FIGHTLINE BY DOUG FISCHER
Fights only last a matter of minutes, but fighters are connected to each other by chains that extend for decades – even centuries – into the past. Their bond is a lineage built face-to-face: A young prospect struggles once broken by a fighter now enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. In that way, muscle memory carries knowledge and boxers face a piece of everyone their opponent has fought, everyone those people fought, and so on. This month we’re linking two of with the skills of an aging veteran whose nose was the hardest-punching heavyweight champions in the history of the sport – Joe Louis and George Foreman. Louis was selected as the best puncher of all
CHARLES UD 15 LOUIS SEPTEMBER 27, 1950
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LOGAN KO 8 CHARLES JULY 30, 1959
time by The Ring: No. 1 in its 2003 Yearbook ( The 100 Greatest Punchers of All-Time! ), as well as the updated rankings presented in the June 2022 issue ( The 100 Greatest Punchers of the Last 100 Years ). The Brown Bomber scored 52 KOs in 66 career victories, including against Hall of Famers John Henry Lewis, Jack Sharkey, Max Baer, Jim Braddock, Max Schmeling, Billy Conn and Jersey Joe Walcott. Foreman was ranked No. 9 in the 2003 Yearbook and No. 5 in the 2022 special edition. Big
George scored 68 KOs in 76 career victories, including stoppages of Hall of Famers Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Dwight Muhammad Qawi and Michael Moorer. There are multiple paths linking the heavyweight powerhouses, whose primes are separated by almost 40 years, but we found this four-step Fightline – short and direct, like a Louis left hook or Foreman’s shootouts with Frazier and Norton. Can you find a faster route?
ALI TKO 4 LOGAN APRIL 23, 1962
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ALI KO 8 FOREMAN OCTOBER 30, 1974
If so, or if you have another Fightline you’d like to submit, send it to comeoutwriting@ gmail.com. And remember, some fighters can
be linked on paper by jumping forward and backward in time, but to be a true lineage the fights must come in chronological order.
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