The History of the Heavyweight Championship - 1972

1972 was not a great year for the heavyweight championship of the world and the champion, Joe Frazier. Nobody in the sport doubted Frazier’s ranking – he was the number one and he had proven it.

In 1971, Frazier had beaten Muhammad Ali in the Fight of the Century, dropping the former champion in the 15th and final round to confirm the win. It was a truly great night, a magical fight in Madison Square Garden in front of a sold-out crowd of 20,000 and a watching world, but it was in March of the previous year.

Then Frazier vanished, exhausted from victory and also concealing some cataract damage in his left eye. It meant he had to pick with care the cities and states for his fights and make sure that he avoided the places where the pre-fight medicals were strict. His eye damage was a dark secret. His sight was threatened with every punch he took from that point.

And then he returned to the ring in early January of 1972 to fight a student called Terry Daniels in New Orleans. It was not the defence of the title that people wanted. And not the fight that the sport needed. Still, Frazier was back and guaranteed 200,000 dollars and the championship was active again.

It was a mismatch from the start. Frazier was twenty pounds heavier than the 25-year-old legal student. Daniels had lost three fights in 1971 and all three of the men that beat him were far more deserving of a crack at Frazier’s title. It was and remains one of the worst world heavyweight title defences to ever take place.

Yank Durham, Frazier’s manager and cornerman, had promised to ease Frazier back, ease him back from the hospital bed the boxer had occupied after beating Ali – Yank promised a fight that would not be a problem and he delivered. It was all over in the fourth round. Daniels had been over four times. It was the easiest fight Frazier had had for a long, long time. The Ring record book, an annual that arrived with such anticipation all those decades ago, ignores the Daniels fight. Daniels was, according to Frazier, a gentleman.

In May, Frazier was in Omaha, Nebraska, to fight local idol, Ron The Bluffs Butcher Stander. Now, Big Ron could fight a bit and he did love to fight. Boxers, drunks, policeman and his wife, Darlene. I’m not sure she ever lost, by the way.

“Stander is a crude, brawling sort,” warned Durham. In all fairness to the Butcher, he was a bit better than that… not by much.

Stander had lost just once in 25-fights before the Frazier opportunity. He had dropped a split decision to a veteran called Rico Brooks just four months before stepping inside the ring with Frazier – Brooks, by the way, had been a professional boxer since 1955 and had won eight and lost 11. An odd record for an 18-year-old veteran. He is one of the enigmatic bit players in the heavyweight scene, sharing a ring with a lot of good fighters and having various records … most pure fantasy.

Anyway, Stander did have one truly outstanding win on his record: in late 1970 he had knocked out Earnie Shavers and Shavers, in the coming years, would be considered one of the best and most feared heavyweights out there – Shavers is also one of the very best heavyweights to never win the world championship. Shavers had knocked out every one of the 12 men he had beaten before Stander beat him in the fifth. Shavers, known as the Acorn because of his fearsome bald head, spent most of the Nineties as a doorman on Merseyside. It’s hard to invent.

Stander delivered some wonderful one-liners in the build-up: “How much beer do I drink? I lose count after a case.” And, on the subject of his clashes with local law enforcement: “Have I ever been knockdown? Yeah, by the police with a nightstick.” Stander had the banter.

It was a brutal, short fight. It ended at the end of the fourth round when Frazier added an assortment of facial wounds to the impressive collection that Stander already had. Somebody quipped: “Ron ran out of skin.” It looked that way: Stander had a cut above and below his right eye, by his nose, his nose was broken. Some of the old wounds had been caused by police truncheons – or, nightsticks as they are called – and one cut above his eye was from a flying plate of spaghetti that Darlene had launched his way. Darlene seemed to launch an awful lot his way. “Ron gets hurt every time he goes in the ring because he’s never been in shape,” offered Darlene. “How do I know Ron gets hurt? Because after a lot of fights he doesn’t know what he is doing and doesn’t remember what happened.”

Frazier sat in praise of the Omaha strongman: “He came to fight, he was tough.” That was about all.

In a 1975 fight – unofficially the clash of the hapless losers – Stander and Daniels met: The Butcher won in the first. An even stranger fight took place in 1977 when Stander travelled to London for a ludicrous booking on an unlicensed show and he met the great hero of that circuit, Roy Shaw. That madcap fight finished in the third round and Shaw was the winner. However, Stander had a broken a rib before the fight and struggled. Shaw admitted he would have lost if Stander had not been so severely restricted.

Frazier was back, still champion, but the two fights had done nothing to enhance his position or add to the glamour and brilliance created by the buzz from the Fight of the Century the year before.

There was talk of a rematch with Muhammad Ali.

“I want 3.5 minimum guarantee – and the other guy must get less,” said Frazier. There was an early offer of 2.7, better than the 2.5 million dollars he got for the first fight. However, the offers stopped.

