Still think Ernie Shavers beat Ali.
Years later, I met Shavers downtown in NYC. He was with the Lord and looked great. You could see it in his eyes.
What a nice man.
I’m not a huge boxing fan but it seems to me that the 70s was the era of big spectacle event fights that everyone in the country would tune if for a couple times a year but the 50s was when people watched boxing every single week. So one era had a plethora of hardcore fans nationwide for whom boxing was a weekly passion but the casual viewer wasn’t that into it, the other had nationwide interest from casual fans or even non-fans interested in the spectacle and the big personalities but only a couple times yearly. Which is more a golden age? Over a beer with a couple of old timers, that could make an interesting debate.
Ali-Frazier I of 1971 has to be the greatest fight ever. Two great undefeated fighters each with a legitimate claim to the true linear heavyweight championship both still in their primes. Despite the incredible hype to the fight, it lived up to expectations. There may never be an equal in our life times.
I idolized Ali as an impressionable kid in South Dakota. He was so fast he could shut off the lights and be in bed before the room was dark. I remember the blue blooded generation of my father being critical of him for not defending our country but I was not concerned about politics. There was a pop song on the radio about him, George Carlin had a funny line about him, “now I’ll beat them up but I won’t kill them.” If it happened all over again, I would’ve wanted Smokin Joe and Big George to have busted his jaw I suppose. It used to be the most respected athlete in the world was the Heavyweight Champ. Now there are usually multiple belts in each division. I couldn’t tell you one name of one heavyweight fighter today. And Does anyone remember ABC’s The United States vs the World in amateur boxing?
And to think that you could watch it all for free.
I think pay per view killed it.
Once boxing went pay per view, it was no longer what everyone was talking about.
Don King single-highhandedly ruined professional boxing from what I remember. It may have been waning anyway but he put the downfall into hyper-drive.
Great article about some great fights and great fighters.
I was just thinking about this the other night when I was watching (re-watching) an episode of Boardwalk Empire. In it, they have a revolving story line about the Dempsey–Carpentier fight.
It’s pretty amazing how the sport has pretty much disappeared. I think a unified belt would help bring it back, but then again, who knows if the snowflakes would watch either way.