ROUND 8
SIX WEEKS AFTER FIGHTING ALI, I KNOCKED out Levi Forte in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, in the makeup for the bout we were supposed to have down in Miami in March. Right afterward, I signed to meet South American champion Oscar Bonavena at Madison Square Garden on June 23. It was a huge fight for New York because Oscar, who was from Argentina, was popular with the Hispanic community and promised to fill some seats in the Garden.
Bonavena was born on September 25, 1942, in Buenos Aires, and by age 17 he was Argentina’s national amateur champ. His amateur career came to an abrupt end when he reportedly bit the nipple of an opponent who was getting the best of him, so he traveled to New York and turned pro under the legendary Charlie Goldman, the guy who molded Rocky Marciano into a world champion.
After winning his first eight fights—seven by KO—Bonavena was knocked down and took a bad beating in a 10-round loss to Zora Folley in 1965, but he rebounded to win 12 of his next 13, including a decision over tough Gregorio Peralta, who was 48–4 at the time.
Oscar was a pretty crude guy—and not just in the ring. He was loud and volatile and had been sued a couple of times for smashing photographers’ cameras. Later in his career, before his fights with Frazier and Ali, he tried to psych them out by doing this exaggerated sniffing thing. He’d lift up his chin contemptuously and start sniffing like there was a foul scent in the air, like he was disgusted to be in their presence. He never did that with me—I must’ve been wearing my best cologne at the weigh-in—but I wish he had, because it might have made for a better fight.
It should’ve been a helluva match, and on paper it was: two strong wade-in guys who liked to go to the body. Bonavena was built like a tank, and the 17 KOs on his 20–2 record proved he could punch, but against me he did nothing but hopscotch like a rabbit all over the ring. It made for a real lousy fight, one of the worst I was ever in. I never saw him do that before, and he never did it against anyone else.
Bonavena’s former manager, Dr. Marvin Goldberg, told me later that Oscar was scared out of his wits going into the fight, so maybe that’s why he didn’t want to mix. In the second and fourth rounds he tried pushing me to the canvas when I was off balance. The first time, when I kind of skidded backwards, I heard the crowd drawing in their breath in anticipation. Then it raced through my mind that if I stumbled and went down, my record would be gone. I thought, “I’m not going down! I won’t let it happen!” And it didn’t. It’s kind of funny … one of those pride things. But from there my reputation for remaining vertical just kind of snowballed without my realizing it.
For the rest of the night Bonavena did more mauling than brawling and never landed anything even remotely powerful. On the few occasions when he stopped running, I nailed him with jabs and one-twos, but then he’d grab me and try to wrestle. It still rankles me that they gave him the decision. Referee Arthur Mercante scored it a draw at 4–4–2, while Tony Castellano had it 4–5–1 and Tony Rossi saw it 3–7.
Under a headline reading “Chuvalo won fight, Bonavena got decision,” Lew Eskin wrote in Boxing Illustrated, “We scored it 6–4 for George, who outdid Oscar in every department but holding. Chuvalo outfought, outpunched, outbutted and outfouled Bonavena, but the judges saw it differently.”
I never saw or spoke to Bonavena again after that night, but he went on to have a pretty decent career. He got stopped by Ali in Muhammad’s second comeback bout in 1970, and two years later he broke his hand in a loss to Floyd Patterson before winning 11 of his next 12.
Oscar was in the midst of a seven-fight win streak when he was shot and killed outside the Mustang Ranch brothel in Reno, Nevada, on May 22, 1976. The rumor was that he was having an affair with the wife of his manager, Joe Conforte, who also owned the Mustang. Whatever the real story, one of Conforte’s bodyguards, Willard Brymer, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 15 months in prison. True to Oscar’s larger-than-life persona, his memorial service at the Buenos Aires soccer stadium drew 150,000 mourners.
The rest of 1966 was a whirlwind. In August, I knocked out Mel Turnbow at the Paul Sauve Arena in Montreal, but not before he shook me early with one of the hardest punches I was ever hit with. A few months earlier, Turnbow, who was one of Floyd Patterson’s favorite sparring partners, decked Cleveland Williams before losing a 10-round decision. I’d also seen Mel hold his own in sparring with Liston when Sonny was training for his second fight with Ali, so I knew he could punch. Late in the seventh, I dropped him with a left hook. When he got up, I whacked him with a combination that sent him backwards into the ropes. He sprang off right into another left hook that knocked him cold with five seconds left in the round, and it was about 15 minutes before the doctor got Mel back on his feet. Covered with flecks of resin from lying on the canvas, he walked straight over to where I was talking to the reporters and, out of the blue, said, “George, I still think you won the Terrell fight.” Then he exited between the ropes.
