Iron Mike the nation was more interested in England's World Cup heroics against Argentina the previous night.

It was not Lewis's fault that he dominated over an era of faceless, unconvincing heavyweights. All he could do was chase the best, duck no challenges and beat what was on offer, which he did with a remarkable degree of comfort and quality over a decade in which he lost just two of his 18 world title fights.

That he's now able to end up retiring still on top is just fantastic. That he's doing it on his own terms is even better. That he's joining the pantheon with neither a nickname nor the Don whispering in his ear? Well, that's a boxing miracle.

[Dapotayto]

I agree that Lennox brought class and dignity to a sport that has become almost devoid of it. Well, The heavyweight division at least. His determination to avoid dealing with Don King is a strong example of his character and should be applauded. So should his overall ability and athleticism. He was, and is, a great fighter.

That being said, he has only himself to blame if he complains about lacking the respect or recognition he feels he deserves. Both of the losses, to McCall and Rahman, were a result of a lack of training (see the dictionary under laziness) and general cokciness. He trained for two weeks (!?!?) for the Rahman fight, even doing publicity while getting ready. Rahman trained for months. McCall? Give me a break. How could any fighter lose to either one of these chumps and realistically expect people to class him as one of the best, as a legend of boxing? How could he dominate Holyfield in their first fight but still lack the courage or intensity to try and knock him out? That situation itself was ready-made for Lewis to shed his lacklustre image but he didn't take the opportunity. Holyfield was a fcuking warrior who would never say die. Round ten of Holyfield v. Bowe I was epic. Bowe beats Evander from post to post to post to post but can't put him down. Holyfield stands his ground, takes his shots and comes storming back! Un-fcuking-real. If Lewis had knocked Holyfield out when he had his chance (and which he likely could have done) instant credibility would have been his. Instead he let it play out on points and for his troubles he got a draw as the result. It's freaking boxing. Did he really think the judges would do the right thing and give him the decision? Dumbass.

As for the English public not taking to him? Uh, well, he was raised in Canada, learned to fight here and then moved back to England and immediately adopted an accent worthy of Madonna or Gwyneth Paltrow. Ya, nice try, Lennox. Bruno was more endearing to the English public because he was actually born, raised and trained there.

I don't believe you have to commit crimes or make outrageous quotes to be charismatic as a fighter. Just try to be more than a wet noodle bitching that you want to be known as al dente.

Lewis could have destroyed the heavyweight division and put any of these issues to rest if he had shown more intensity. Even his retirement reeks of lacking courage or at the very least, ambition. Does the name Klitchko mean anything to you Lennox? Come on, here is a chance to end things with an exclamation mark and maybe answer some of the skeptics. As it is, it looks like he is ducking Klitchko as their is a good chance he may lose the fight and his coveted Heavyweight Championship with it.

[Fastshow]

Dapsy,

Saw that one about Lennox before you typed it.

Good one.

Not yours though

Nice try putting your name on it

Fast

[LucVanLierde]

Lewis was a great amateur canadian boxer, and an even better british world heavyweight champ. I felt he had the best left jab since Ali, he won more than half his fights with a jab alone. I think the potatoe has a really good point about his missing respect. Those two loses shouldnt have happened, his lack of training showed a lack of respect for the sport and more importantly a lack of respect for his fans. He took out everybody that threatened his belt. Lewis wants to retire a champ. If he waited untill after a 3rd meeting with Klitchko, that wouldnt have happened. So now its goin to be a brother battle for a few years. This div is gonna stink more than ever now.