Bob Arum, working as one of Ali’s lawyers at the time, and soon to become a promoter, put together a deal with some British investors. The plan was to buy the rematch contract and rights from Jack Kent Cooke – one of the two original promoters of The Fight of the Century – for eight million dollars. The fighters would then receive a guarantee of 3 million and the two million would go to Kent Cooke. The deal fell apart. It was, by the summer of 1972, a desperate time. The great night in New York was fading fast, replaced by constant squabbles and the memory of Daniels and Stander flopping so badly.

Ali was not going to wait for Frazier to agree terms. In 1972, Ali fought six times. All six of the men he beat were superior to the two men Frazier had ruined so easily in his championship defences.

Ali went to Tokyo in April to fight Mac Foster. The promoter called Ali the champion and demanded 15 rounds. Ali had a cold. Foster had lost just once in 29 fights and had stopped or knocked out his 28 other opponents. Big Mac had wrecked names like Thad Spencer, Zora Folley and Cleveland Williams. His only loss was Jerry Quarry.

“Mac Foster never got the credit he deserved – there are no walkovers at that level and I knew it would be a hard fight. It was tough – Muhammad made it look easy,” said Angelo Dundee.

Ali won on points after 15 long rounds in front of 15,000 people, gather at noon for the fight to suit the TV audience in the USA. Ali was calling for Frazier from that first fight in 1972:

“Where is Joe Frazier? I’m fighting like the devil, why ain’t he in action? Why ain’t he fighting?”

Four weeks later and Ali was back on the road and back in the ring. Ali met old foe and the sport’s toughest fighter, George Chuvalo in Vancouver. Ali had outpointed Chuvalo to defend his heavyweight world title in 1966. In that fight Chuvalo had walked through Ali’s pinches and dug away to the body.

Chuvalo believed he had a chance, had a hope: “He’s not as good as he was in 1966 – I’m better now. You can hear the rust in his bones.”

Chuvalo had never been dropped and finishes his career that way – 95 fights, dozens against the best heavyweights of two generations and never knocked out. That is some record.

In Vancouver in May 1972 Ali won on points again. It was gruelling at times.

“I’m tired of hitting George – he eats punches like other fighters eat burgers,” said Ali.

Chuvalo shuffled off, smiling, polite as ever and knowing that his career was still not finished. He was cornered and asked about the new Ali. His opinion is perfect: “He’s not as fast, but he punches harder.”

The schedule continued and in June the Ali Camp went to Las Vegas for a second fight with Jerry Quarry.

Don King had been released from prison in September 1971 and by the summer of 1972 he was getting busy in the boxing business. He was working with a couple of feared heavyweight fighters – Earnie Shavers and the tragic Jeff Candy Slim Merritt. But, he had his eyes on Ali.

King was involved with the Quarry and Ali second fight. King always had a way of making people believe that he was running the show, running all shows.

On the undercard in Las Vegas, Quarry’s brother Mike was fighting Bob foster for the world light-heavyweight title. It ended badly and Mike was knocked out cold for five minutes. It upset Jerry.

The show was dubbed The Quarry Brothers v The Soul Brothers. King took credit for the title. The real title was Double Jeopardy. Before the fight, Ali gives an interview, shown live across the world to audiences in cinemas at closed-circuit screenings:

“Tell everybody to take their seats – one Quarry got beat and now it’s the turn of the last white hope.” Quarry always hated the White Hope tag.

It is hard to watch after a couple of rounds. At the end of the fifth round, Reg Gutteridge, on commentary duty with Eamonn Andrews, asks: “Why didn’t he finish him, he’s spanking him like a sparring partner.” In the sixth, Andrews utters the brilliant line: “There is nothing left to quarry in Quarry.”

Ali stopped Quarry after 19 seconds of the seventh round when he waved the ref in after landing with three clean punches. He was accused of “carrying” Quarry until the vicious end. In boxing, “Carrying” means that a boxer held back when he could have finished the fight earlier. “I was feeling him out, making sure he was ready to go,” Ali claimed.

The melee in the ring was a comic carnival of men with microphones, men with soppy Las Vegas grins and police in riot helmets. Ali ran the chaos like a fine conductor of an eager orchestra.

“I’m ready now for Joe Frazier – I’ve proved he’s a coward. He’s a chump, not a champ – let’s get Joe Frazier ready now. I want him, but he won’t even talk about me.”

At ringside that night in Las Vegas was George Foreman, the unbeaten young beast of the division. There was a brief and explicit exchange of opinions at ringside after the fight when Ali called Big George over. “Fight me, not Joe Frazier – Joe Frazier is scared of me and is taking you as an easy choice.” Foreman laughed it off, they got physically closer and Ali was flicking out jabs, putting his hand son Foreman’s face and then Foreman flicks a punch back – it missed but it had pace. Ali then throws a right hand – he makes it miss – and there is real power in it. It was an electric stand-off. That is how you start to sell a fight! Ali and Foreman would not fight for another 28 long months. Foreman and Frazier was getting closer and closer. Ali and Frazier would not fight there long overdue rematch for 18 months and when they did fight again… there was no world championship on the line.