Twenty-eight days later in Edmonton, I dropped Bob Avery five times before stopping him in two, then I wrapped up the year with KOs over Dick Wipperman (Montreal), Boston Jacobs (Detroit, with Willie Pep as referee), Dave Russell (Saint John) and Willie McCormick (Labrador City).
I felt bad about knocking out Wipperman, who at 6 foot 4 was one of the taller guys I ever fought. He was a good banger and a nice guy, and I later used him as a sparring partner.
Dick hailed from Buffalo, and he was 32–7 when we fought the first time. He had a reputation for being a crowd pleaser, dating back to October 2, 1964, when he faced 6-foot-9, 250-pound James J. Beattie on the undercard of my fight with Doug Jones at Madison Square Garden.
The previous year, Beattie, who lost to Buster Mathis in the 1962 Golden Gloves, answered a newspaper ad looking for “a future heavyweight champion.” Now he was being promoted as the rising star that would pull the fight game up by its boot-straps. Beattie was 12–1 against handpicked opponents and was fast becoming a favorite with the media—so much so that ABC had featured him in a prime-time documentary.
None of that mattered to Wipperman, who was 36 pounds lighter and five inches shorter than the Minnesota giant. He easily outpointed Beattie over the first six rounds and had him bleeding so badly that the ringside doctors conferred with referee Barney Smith about possibly stopping the bout.
Beattie stormed out of his corner swinging wildly to start the seventh, but after hitting nothing but air he used his massive body to drive Wipperman into the ropes, where Dick simply covered up. That’s when Smith stepped in, stopped the fight and raised Beattie’s arm in victory.
Well, Wipperman went nuts—and so did the crowd. Dick started yelling and screaming, then broke away from his handlers and took another swing at Beattie. Then he tried to grab the microphone from the ring announcer to plead his case to the fans, who were throwing all kinds of garbage into the ring. The cops finally had to move in to give Smith an escort, and my fight with Jones was late getting started because the mess in the ring had to be cleaned up. The next day’s story in the New York World-Telegram referred to Wipperman as “the wild buffalo from Buffalo” but noted that he had “a justifiable complaint.”
I ended up fighting Wipperman again four months later in Akron, Ohio, and gave him a real bad beating before knocking him out in the third. He had a decent jab but never moved enough. I couldn’t have missed him in my sleep. I felt terrible afterward because he had these huge purple lumps on his forehead.
Dick hung up his gloves the following year with a career record of 32–14–1, then became a police officer in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga. If he was as tough on criminals as he was in the ring, I’m sure he made a hell of a cop.
In the 12 weeks after I beat Wipperman in Akron, I KO’d Buddy Moore in Walpole, Massachusetts, and stopped Willie Besmanoff in back-to-back fights in Florida.
Moore—a.k.a. Abdul Haleem—was 6 foot 3 and hailed from Pittsburgh. He had a win and two losses against Wipperman, but the highlights of the rest of his résumé were prett
y nondescript: decision losses to Leotis Martin and Al “Blue” Lewis and a split decision over Jimmy Christopher, whom I’d used as a sparring partner.
I dispatched Moore in the second round in front of a nice crowd. Afterward, while we were celebrating the win, I heard a tap-tap-tap in the corridor outside my dressing room. I looked out and saw two guys, the youngest of whom carried a white cane and was obviously blind. “My nephew is a huge fight fan, and he loves you, George,” said the older fellow. “We came to ask if you could find it in your heart to give him your gloves from this fight.”
I was touched. I turned to Ungerman and said, “Irving, go get my gloves.” When he came back a few minutes later and handed over a pair of gloves, both guys thanked us profusely before going on their way.
Shortly after they left, Irving turned to me with a big grin and gleefully exclaimed, “I just fucked the blind kid!”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“I went to Moore’s room and took his gloves!”
I was dumbfounded. I’ll never forget the look on Ungerman’s face; he was so proud of himself for pulling a fast one. It made me sick.
“How could you do that?” I said. The reply was vintage Ungerman: “Don’t worry about it, Georgie; he’ll never know the fuckin’ difference.”
