Although a 1972 rematch with Frazier was not to be, Ali wasn’t about to sit around gathering dust. He worked out a busy schedule for the year, bragging that while Frazier was fighting bums, he was taking on all the contenders.
Not only was his regular activity keeping the sport alive, Ali argued, it would also keep him sharp when the Frazier rematch finally materialized.
Frazier disagreed vehemently. He said that Ali was taking all of those fights purely for financial reasons. The champ didn’t think that all of those matches would help Ali one bit once they hooked up for their rematch.
Whatever his reasons for keeping such a busy schedule, Ali was right. Champion or not, 1972 belonged to him, not Frazier. Ali fought six times that year, and that level of activity led many fans to label Ali the “People’s Champion.” It was a designation Muhammad was happy to accept.
The Ali roadshow’s first stop was in Tokyo for an April 1 encounter with Mac Foster, a much-anticipated event in the island nation.
Promoter Yoshio Kou took on a major challenge when he decided to bring big-time heavyweight boxing to his homeland. His first task was to convince the Japanese Boxing Association to rescind a law prohibiting two foreign fighters from opposing each other on Japanese soil. The law had been enacted to protect the interests of Japanese boxers.
Kou managed to sell the JBA on the idea that Ali was the world’s greatest boxer (notwithstanding his loss to Frazier), and that staging an Ali fight would bolster the image of boxing in Japan. The JBA agreed with Kou’s reasoning and gave him the green light.
Ali–Foster would be the first heavyweight fight ever held in the Orient.10
Foster had come back well after his devastating 1970 loss to Jerry Quarry. No one had beaten him since then, and he had stopped four opponents in a row leading up to Ali. In 28 wins, he had scored 28 knockouts.
A native of Fresno, California, MacArthur “Mac” Foster had served 61⁄2years in the United States Marine Corps, including 14 major operations during two stints in Vietnam.
He achieved the rank of sergeant during his military career. It was while he was in the Marines that Mac took up boxing. He compiled an amateur record of 26–1, with 17 knockouts, and captured the following titles: two all–Marine, one all-service, and one AAU.
After his release from the Marines, Foster turned pro under the management of Pat Di Furia.
Mac received a major scare during his pro debut on November 28, 1966, when he was dropped twice by 275-pound Jimmy Gilmore. Foster came back to put Gilmore to sleep for a full minute with a single right hand in round three.
In 1968, Foster gained prominence as a sparring partner for Sonny Liston. Liston was desperate for live bodies to punch in preparation for his crossroads bout with Henry Clark.
Foster gladly accepted the job and succeeded in decking Sonny with a right hand during one session.
Once word of Mac’s feat made the rounds, it became almost impossible for manager Di Furia to find any quality opposition for his fighter. The combination of Foster’s reputation as a puncher and his intimidating physical appearance prompted most managers to keep their charges far away from the ex–Marine.
Reputable foes who did dare to cross gloves with him suffered the same fate as the stiffs. Ex-contender Thad Spencer fell in four, and Roger Rischer went out in one. But Fos-ter’s perfect 24–0, all-knockout winning streak came to an end when Quarry destroyed him in six rounds.
That setback didn’t end Foster’s title aspirations. Now he was about to face Muhammad Ali, the man Foster had wanted to fight since the day he turned pro. As a Marine and a Vietnam veteran, Foster considered Ali’s antiwar stance unpatriotic.
At the beginning of his career, he announced that he would make the kicking of “Clay’s”
behind his top professional priority.
Strangely, that animosity never emerged once the contracts for the Tokyo bout were signed. It is ironic that a Vietnam vet and a conscientious objector to that war would choose an Asian country as the location for their fight.
Foster’s arrival in Tokyo was something of a homecoming, as he had once been stationed at Yokosuka, an hour away from the big city. He arrived before Ali, and he received a great deal of coverage in the Japanese media. Outside of the sumo wrestling fraternity, a heavy-weight is an anomaly in the land of the rising sun, and Foster stayed in the limelight until Ali came to town. After that, Mac was relegated to the status of the “other guy.”
