Once There Were Giants by Jerry Izenberg

Author:Jerry Izenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Is This the End of Muhammad Ali?

“[Ali] should hang it up. He’s going to get hurt.”

—Teddy Brenner

He had out-gutted Joe Frazier in the greatest heavyweight title fight ever staged. It was hardly time for another trauma. So Muhammad Ali took a deep breath and relaxed with a trilogy of soft touches. He went down to Puerto Rico and stopped a Flemish sculptor named Jean-Pierre Coopman in five rounds, after which Coopman embraced him and asked for an autograph.

Landover, Maryland, was next, as was a very talented boxer named Jimmy Young, whose best days were behind him. Here, the word boxer is used advisedly. Young’s strength was in his ring smarts. However, nobody ever out-boxed Ali, and Young’s principal offense consisted of sticking his head out of the ropes and benefitting because the referee didn’t know that each instance should have been scored as a knockdown. Ali, of course, won.

Then came a vacation trip to Munich to fight a British ex-paratrooper named Richard Dunn. Ali stopped him in five rounds. The event was notable because, to save television the embarrassment of empty seats, Ali bought hundreds of tickets and gave them away to American soldiers stationed there.

However, a real fight was at hand. Three years earlier, Ken Norton had broken Ali’s jaw as a 5–1 underdog. They fought a second time six months later, and Ali won in a highly questionable decision. Most writers at ringside, including me, had disagreed with the judges and given it to Norton. Once again, it was time for unfinished business.

In truth, Norton was an athlete first and foremost, who later became a great boxer. A four-sport letter winner in high school, he was so gifted he once finished first in fourteen events in a high school track meet. He was big and strong, and always seemed to move forward. However, he had an awkward fighting style, seeming to drag his right foot from behind. His stance also featured a cross-armed defense rarely seen in the sport. This latter style became a puzzle that Ali had trouble solving.

The third fight between Ali and Norton on September 28, 1976, promoted by Bob Arum and held in Yankee Stadium, was one of the last outdoor fights in the United States. On picture day, the fighters were photographed separately. Ali ran around the outfield for the television cameras, throwing punches and shouting while huge letters blazed on the big stadium scoreboard: “Is this the end of Muhammad Ali?”

The fight was set for the big stadium in the city that never sleeps. What a moment; what a venue. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything.

On that night in the Bronx, the New York Police Department did the unimaginable thing. Its union organized a strike for a new contract that day, essentially voting with its feet against the need to serve and protect.

Nobody believed it would actually happen. On the eve of the fight, Arum met with top police brass, city, and stadium officials. “We were assured,” Arum recalled, “that everything would be under control.

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