The history of the Heavyweight Championship - 1973

Joe Frazier and George Foreman agreed terms and delivered a classic and unforgettable world heavyweight championship fight. Both unbeaten, one the champion and one the pretender, contender and beast of the sport.

It was called the Sunshine Showdown and it took place in January 1973 at the National Stadium in Independence Park in Kingston, Jamaica. 36,000 people came out for the massacre – nobody in the fight game could believe what they saw in the ring.

Foreman was unbeaten in 37 fights and 34 of his victims had been knocked down, knocked out and bludgeoned all over rings. “Frazier ain’t any different than the other guys – I’m going to knock him out.” The bookies and the experts disagreed, but… a big fight always has some secret truths, some hidden gems that only the smartest notice or get to hear about. That week in Jamaica was no different.

Eddie Futch was a crucial part of the Frazier team – the quiet fight genius – the man whispering in the ears of the all-hollering and always entertaining, Yank Durham. Futch knew his fighters, had a sense of doom.

He arrived in Jamaica and was stunned to see Frazier singing and performing with his band The Knockouts – the gigs were by the pool, it was hot, it was draining – it was stupid. There was a party atmosphere, not a big fight atmosphere.

However, that was not what bothered Futch. He had seen Frazier sparring, watched Frazier with the tough Kenny Norton, a regular paid sparring partner during the last few years – a man Frazier controlled when they sparred. Not in Jamaica… and Futch acted:

“Norton was taking it to him, so I told him, ‘Ken, you’re not working with him anymore. Have a nice vacation here.’”

A man called Wally Bartleman, a veteran boxing correspondent with the London Evening Standard picked Foreman. He was on his own and ridiculed.

Mark Kram, the Sports Illustrated reporter, was also very concerned. His observations are obvious… now:

“If somebody had consulted the holy dictionary of style, big George would have leaped out as an unfortuitous choice. Might as well have placed Joe up against a wall.”

In the silent background at the lush location, there was also fear in Angelo Dundee’s head. He was Ali’s main trainer and he was there to make sure that a rematch between Ali and Frazier did not vanish. It was long overdue. However, Dundee feared the jab and the size of Foreman – he wanted Frazier, but he was not stupid and knew what he had been watching and hearing:

“I saw George before the fight and I said: “George, we want to talk to you after you win,’ He smiled. He had a jab like Sonny Liston and that was a jab.”

Don King was there, working for the company broadcasting the fight. He tells a glorious story about arriving with the champ and leaving with the champ. A limo to the fight with Frazier… and a limo from the fight with Foreman. It’s mostly true, but the bit about stepping over Frazier at the end and going to congratulate Foreman is not true – Frazier finished the fight on his feet… only just.

Frazier still believed that Foreman’s record was a deception, still believed that he would have too much, be too strong. It was one of the greatest miscalculations in the history of the heavyweight championship. A catastrophic mistake.

However, Foreman insists that he was not convinced he would win – that he had some sort of crisis of confidence. It is a great fight for theories and savagery.

They gloved up in the ring. It added to tension. The referee – Arthur Mercante from the Fight of the Century – called them to the centre of the ring for the final instructions. Frazier looked up – gazed up four or five inches and tried to win the stare down. Foreman seemed to not notice the intensity that Frazier was trying for. Foreman did not get scared easy. Foreman just kept on staring with that ghost-like indifference that was truly frightening.

From the first bell Foreman tried to land with big, swinging, booming shots – they were intentionally wild. They let Frazier know exactly where was safe and where was dangerous. The message was clear: This is my ring, you are my victim … be careful. It was Frazier who connected clean first with his trademark and lethal left hook. Foreman showed that he was hurt, but moved away. Then… Big George Foreman started to brutally beat Joe Frazier. It was extraordinary: Frazier was just hit and hit and hit and hit.

Frazier was sent tumbling acrobatically to the canvas three times in the first round. He had no idea where he was, but he bravely got back up, tried to cover up and then was hurt again.

In round two a right sent Frazier over again – then a left hook dropped him with a twist and then – the final of six knockdowns and the most compelling and memorable and incredible – a left hook and right uppercut thudded in… there was a pause and then Frazier actually jumped up, his feet leaving the canvas and he collapsed. Foreman’s power that night in Jamaica has never been equalled.

The Sunshine Showdown was an annihilation and it was called off after 95 seconds of round two.

George Foreman was the new heavyweight champion of the world and the baddest man on the planet.

Frazier and Yank Durham had no answers for the questions they never imagined they would have to answer. Foreman never said much back then, but he confirmed something ringside observers had heard:

“I didn’t want to hurt him anymore – I kept telling Yank Durham to stop it: I told him, ‘Stop it or I’m going to kill him.’”