Despite Foster’s record and reputation as a puncher, Ali was supremely confident in his ability to win. His weight was a slightly lardy 226, which indicated how seriously he took Foster’s chances.
Japanese fans received the full Ali package, with pre-fight bantering and predictions thrown in free of charge. He paraded around Tokyo carrying a placard with the number 5, his forecast of the number of rounds Foster would last.
And that prediction wasn’t based on whim or chance. Ali had several well-thought-out reasons for choosing the fifth frame.
“It shall be over not in round four or six,” Ali declared, “but round five. I like the number five. I get up at five in the morning and I run for five miles. I eat five poached eggs for breakfast. I drink five glasses of orange juice and five glasses of ice water during the day.
I take a nap at 5 P.M. My daughter is five years old. I have been married five years and I met my wife on June 5.”11
Trusting in Ali’s logic, Japanese fans fully expected Ali to carry out his prediction. But this was the Ali of 1972, not 1962. He had turned 30 the month before.
Ali wore an elaborate Japanese robe into the ring. It was the only sign of flash through-out the entire encounter, which commenced around noon, Tokyo time.
Although he was a slugger, Foster followed a defensive game plan, possibly to preserve his stamina. The bout was scheduled for 15 rounds, and Foster had never gone past eight complete rounds in his career.
Ali didn’t expend much energy in the early going either. Presumably, he was holding back for the fifth. When the bell sounded to open that round, Ali sprang from his corner and threw everything but the kitchen sink at Foster. But Mac withstood the storm, and was still on his feet at the end of the round. Ali’s prediction had failed, and the crowd erupted in a chorus of boos.
The fight dragged on for the full fifteen rounds. Ali won by a wide margin, but he dis-appointed the Tokyo fans with his inability to stop Foster. Except for a brief moment in round 11, Foster was never in any real danger of going down. Ali claimed that anyone who could survive 15 rounds with him must be “great.”
But the “great” Foster was nothing more than a puffy-faced, one-sided loser at the end of the fight. This was Ali’s poorest performance since the Mathis waltz the year before. A more aggressive showing from Foster might have made for an interesting contest, given Muhammad’s power shortage that night.
Ali tried to make the best of a bad situation by saying that Foster was tougher than Frazier. Frazier must have laughed when he heard that.
Foster waited a year before stepping into the ring again. He stopped a ham-and-egger named Sam McGill in nine rounds. That would be Mac’s last victory. After losing by
decision to Bob Stallings, Joe Bugner, and Henry Clark, Foster hung up his gloves for good.
His final record was a respectable 29–5, with all the wins coming by knockout.
The next stop on Ali’s 1972 Grand Tour was Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
His opponent there was former foe George Chuvalo, against whom Ali had defended the heavyweight title back on March 29, 1966.
Earlier in 1972, Ali and Chuvalo had appeared on the same January 27 card in Van-couver. Chuvalo retained his Canadian heavyweight title via a fifth-round stoppage of Mon-treal’s Charlie Chase, while Ali delighted the fans with two exhibition bouts.
“You’re the man I want to fight again,” Ali told Chuvalo afterward. “You’ve never been knocked down, and all the greats have been knocked down. Jack Johnson, Sugar Ray Robin-son, Joe Frazier, myself, we’ve all been knocked down.”
Ali added, “You’ve been on one knee, haven’t you?”
“Only in church,” Chuvalo shot back.
The fight was set for May 1, only a month after the Ali–Foster yawner. Ali–Chuvalo was put together by a Vancouver promoter named Murray Pezim. To liven up the promotion, Pezim announced that a marathon 96-hour party would precede the fight.
The 34-year-old Chuvalo had tasted leather from just about every top-notch fighter of the past 16 years. Other than Jerry Quarry and Doug Jones, he had failed to defeat anyone in the upper echelon of the division. In his last two major fights, he had been stopped by George Foreman and decisioned by Jimmy Ellis.
Still, with 66 career victories and his reputation for absorbing punishment, George had kept his name in the ratings for the better part of fourteen years, an enviable span for a sport that doesn’t encourage such longevity.