In the Las Vegas ring, Ali had talked about his next two fights, named the dates, the venue and the opponents. He was working hard to stay number one heavyweight in the world.

Just three weeks after the Quarry fight in Las Vegas… the Ali roadshow arrived in Dublin. Ali was fighting his old sparring partner – Al Blue Lewis. It is a fight of a thousand tales … and some are even true.

It was put together by a man called Butty Sugrue. He was a Dublin publican and had made money by pulling tractors attached to a rope which he held in his teeth. Ali landed and started to talk about his Irish great grandfather. Croke Park could hold 81,000 but fewer than 20,000 showed and a lot never paid. The main gate was either stormed or opened and either 5 thousand or ten thousand got in for free. Somebody famously said – possibly Tom Cryan, one of the finest boxing writers of any generation at the Irish Independent – before the fight: “It’s an insult for an Irishman to pay to see a fight.”

Then, Ali was back in the Madison Square Garden ring against former world heavyweight campion, Floyd Patterson. It was a relentless schedule, all designed to keep the pressure on the absent Frazier. In the weeks before the fight, Patterson was invited to the White House to see Richard Nixon, the war president. It was a reminder of the days when President Kennedy had been one of Floyd’s biggest fans a decade earlier.

It was Floyd’s 64th and final fight. Ali cut him and beat him after seven rounds – there was no humiliation and criticism this time: their first fight in 1965 was horrible to witness, it was Ali at his cruellest. In 1972 there was respect and it is also overlooked … but at that point Floyd had cleared over 8 million dollars in purses from his fights and that would have been a record amount for a heavyweight champion. Floyd never fought again, but never announced it. There was even a move in 1977 to get Floyd back from his exile to fight Ali a third time. Instead a novice called Leon Spinks was picked. That is a story to tell.

Vic Ziegel, a New York columnist, captured the confusion:

“The thing about Floyd is that he never actually retired. He just stopped fighting. For years people just kept waiting to see if he would box again.”

It was 1972 but Patterson belonged firmly in the 1950s. A man from the sport’s black and white days. He had beaten boxers when he started that had been scrapping since the Thirties – he was a link with the ancient days of the heavyweight championship and a massively underestimated boxer. Mark Kram of Sports Illustrated knew a complex fighter when he saw one:

“Floyd like Sonny (Liston) was the real thing. No stranger or more interesting figure ever worked the landscape of sport.”

There was time after sending Patterson into retirement for one last fight in in 1972 for Ali. It would be his sixth of the year.

A proposal to fight in South Africa collapsed and Ali fought wold light-heavyweight champion Bod Foster in a big night club in Lake Tahoe. Foster was dropped a total of seven times before the finish in the eighth round.

“They say he slowed down after the lay-off, but the guy was still too fast,” said Foster.

The fight was in late November – it had been a draining year and he was still no nearer to a Frazier rematch. In fact … Frazier had signed to fight Foreman in Jamaica in January of 1973. Ali was on the outside again – he had a licence, he just couldn’t get the fight.

Foreman had won five times – all quick – in 1972 to get the chance to fight Frazier. He ended the year 37 and zero in fights and was just 23.

Ken Norton won six times in six fights. He had lost just the once in 30 fights by the end of the year. The ex-marine would be Ali’s next opponent.

And Joe Bugner won his eight fights in the year. He beat American tough guy Tony Doyle late in the year, stopping the American on cuts. Doyle had a 1971 win over Terry Daniels. The heavyweight division was open, it seemed that anybody could get a chance at the title. Bugner was just 22 at the end of the year. In 1973 Joe Bugner would fight both Ali and Frazier. Crazy days.

At the Munich Olympics a new heavyweight emerged. He would never turn professional, he would refuse a decade of multi-million dollar offers to fight in America. Teofilo Stevenson was a Cuban idol, a friend to Fidel Castro.

Stevenson won three consecutive gold medals at the Olympics – Munich, Montreal and Moscow. He might have won a fourth gold in Los Angeles in 1984 but there was a boycott. He was a lethal one-punch finisher. He stayed loyal to the Cuban cause and said:

“I will not leave my country for one million dollars or much more. What is a million dollars against eight million Cubans who love me?”

The year ended with Frazier and Foreman making travel plans for the Sunshine Showdown in Jamaica and Ali putting a list of opponents together for another torrid year on the side-lines.

The biggest fights in heavyweight boxing history were moving closer … and the division’s giants were all getting sucked into a series of fights that would change the sport forever. First stop… Jamaica in January 1973.