A KING AMONG KINGS
but those appearances were sporadic compared to the days when a stellar collective of heavyweights fought each other on a regular basis, often on free network television. And when there was a big closed-circuit event, like the “Rumble in the Jungle” or “Thrilla in Manila,” the world – not just the boxing world, but the entire globe – stopped. These days, most if not all big fights are behind a paywall, either through pay-per-view or a streaming service. And with main events broadcast after 11 p.m., late-night adults are well into other weekend plans and their kids are in bed before they get to see their favorite fighters, if they even have them. Those who grew up in the era of Ali, Frazier and Foreman had no such issues seeing their heroes on the small screen, and with newspapers having beat writers covering every move of the champions and contenders, there was no shortage of access to the stories behind the men in the ring. “People knew who the heavyweight champ was then,” Holmes told me in 2014. “The Easton Assassin” turned pro in 1973 and won the world title in a 1978 classic with Norton that was one of the greatest heavyweight title fights in boxing history. Before that victorious night in Las Vegas, Holmes made his bones on undercards and in the gym as a sparring partner for both Ali and Frazier. It was a necessary process for fighters back then, as the money wasn’t there like it is today, thanks to lucrative broadcast deals and a host of high-powered promoters who have prospects making decent money from the formative days of their careers. Holmes made $63 (no typo) for his pro debut against Rodell Dupree. And that’s for a man who became one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. So there was little cherry-picking of opponents or the idea of “cultivating” a particular road to the title. In the ’70s, fighters fought, because that was the only way they got paid, and they couldn’t be choosy about who stood across from them on fight night. Sure, they were true fighters with all the heart
in the world and they wanted the glory that came with being a champion, but, in the end, it was economics. “I was greedy. I was hungry,” Holmes laughed. “I wanted to prove to people that I could fight, for one thing, and I wasn’t just a fly-by-nighter. People used to tell me that I can’t do it, and I said, ‘OK, fine. I can’t do it.’ But I just kept on going – actions speak louder than words.” Jerry Izenberg was one of those boxing beat writers who covered all the great ’70s fights and fighters for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger newspaper and wrote about that era in his 2017 book Once There Were Giants. “The history of the heavyweight title tells you something that people never see,” he said. “I have yet to see a Harvard cum laude or Johns Hopkins graduate say, ‘I think I’ll try boxing and get hit in the face.’ The Jews were the bottom of the [economic] scale. Then the Poles and the Irish started getting better fights. Then after them came the Blacks, and after them came the Latinos. And now it’s the Latinos
and the people from Eastern Europe. So if a guy ain’t hungry, he’s not going to even try.” The heavyweights of that era were certainly hungry, and they were also competing at a time when boxing was running neck and neck with baseball for the attention of sports fans in the United States. The NFL was rapidly rising in popularity, but the NBA was far from mainstream, with championship games being aired on tape delay instead of live. So if you were an athlete with a 6-foot-3, 225-pound build like Foreman, boxing gave you a better shot at succeeding and making some big paydays than becoming a tight end or shooting guard. In response, many rolled the dice. And while big men in later decades moved into different sports to improve their economic standing, a group of special
a portion of a title. As for Shavers, as he tells it, dropping Holmes in the seventh round with a rocket of a right hand resulted in the shortest heavyweight championship reign of all time. “You know, I was champ for five seconds,” laughed Shavers. “But Larry got up and he wasn’t happy.” No, he wasn’t. “He made me mad,” laughed Holmes. “I wanted to prove people wrong. If Earnie Shavers knocked me out, you know what they’d be saying about me?” Holmes won in the 11th round, and the world saw it for free on ABC. It was a different world with a different kind of fighter. Foreman, who landed an analyst’s gig for HBO from 1992 to 2004, saw the writing on the wall for the heavyweights when he spoke to me in 2012. “We’re running into a sad era, and things are just not good,” he said. “I wish I could fix it. I think all the time that it wasn’t that I was a good champion or a heavyweight champion of the world or that Muhammad Ali was that great, but we certainly were heroes for people to talk about, and I wish this generation had just a few. I don’t know the reason, and there have been a lot of people to calculate and take a guess at the reasons, but there aren’t any. We just don’t have ’em. Jerry Quarry, Thad Spencer, Ernie Terrell. Where did they come from? They were bigger than Earth, and no one was bigger than the greatest show on Earth: Muhammad Ali. Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson, I could go on and on and on. They were like angelic figures that stayed in your mind, and you’d never get them out. I wish the young kids could have that again.” Will they? Since the days when Ali, Frazier, Foreman and their peers ruled boxing, we’ve had Tyson, Holyfield, Lewis, Riddick Bowe, the Klitschko brothers, Fury, Usyk, Wilder and Joshua to hold up their end of the bargain. But those ’70s heavyweight killers? “We need magic to come around,” said Cooney. “And every so often, it happens.”
Foreman knocked out Ron Lyle in The Ring’s Fight of the Year for 1976 ...
... then lost a decision to Jimmy Young in The Ring’s 1977 Fight of the Year.
athletes in the ’70s decided to chase a title often referred to as “Boxing’s Mr. President.” The odds were high, but the rewards were great, and to get there, you had to fight all comers who had the same dream you did. “Now, most of the guys handpick their opponents,” longtime heavyweight contender Earnie Shavers told me in 2018. “We didn’t handpick. We just fought everybody. And I’m glad I fought in that era, because it taught me how to fight, take care of myself and earn a name. But now they handpick them, and when you fight a top guy, you get beat. You’ve gotta start a guy and let him fight. That’s how I started. I started late, so my trainer said, ‘Earnie, you cannot afford to make any mistakes, so listen to me.’ I did everything he said to do – hard work, training, no smoking, no drinking. The worst habit I ever had – one time – I bought two scoops of ice cream instead of one – and that’s it. (laughs) But he told me what I could do if I took care of myself and trained hard and listened to him. And I did, and it opened doors for me – money-wise and
everything else.” Shavers was a prime example of a ’70s heavyweight. Take away the decade’s top dogs – Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Holmes, Norton – and you have a collection of fighters that could, on any given night, upset the apple cart and/or win a world title. Jimmy Young ended the first chapter of Foreman’s career by beating him in 1977, and many believe the Philadelphian did enough to beat Ali in their title fight a year earlier. Quarry is considered by many to be one of the best fighters to never win a heavyweight title. Leon Spinks famously defeated Ali in 1978 with only seven pro fights under his belt, and Ron Lyle engaged in a five-round war with Foreman that was The Ring’s Fight of the Year in 1976. A lot of folks believe that if you take any of those contenders from the ’70s and drop them into the modern era, they’d win at least
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