By 1972, however, Chuvalo’s career was in an irreversible decline. The Ellis defeat had dropped him out of the top ten.
Regardless of his ranking, Chuvalo’s most famous credential remained intact. In 85 professional fights, he had never been knocked off his feet. Ali said he would “consider it a defeat if Chuvalo isn’t flat on his back.” Chuvalo figured that if Ali couldn’t stop him in 1966 that he’d never do it in 1972.
The buildup to this fight, like so many others in which Ali was involved, became a war of words. And this time Ali was not battling an unarmed man. Chuvalo could match repartee with the best of them. And Ali was definitely the best of them.
One aspect of Ali that hadn’t changed was his sense of humor. Before the fight, Muham-mad strode through the streets of Vancouver, wielding an axe and predicting that he would chop Chuvalo down once and for all.
But George wasn’t intimidated by Ali’s psychological ploys. “I’m not made of wood,”
he pointed out. “And he can’t bring an axe into the ring.”12
Another Ali prank a few days before the fight almost caused its postponement. Muham-mad was doing his usual taunting and threatening routine outside Chuvalo’s dressing room at the gym in which the Canadian champ was training. The dressing room door was split horizontally so that the top half could be opened independently of the bottom part.
Fed up with Ali’s antics, Chuvalo pushed the door open and lunged forward, fist upraised. As Ali took off, George, forgetting about the bottom half of the door, crashed into it and bruised his ribs. The injury wasn’t serious enough to force a postponement, but it was probably the hardest blow Chuvalo ever took to the body.
Another controversy that could have threatened the bout was a dispute over the size of the gloves to be used. Irving Ungerman, Chuvalo’s manager, complained about a
Van-couver Athletic Commission ruling calling for large 10-ounce gloves. The smaller gloves are to the benefit of the harder puncher, in this case Chuvalo.
Ali said the size of the gloves made no difference to him, but he asked that Chuvalo make a concession in return. He wanted the size of the ring expanded from a phone booth 16 ¥ 16 feet to a roomier 18 ¥ 18. Chuvalo agreed.
Muhammad refrained from making any prediction until the last few days before the fight. At that point he advised people to get to the theaters early. He said he had a strange premonition of an early kayo, much like before his rematch with Liston.
Ungerman’s only prediction was that the fight would be dirty. For his part, Ali had always accused Chuvalo of bending the Marquess of Queensberry rules, and he even took the opportunity to both scold and warn the Canadian at the contract signing. Ali claimed that chuvalo hit him low “26 times” in their first fight. He warned that if Chuvalo attempted any dirty tactics in the rematch that he would reciprocate.
Chuvalo countered that Ali simply wore his trunks too high in their first fight. “It’s just like those cartoons, where the rabbit pulls up his trunks until all you can see are his ears,” Chuvalo quipped. “He’s just trying to take away some of my best punches, to the solar plexus.”
Chuvalo also said he was better prepared for Ali now than he had been in 1966. For their first fight, George had been a replacement for Ernie Terrell. Consequently, George had only 17 days to train for that fight. This time, however, George was in peak form.
Ali was also in excellent shape. He trained hard this time for three reasons: (1) He knew from experience that Chuvalo would be a tough opponent; (2) He wanted to look more impressive than he had against Foster the month before; (3) He desperately wanted to become the first fighter ever to floor the iron-jawed Canadian.
Consequently, by weigh-in time Ali’s weight had dropped to 2171⁄2, 81⁄2pounds lighter than he’d scaled against Foster. At this weigh-in, Muhammad was uncharacteristically seri-ous.
When asked why he wasn’t up to his usual tricks, he replied: “There’s $5 million at stake for me with the Frazier date. You watch those Wells Fargo guards when they unload a payroll. They look serious, too.”13
From the opening bell, Ali erased the month-old memory of the sluggish, slow-moving heavyweight who had bored the fans in Tokyo. He danced the entire 12 rounds, peppering Chuvalo with jabs and combinations.
In round three, Chuvalo actually dropped his hands and invited Ali to try and knock him down. An odd invitation, considering that by then Chuvalo must have been painfully aware that Ali could hit him any time he wanted.
