Ten of Muhammad Ali's former rivals pay tribute to the three-time world heavyweight champion.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. George Louis Chuvalo, CM (born September 12, 1937) is a retired Canadian heavyweight boxer who was never knocked down in ninety-three professional fights between 1956 and 1979. He is often considered to have had the greatest chin in the history of boxing. He was Canadian heavyweight champion as both an amateur and a professional, and twice fought for versions of the professional world's heavyweight title. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Chuvalo, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Sir Henry Cooper OBE KSG (3 May 1934 – 1 May 2011) was an English heavyweight boxer known for the effectiveness of his left hook, "Enry's 'Ammer", and his knockdown of the young Muhammad Ali. Cooper held the British, Commonwealth and European heavyweight titles several times throughout his career, and unsuccessfully challenged Ali for the world heavyweight championship in 1966. Following his retirement from the sport, Cooper continued his career as a television and radio personality and was enormously popular in Britain: he was the first (and is today one of just three people) to twice win the public vote for BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. Description above from the Wikipedia article Henry Cooper , licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. George Edward Foreman (nicknamed "Big George") (born January 10, 1949) is an American two-time former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Olympic gold medalist, ordained Baptist minister, author and successful entrepreneur. He is credited as being one of the hardest hitters in boxing history. His most notable fights in his early career were his knockout (TKO-2) against Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 22, 1973 and his loss to Muhammad Ali (KO by 8) in "The Rumble in the Jungle" in Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 30, 1974. He later became the oldest man ever to become heavyweight boxing champion of the world when at age 45, he knocked out (KO-10) Michael Moorer, age 26, on November 5, 1994 to reclaim the title he held more than 20 years earlier. He has been named one of the 25 greatest fighters of all time by Ring magazine. He is now a successful businessman and an ordained Christian minister who has his own church. Foreman is ranked #9 on Ring magazine's list of "100 greatest punchers of all time". He is also well-known for the eponymous George Foreman Grill. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Foreman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Larry Holmes is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1973 to 2002. He grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, which led to his boxing nickname of the Easton Assassin. Holmes, whose left jab is rated among the best in boxing history, held the WBC heavyweight title from 1978 to 1983, The Ring magazine and lineal heavyweight titles from 1980 to 1985, and the inaugural IBF heavyweight title from 1983 to 1985. During his only title reign, he defended his title against 19 fighters, the second most in history behind Joe Louis. He also holds the record for the longest individual heavyweight title streak in the modern boxing history. Holmes is one of only five boxers—along with Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Leon Spinks and Trevor Berbick—to defeat Muhammad Ali; he is the only one to have stopped Ali. Holmes won his first 48 professional bouts, including victories over Norton, Ali, Earnie Shavers, Mike Weaver, Gerry Cooney, Tim Witherspoon, Carl Williams and Marvis Frazier. He fell one short of matching Rocky Marciano's career record of 49–0 when he lost to Michael Spinks in an upset in 1985. Holmes retired after losing a rematch to Spinks the following year, but made repeated comebacks. He was unsuccessful in three further attempts (against Mike Tyson in 1988, Evander Holyfield in 1992 and Oliver McCall in 1995) to regain the heavyweight title. Holmes fought for the final time in 2002, aged 52, against the 334lb Eric "Butterbean" Esch, and ended his career with a record of 69 wins and 6 losses. He is frequently ranked as one of the greatest heavyweights of all time and has been inducted into both the International Boxing Hall of Fame and World Boxing Hall of Fame. When Holmes was nineteen, he started boxing. In his twenty-first bout, he boxed Nick Wells in the semifinals of the 1972 National Olympic Trials in Fort Worth, Texas. Wells, a southpaw known for unprecedently high knockout-to-win percentage for an amateur boxer, with a majority of knockouts coming in the first round, stopped Holmes in the first round. Nevertheless, Holmes was chosen by a selection committee of the National Olympic authorities to fight at the Olympic Box-offs in West Point, New York, where he had a match-up versus a fighting seaman Duane Bobick. Holmes was dropped in the first round with a right to the head. He got up and danced out of range, landing several stiff jabs in the process. Bobick mauled Holmes in the second round but could not corner him. The referee warned Holmes twice in the second for holding. In the third, Bobick landed several good rights and started to corner Holmes, who continued to hold. Eventually, Holmes was disqualified for excessive holding. Holmes invested the money he earned from boxing and settled in his hometown of Easton. When he retired from boxing, Holmes employed more than 200 people through his various business holdings. In 2008, he owned two restaurants and a nightclub, a training facility, an office complex, a snack food bar and slot machines.[citation needed] Holmes currently co-hosts a talk show What The Heck Were They Thinking?
