Chuvalo by George Chuvalo

Author:George Chuvalo [Chuvalo, George; Greig, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443417358
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

ROUND 9

RECOVERING FROM THE EYE INJURY KEPT ME out of the ring for the next 11 months, and in the interim the WBA conducted its heavyweight elimination tournament with eight participants: Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, Karl Mildenberger, Jimmy Ellis, Thad Spencer, Ernie Terrell and the guy who was brought in to replace Frazier, Leotis Martin.

The main sponsor of the tournament was a promotional group called Sports Action Inc., which agreed to pay $50,000 per man for the four quarter-final bouts, $75,000 for the semifinals and a guarantee of at least $100,000 each for the final.

Televised live on ABC, the tournament opened on August 5 with a doubleheader at the Houston Astrodome that saw Spencer beat Terrell in a boring 12-round decision, followed by Ellis stopping Martin in nine. Martin, who would make headlines two years later by knocking Sonny Liston colder than an Alberta winter, was 24–1 when he fought Ellis—the best record of the eight invitees.

Six weeks later in Frankfurt, Germany, Bonavena manhandled Mildenberger in a 12-round decision, and on October 28 in Los Angeles, Quarry floored Patterson twice en route to winning the rematch of their June fight, which had ended in a draw.

The quarter-final bouts temporarily shifted boxing’s spotlight away from Ali’s political problems and focused it on what the WBA was dubbing “the showdown for succession,” but during the break between the two semifinal matches (Ellis dropped Bonavena twice in winning a decision in Louisville on December 2; Quarry stopped Spencer in Oakland on February 3, 1968), the tournament’s media profile was bushwhacked by Ed Dooley, the cagey chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission.

Since the WBA had already announced that the much-hyped finale between Ellis and Quarry would take place April 27 in Oakland, Dooley called a press conference in early January to announce that Frazier and Mathis would square off March 4, with the winner earning New York’s recognition as world heavyweight champion. In short order, five other states—Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois, Maine and Massachusetts—agreed to follow New York’s lead.

Dooley’s smooth move pretty much harpooned any hope the WBA had of its tournament winner being recognized as the best heavyweight in the world. A lot of fight fans—probably a majority—already figured that with Ali out of the picture, Frazier was the “uncrowned” world champion, and his spectacular 11th-round knockout of Mathis, who went into their fight with a record of 26–0 and 17 KOs, only solidified that standing. A crowd of more than 18,000 turned out to watch—along with Nino Benvenuti regaining the middleweight championship from Emile Griffith in the co-head-liner—on the first card staged at the “new” Madison Square Garden at West 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue.

Six weeks later, when Ellis defeated Quarry in 15 rounds in the anticlimactic WBA tournament finale, hardly anybody noticed—even though it gave Ellis “world champion” status in 44 states and most of Canada, too.

A couple of weeks after my fight with Frazier, the American Medical Association published the results of yet another study that concluded professional boxing should be banned once and for all.

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