In the fourth, Chuvalo managed to get through with a crude combination topped by a left hook that drove Ali back against the ropes. Ali admitted later that the hook had hurt him. He shook it off, however, and quickly regained control of the fight.
At the end of the 12 rounds, the decision was pretty much a formality. One judge gave Ali every round.
Chuvalo emerged with a marked-up face, but Ali had never come close to decking him. A healthy $65,000 purse was further consolation.
In fact, promoter Pezim took it harder on the chin than Chuvalo. For him, the fight was a financial TKO. Of the 17,465 seats at the Pacific Coliseum, only half were filled. And his big 96-hour pre-fight blowout lasted only 23. Pezim’s losses amounted to something in the neighborhood of $100,000.
The antagonists in the bout had nothing but praise for each other after it was over.
“I’d like to compliment Muhammad on a good, tough fight, which I enjoyed,” Chuvalo said. “He surprised me because he seemed in the same good shape he showed against me in 1966.”14
Ali likewise praised Chuvalo for his resiliency and clean tactics. “He threw only one low blow,” Ali confided. “And that was on the side.”15
The Ali fight was Chuvalo’s last major ring appearance. He disappeared from the ratings, although his hold on the Canadian championship remained secure. Over the next few years, he displayed his fading skills against second-rate opposition. But even though his career was almost over, his fans still expected to see him in action against top contenders.
“What do they want me to do?” Chuvalo wondered. “I’ve already fought every top fighter you can name. Am I supposed to go back and fight all those guys all over again just to please the critics?”16
Yet Chuvalo had no immediate plans for retirement.
“When I think I can’t function as well as I want to, and when I don’t enjoy it anymore, I’ll quit.”17
He retired temporarily in 1975, then came back a year later to resume his position at the top of a sorry heap of Canadian heavyweights. His wars against competent countrymen like the long-retired Robert Cleroux were a thing of the past. Instead, he disposed of every creampuff opponent the promoters put in front of him.
Unfortunately, the Chuvalo of 1976–78 looked as though he’d feasted on too many creampuffs outside the ring as well. In his heyday, George was a solid block of muscle, a fighter who always stayed in shape. However, the comebacking Chuvalo jiggled like a white Buster Mathis as he knocked over the likes of Bob “Pretty Boy” Felstein and Earl McLeay in defense of the title he couldn’t bear to part with.
Finally, Canadian boxing authorities stripped Chuvalo of the championship due to inactivity and, possibly, embarrassment. He never fought again.
The world title always seemed just beyond George Chuvalo’s grasp. However, his record for durability has ensured his place in boxing history as the “King of the Iron Men.” Today, he shows few effects from the many punches he took over his career, and he remains a national hero in Canada. Chuvalo has lost three of his four sons, one to suicide and two to drug overdoses, since his retirement from the ring. Amidst these tragedies, George also lost his wife to suicide. Since this unimaginable pain that Chuvalo has sustained, his image in Canada has escalated from sports hero to national treasure. As tough as Chuvalo proved to be throughout his 93-bout career, he has proven to be immeasurably more resilient to the pain life has thrown at him over the years. Instead of folding under the avalanche of tragedy, Chuvalo has instead dedicated himself to visiting Canadian schools, speaking of the evils and dangers of drugs. Because of his bravery both in and especially out of the ring, Chuvalo was rightfully honored with the Order of Canada in 1998.
Ali’s next stop was Las Vegas, where he would settle accounts with another old foe, Jerry Quarry.
In the two years since their first meeting, Jack and Jerry Quarry had been pressing for a rematch with Ali. Jerry told everybody who would listen that the cut that undid him in Atlanta was a fluke, and he desperately wanted to show what he could have done to Ali had the fight been allowed to continue. On June 27, Quarry received his chance to avenge the
In the two years since their first meeting, Jack and Jerry Quarry had been pressing for a rematch with Ali. Jerry told everybody who would listen that the cut that undid him in Atlanta was a fluke, and he desperately wanted to show what he could have done to Ali had the fight been allowed to continue. On June 27, Quarry received his chance to avenge the