Kenneth Howard Norton Sr. was an American professional boxer who competed from 1967 to 1981. He is often considered One of Greatest Heavyweight boxers of All Time.
Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer, activist, entertainer and philanthropist. Nicknamed The Greatest, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated figures of the 20th century and as one of the greatest boxers of all time. Ali was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He began training as an amateur boxer at age 12. At 18, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics and turned professional later that year. He became a Muslim after 1961. He won the world heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston in a major upset on February 25, 1964, at age 22. On March 6, 1964, he announced that he no longer would be known as Cassius Clay but as Muhammad Ali. In 1966, Ali refused to be drafted into the military, citing his religious beliefs and ethical opposition to the Vietnam War. He was found guilty of draft evasion so he faced 5 years in prison and was stripped of his boxing titles. He stayed out of prison as he appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which overturned his conviction in 1971, but he had not fought for nearly four years and lost a period of peak performance as an athlete. Ali's actions as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War made him an icon for the larger counterculture generation, and he was a very high-profile figure of racial pride for African Americans during the civil rights movement and throughout his career. As a Muslim, Ali was initially affiliated with Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam (NOI). He later disavowed the NOI, adhering to Sunni Islam, and supporting racial integration like his former mentor Malcolm X. Ali was a leading heavyweight boxer of the 20th century, and he remains the only three-time lineal champion of that division. His joint records of beating 21 boxers for the world heavyweight title and winning 14 unified title bouts stood for 35 years. He is the only fighter to have been ranked as the world's best heavyweight by BoxRec twelve times. He has been ranked among BoxRec's ten best heavyweights seventeen times, the third most in history. He won 8 fights that were rated by BoxRec as 5-Star, the third most in the history of the heavyweight division. Ali is the only boxer to be named The Ring magazine Fighter of the Year six times. He has been ranked the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, and as the greatest athlete of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated, the Sports Personality of the Century by the BBC, and the third greatest athlete of the 20th century by ESPN SportsCentury. He was involved in several historic boxing matches and feuds, most notably his fights with Joe Frazier, such as the Fight of the Century and the Thrilla in Manila, and his fight with George Foreman, known as The Rumble in the Jungle, which has been called "arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century" and was watched by a record estimated television audience of 1 billion viewers worldwide, becoming the world's most-watched live television broadcast at the time. Ali thrived in the spotlight at a time when many fighters let their managers do the talking, and he was often provocative and outlandish. He was known for trash-talking, and often free-styled with rhyme schemes and spoken word poetry, anticipating elements of hip hop.
Joseph William "Joe" Frazier, known as "Smokin" Joe, is a former Olympic and World Heavyweight boxing champion, whose professional career lasted from 1965 to 1976, with a brief comeback in 1981. Frazier emerged as a contender in the mid-1960s, defeating Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, Buster Mathis, Eddie Machen, Doug Jones and Jimmy Ellis en route to becoming undisputed heavyweight champion in 1970, and followed up by defeating Muhammad Ali in the highly-anticipated "Fight of the Century" in 1971. Two years later Frazier lost his title when he was knocked out by George Foreman. He launched a comeback, beating Joe Bugner, losing a rematch to Ali, and beating Quarry and Ellis again. Frazier's last world title challenge came in 1975, but he was beaten by Ali in their brutal rubbermatch. He retired in 1976 following a second loss to Foreman. He made a comeback in 1981, fighting just once, before retiring for good. The International Boxing Research Organization (IBRO) rates Frazier among the ten greatest heavyweights of all time. He is an inductee of both the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame. Frazier's style was often compared to that of Henry Armstrong, dependent on bobbing, weaving and wearing down his opponents with relentless pressure. His best known punch was a powerful left hook, which accounted for most of his knockouts. Compared to Ali's style, he was close enough to the ideal bruiser that some in the press and media characterized the bouts as the answer to the classic question: "What happens when a boxer meets with a brawler?" Since retiring Frazier has made cameo appearances in several Hollywood movies, and two episodes of The Simpsons. His son Marvis also became a boxer - trained by Frazier himself - although was unable to emulate his father's success. Frazier continues to train fighters in his gym in Philadelphia. His later years have also seen the continuation of his bitter rivalry with Ali, in which the two periodically exchange insults, interspersed with brief reconciliations.