Nobody at the Sunshine Showdown doubted Foreman’s warning.

Foreman never once pulled back on a punch or held back. There was no pity in George Foreman.

Frazier was open, honest: “Foreman was strong, uncommonly strong – he was able to push me backward – he just straight out shoved me back.”

Durham got a bit frustrated, defensive: “What happened? He got hit. He got hit and he fell down. What happened to Marciano when he got hit? What happened to Louis? It’s no mystery.”

Frazier had been the world heavyweight champion since March of 1968 – the Foreman fight was his 11th championship fight. Those are significant statistics, and… he had beaten Ali.

It was hard that night for anybody to imagine what would happen if Foreman ever got anywhere near Ali. It was laughed at, dismissed as a murderous suggestion – Foreman was the scariest heavyweight champion ever, make no mistake.

As a funny footnote there was another tumble in Jamaica… it happened at breakfast the following morning when Mr. Wally Bartleman, the writer who tipped Foreman, arrived for his porridge by the pool and was given a standing ovation. Old Wally, smiled and nodded and fell face-first into the pool. Reg Gutteridge, the British king of commentary, piped up: “You picked the winner, you ain’t Jesus yet, Wally.”

After the glories of Jamaica… the next heavyweight world championship fight was a joke. An insult.

Foreman agreed to fight in Tokyo in September. He asked for and got a 17-foot ring – he could have requested a guillotine and done less damage.

His opponent on that dark night for championship boxing was Puerto Rico’s Jose King Roman. The challenger entered the ring with a record of 44 wins and seven defeats. He had lost to Jack Bodell in an ice rink in Nottingham a few years earlier. There was not a single name on his record – Roman was also close to 30 pounds lighter and perhaps six inches shorter. And understandably terrified.

It was over after just 120 seconds of the very first round. Roman was dropped twice before he was viciously and alarmingly dropped for the third and final time. He was motionless after he slumped down to his knees from a sickening right uppercut. His head dropped over to the canvas and dark blood dropped from his mouth. It was awful to witness. He never moved and for several seconds nobody moved to help him – he looked like a dead bull at the end of a fight.

In January, Muhammad Ali arrived in London to watch Joe Bugner beat Rudi Lubbers – a name that sounds like an erotic anagram –at the Royal Albert Hall. At the end of 15 rounds, Ali took his shirt off and climbed up on the ring apron to challenge Bugner:

“I want that man, give me that man.”

Bugner fought Ali just 29 days later in Las Vegas. Fights happened fast and furious in the Seventies. “It was short notice, but I had to take it,” Bugner told me in 2007.

The fight week included a visit by both boxers to the Las Vegas suite of Elvis Presley. Ali has adored Elvis since he was a teenager – Bugner, who was born in Hungary and had escaped on foot when he was a child was not bothered about the King of Rock.

Elvis presented Ali with a specially designed robe with People’s Champion written on the back. The gown was stiff and had high Elvis-collars and it was studded with jewellery of all sorts. It weighed 150 pounds. It was a garment, that’s for sure.

Bugner, watched silently as Ali took the gift, tried it on and shadow-boxed for his idol… and then went over to Elvis a bit later. “Where’s mine?” he asked. Elvis was dismissive: Joe Bugner, who was only 22, suggested somewhere that Elvis could stick the robe.

Bugner went the full twelve rounds. He was cut in the first – the kid against the old master. Ali was 31 that night, and had lost just once in 41 fights. It was a good performance, one that is often overlooked.

“I showed that I belong in the ring with Ali – I’m ready now and nobody scares me.” The problem was that Big Joe didn’t scare anybody.

Ali believed in Bugner:

“Joe Bugner will be champion a couple of years from now. It will be Bugner’s time when I’m done.”

Bugner met Ali in February and in his next fight, which was in July, he was matched with Joe Frazier. It was Frazier’s first fight since losing to Foreman.

Frazier and Bugner met over 12 torrid and bloody rounds at Earl’s Court. It is, without doubt, one of the most neglected heavyweight fights of the Seventies. It was a mini-classic, not titles on the line – just pride and a spot on the waiting list for massive future fights.

Bugner was dropped heavily in the tenth, but Frazier was marked up, his left eye nearly completely closed. “Frazier wanted me to stay down, but I got up – the fight was not quite over,” said Bugner.

The 12th and final round was a 180-second slugfest. Nobody heard the last bell and the pair kept throwing punches and Yank Durham had to jump into the ring and get between them to stop them punching. It was that type of fight. At the end George Foreman, one of the commentators, believed that Bugner had done enough to win. The referee, who was the sole judge, went narrowly for Frazier.

