GONE BUT STILL STANDING By Corey Erdman
G eorge Chuvalo embodied a particular brand of toughness that is valorized in Canadian culture. Not the braggadocious bully who relished dishing it out physically and verbally, but the humble warrior with the ability to endure. The hockey enforcer who takes his lumps to ensure the star goal-scorer can skate around uninhibited, or the exhausted goalie peppered with pucks to keep his team in the game. He was the archetype of the Canadian hero, the one who stood up to everyone and never backed down, let alone went down, and did so with humility – and a little bit of humor. In countless retellings of his career, there’s an anecdote Chuvalo would inevitably share at events, in schools across Canada or in the one-on-one conversations with admirers he always made time for. The fight he’s best known for, his first of two battles with Muhammad Ali, at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto in 1966, would come up one way or another. Famously, Chuvalo accepted the fight on just 17 days’ notice, and although he dropped a decision in a bid for the heavyweight championship, Ali would later remark that Chuvalo was the toughest man he’d ever faced. It’s a sentiment many who faced him would share, as he was never once knocked off his feet during his 93-fight career. “[Ali] went to the hospital with bleeding kidneys,” Chuvalo would say. “And me, I went dancing with my wife.” Chuvalo passed away on September 12 of 2026, making it to one final bell on the day of his 89th birthday. “I lost the fight. So people see me and they say, ‘Oh, George, you went the distance with Muhammad Ali.’ I say, ‘No, he went the distance with me.’ When people say to me, ‘You must
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