Posted on 10/24/2018 7:47:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The decade of 1970s is widely regarded as the Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing. More world-class, highly skilled heavyweights were active during this time than at any other decade in boxing history. Names like Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Norton, Quarry, Lyle, Shavers, Bugner, Ellis, Young, Holmes, Spinks, Patterson and Bonavena were known throughout the sporting world.
The decade started off with Joe Frazier winning universal recognition as heavyweight champion when he stopped Jimmy Ellis after four spirited rounds in their long-awaited showdown at Madison Square Garden on February 16th, 1970. Muhammad Ali had been stripped of his title and shorn of his boxing license following his refusal to be inducted into the Army in April 1967 (“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.”). This precipitated a series of elimination bouts between the top contenders, culminating in the Frazier-Ellis fight, which was recognized by all the major sanctioning bodies around the world as the fight that would determine Ali’s official successor. Remember, up until the advent of Ultimate Fighting around the turn of the 21st century, boxing was a longstanding major sport and the heavyweight champion was one of the pre-eminent athletes in the world. So the Frazier-Ellis fight was a big deal.
Ali was eventually granted permission to fight again and came out of his forced retirement at age 28, in his athletic prime. He and Frazier -- both undefeated and both at their physical peaks at 29 and 27 -- fought in 1971 in what was just one of the many memorable fights in the 1970-1979 span.
Let’s take a quick look at just a few of these amazing fights. We certainly don’t have room to discuss them all, but these will give a flavor of the time. Apologies in advance if your favorite has been left off:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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.
The popularity of different sports and events changes over time.
I’ve heard people say that, back in the ‘50s, the most popular sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing. Back then, NFL football and NBA basketball were not nearly as prominent as they are today.
Perhaps part of the decline of boxing, is that there is no outsized personality such as Muhammed Ali nowadays?
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.
Muhammad Ali was both athletic and a loud-mouth. A great athlete, but I think he led the way to the decline of boxing as a respectable sport. He made it a spectacle but it was no longer respectable.
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?
But the quality of the games is not good. The first month of football is horrible because the union negotiated all the hard work in training camp away so September football is the new preseason. So a quarter of the season is about mistakes, penalties, bad tackling, just bad football generally. Then there are the game changing penalties on the most absurd things. Couldn't define a catch for a few years, not they can't define a sack. Basically in the Goodell era the quality of the game is really bad compared to 10 years ago but the NFL is making much bigger bucks. Is it the golden age because of popularity or was it the golden age when Elway and Montana and Marino and Kelly and Moss and Rice and other hall of famers were at their peak and the game was more about making plays than avoiding penalties?
Once again, a nice debate topic over some beers if you consider it from a theoretical perspective and ignore that kneeling aspects that automatically ruined football for thousands.
And to think that you could watch it all for free.
I vowed to boycott the NFL but man it’s tough! I have been a football junkie for 45 years. Can’t not watch when I catch a glimpse of a game on any level. A perfect spiral, a goal line stand, an acrobatic catch...football is a great spectator sport. A real round table discussion on the topic might be on the morality of its effect on the brains and skeletal systems of those who participate. I hear there’s a lot of ballers that couldn’t negotiate a flight of stairs while still in their late twenties. It is definitely tough on humans.
I think pay per view killed it.
Once boxing went pay per view, it was no longer what everyone was talking about.
Eliminate steroids and 90% of that and probably most CTE too would all go away. Using steroids to make people's muscles superhuman size ans strength but leaving their bones and connective tissues unchanged is certainly crippling many and leading to much bigger hits than normal people could put out. But without the 'roids those circus catches and big runs would drop off and the NFL can't have that.
I remember Tennis was HUGE in the 70s. The Wimbledon Final was must-watch TV.
I can’t even remember now the last time I bothered with it.
The ABC (network) backed championship tournament (fixed) did nothing for the sport either
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.
RE: Heard the fight live in 1971 and I don’t remember squat about it.
Here’s your chance to watch that fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_TgAc4ESQ4
Boxing killed itself when it got addicted to pay per view. Here watch these nobodies every week but we’re gonna make you pay good cash to watch the good bouts is just not a model that keeps an audience. Then the personalities went away, and that was that.
I still think Jimmy Young beat Ali.
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