“I hit Bugner with shots that no man had any right to take,” insisted Frazier.

Bugner won in defeat, but still had his doubters. He told me, over thirty years later, it was hurtful: “I went the distance with two of the greatest heavyweights ever in less than six months and still some people complained.”

Frazier would not fight again in 1973. His next fight would be his overdue rematch with Ali at the start of 1974.

Bugner was done for the year, but the Frazier fight had taken a terrible, terrible physical toll on the young fighter:

“I was sick for two months after the fight. My kidney and liver were bruised and I was pissing blood for two weeks. That is what fighting – I mean really fighting – a man like Joe Frazier does to you.”

Bugner did fight again, he finished the year having fought a total of 64 rounds. A stunning total in any decade for an elite level heavyweight.

In March, Ali met Kenny Norton. The same Norton who had been sparring with Frazier. Norton’s most recent fight – a win against somebody called Charlie Reno – had been watched by 700 people and Norton was paid just 300 dollars. The fight was a way for Ali to keep busy and keep the pressure on Foreman for a shot… and Frazier for a rematch. It never worked out that way – nobody told Norton what he was meant to do. Kenny was his own man.

Ali had a bad ankle going into the fight, a freak accident from a golf game. He could not do any roadwork. Also, it is claimed that he spent the night before the fight with two women in one bed. Ali and his team certainly had no fear of Norton.

It is another classic Seventies fight with both physical excesses and myths – Eddie Futch, who worked with Frazier in the gym and in the corner, was working with Norton: “I told Kenny to jab once, step in and jab again, I told him to go to the body when Ali hit the ropes. Kenny was ready. It was not a shock to me.”

Ali finished the fight with a broken jaw. It needed 90-minutes of surgery to correct. Going into the 12th and last round that night in San Diego the scorecards were split: One had Norton up, one had Ali in front and one had a draw. Norton won the last, got the split decision and Ali was beaten again.

The old haters were back in a jiffy – Jimmy Cannon, the syndicated columnist, wrote:

“He is a loser now and they match old losers with young winners.”

Cannon was not the only person who considered the Norton loss the start of the end for the Great Muhammad Ali. The boxing obits were being polished after that March defeat.

There was a furious debate after the fight about the broken jaw. Angelo Dundee claimed it was broken in the second round, Eddie Futch said it was done in the 11th. Dundee’s version makes it a miracle, Futch’s version makes it a brave performance. Futch was not budging:

“It’s anything to deny your fighter his day. No man alive could have gone so many rounds with a broken jaw, it would have been turned into splinters.”

They had to fight again. A rematch was made for September in the historic Inglewood Forum in Los Angeles. “I took a nobody and created a monster,” Ali said.

This time Ali trained properly. The testimony of the converted and the cynical all agree… Ali was ready. Dundee was concerned:

“My guy had to win the second fight – if he had lost it would have been all over. Forget it: We knew that going in.”

The fight was equally as intense and once again going into the 12th and last round the scores were even. Ali won the last round and this time he got the split decision. Norton was Ali’s problem man, the fighter he would never easily beat, never conqueror.

Six weeks later Ali beat Rudi Lubbers in Jakarta. The Ali show was rolling again. It was during the Lubbers fight that Ali did a TV interview with Reg Gutteridge between rounds. Ali told a mischievous Reg: “I’m getting old now – years ago I would have taken this man in one round.” Lubbers lasted the full twelve. Again, people wondered what, if anything, Ali had left.

The contenders and future players were winning and losing.

Feared punchers Earnie Shavers and Ron Lyle were both beaten by veteran Jerry Quarry. Shavers was stopped in the first round. But, he did knockout former champion Jimmy Ellis in one round. The heavyweights of the Seventies were certainly not afraid to fight, lose and then fight again. Shavers had some massive fights left at the very top of the heavyweight division.

Jimmy Young also lost to Shavers and drew with Liverpool’s Billy Aird in a hotel in central London. He would be a player in the division in a year or two.

And a young kid called Larry Holmes made his debut and finished the year with seven wins from seven fights. Holmes would soon be part of Ali’s sparring entourage, the greatest academy for developing and also breaking talent in boxing.

The year ended with George Foreman, the kid from the troubled Fifth Ward in Houston, Texas, as world heavyweight champion. He had no clear plans, but he did buy a German shepherd dog for 21,000 dollars. The dog would play a role in the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974.

Joe Frazier had been forced to face some harsh truths in 1973, but at the end of the year he agreed terms for his rematch with Ali – it was set for January 1974, back in the Madison Square Garden ring.

It had been a big year – 1974 would be even bigger.