It didn’t take long for Don to make his pitch. Muhammad Ali was referring to me as one of his friends! ‘I’ll be there in a few minutes,’ he said. Ali’s handlers were getting a little anxious. ‘Well, if you do turn pro,’ he said, ‘just make sure that you don’t do what I did. I haven’t made my final decision,’ I said.Īli stared at me, his quiet eyes like giant saucers. Didn’t he need to focus his attention on the task at hand. Was he kidding? Of course I did, though I wondered: Why would Ali spend a second with me this close to the start of a Championship fight. Thank goodness, the guard realised who I was, smiled, and politely asked if I might want to see ‘Muhammad’. For a second I thought we might not see the fight. We got off on the wrong floor on the way back to our seats and wound up in the stadium’s basement. It’s what took place before the bell rang. In the end, Ali was very fortunate to exit the ring with his belt. Not only would I see Ali fight in person for the first time, I would be introduced to the crowd as the Olympic light-welterweight champion. …I was invited, along with the other gold medallists, by the well-known boxing promoter Don King, to Yankee Stadium to attend the heavyweight title fight in late September between my hero, Ali, and one of his rivals, Ken Norton. ‘About two days,’ I answered, once I composed myself. ‘How long do you stop having pussy before a fight?’ he said, with the same delivery as if he were asking me to pass the mash potatoes. When I pulled up in a little blue Chevy Nova and saw a parking lot filled with one limousine after another, I made a U-turn and parked on the street a few blocks away.Īt the dinner table, Ali sat on my left. I was never as self-conscious of my poor upbringing. I got to see that side of him during our first meeting in early 1976, when I was invited by the Touchdown Club in DC to present him with an award. As unpredictable as he was in public, that was nothing compared to the Ali I observed in private. In his autobiography The Big Fight Sugar Ray Leonard, the five-weight world champion, remembers his first meetings with Ali when he was thinking about turning professional: Read more ‘I could never be Ali outside the ropes. No question I got the best of that deal.” He went the distance with me.’ When it was all over, he was the guy who went to the hospital because he was pissing blood. When people meet me and say, ‘George, you went the distance with Muhammad Ali!’ I say, ‘No, you’ve got it wrong. I got hit a lot harder by Mel Turnbow and George Foreman in later fights. To this day, people say to me, ‘He really hit you, he really pounded on you.’ Maybe it looks that way, but I wasn’t taking any real hard shots. Once in a while he tried to turn the jab into a power punch by putting all his weight behind it, but it wasn’t a whole lot harder. In the cartoon, Bugs wore his trunks up around his ears in order to avoid getting hit.Īli’s left hand was like greased lightning, but there wasn’t a lot behind it. When I saw the top of his bright red jock a couple of inches above his belt line, I felt like Elmer Fudd when he fought Bugs Bunny. I knew it as soon as I saw Ali in the ring. In order to disguise it, they had to get custom-made trunks. Dundee knew I was a body puncher, so he had a special cup made. I know I hurt him to the body and I should have followed up by punching to his head, but he was just too damn quick.Ī few of my punches did land south of the border, but in most cases it only looked like they were low because Ali was wearing his cup about six inches higher than normal. If I waited until he was back in range, it was already too late. He’d be out of punching range, but, as he moved back in, he would already be starting to throw his punch, right on target.
GEORGE BOOM BOOM CHUVALO FULL
What surprised me the most was that he threw so accurately when he was in full motion. When he moved his legs and hands at the same time, when he synchronised them, he was really something. When I say Ali’s speed was amazing, I’m not just referring to his hands.
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