The worst part was that he went on gloating about it for the next half-hour, telling everyone within earshot that he’d ripped off the blind kid. I felt like a piece of crap for letting it happen. I remember thinking to myself that if God was ever going to have a say in the outcome of one of my fights, He would never be in my corner as long as Irving was there.
Between the fights with Moore and Besmanoff, I made a detour to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for an exhibition with Giancarlo Barazza as part of what was billed as a “Canada-America Days” celebration. It was a good workout, and I remember being impressed that a couple of thousand people turned out to watch us go six rounds.
Besmanoff, the guy I decked six times in four rounds back in ‘61, had announced his retirement the day after he was knocked out by Amos Johnson in 1963, but he made a comeback three years later and had won six of seven when we hooked up again on April 4, 1967, in Miami. In a TV interview a couple of days before the fight, Willie, in his thick German accent, solemnly asserted that “this time, I am too schmart for Chuvalo”—but it turned out to be pretty much a replay of what happened in Toronto. I finished him in three.
Six weeks later, Besmanoff was the promoter of a card I was headlining in Cocoa Beach. When my opponent, Moses Harrell, pulled out the night before the fight, poor Willie reluctantly filled in and took another beating. I can still remember the look of relief in his eyes when his corner threw in the towel after the second round. He had just one more fight, a KO loss to Dave Zyglewicz three months later, then retired with a career mark of 51–34–8.
Between the Wipperman and Moore fights, Ungerman got a call from Teddy Brenner at Madison Square Garden, offering us a July date against unbeaten Joe Frazier. The money was good—$50,000—and the fight would air live on network TV, so it was a great opportunity to move up in the top 10. We signed right away.
I knew Frazier’s reputation. Born on January 12, 1944, he grew up dirt poor in Beaufort, South Carolina, as the youngest of 12 kids. At 15, he left home to live with his brother in New York, and then he moved on to Philadelphia, where he found work in a slaughterhouse and joined the Police Athletic League (PAL) boxing program in order to lose weight.
At the 1964 U.S. Olympic tryouts, Frazier won the Eastern regionals in Washington, then traveled to New York for the finals, only to lose for the second time to big Buster Mathis. In their showdown to see who would fight at the Tokyo Games, Mathis outweighed Frazier by exactly 100 pounds, 295 to 195.
Joe still made the squad as an alternate. Ironically, a week before they were to leave for Japan, Mathis broke a knuckle by punching Frazier in the head during an exhibition in Brooklyn and was forced to pull out of the competition. Joe went on to make the most of his opportunity by outpointing Hans Huber of Germany for the gold medal—the only American boxer to bring home the top prize.
In his pro debut on August 25, 1965, Frazier took exactly 100 seconds to knock out Elwood Goss in a makeshift ring set up in Philadelphia’s Broadway Hotel. The left hook that did all the damage against Goss would quickly become Joe’s trademark, and by the time we squared off at the Garden on July 19, 1967, he was 16–0 with 14 KOs—including stoppages of Mel Turnbow, Dick Wipperman, Eddie Machen and Doug Jones. His toughest fight to date had been a 10-round decision over Oscar Bonavena 10 months earlier, during which Bonavena twice dumped Joe to the canvas.
With a big payday and the chance to ruin what Brenner was billing as “Joe Frazier’s coming-out party” on the line, I signed for a tune-up fight against Archie Ray in, of all places, Missoula, Montana.
Elmer Boyce, who managed light heavyweight contender Roger Rouse, promoted the June 22 card at the University of Montana’s Adams Fieldhouse. Rouse fought Bobby Rascon in the co-main event, while the featured prelim was No. 1–ranked middleweight contender Don Fullmer against Luis Garduno.
I’d never experienced anything like Missoula; it was like being parachuted into the middle of nowhere. But Boyce had done a nice job of hyping the card, and the place was packed with a raucous crowd by the time I climbed through the ropes to face Ray.
Archie was from Tucson, Arizona, and had turned pro in 1962. At one point he had a record of 20–4–2, but on May 16, 1966, he was stopped in eight rounds by Mexican champion Manuel Ramos in Phoenix. That fight grabbed national attention because the referee, Dick Moll, had a heart attack in the opening round and died on the way to the hospital. Ray went on to lose five in a row after that and was coming off a seventh-round KO loss to Florida Al Jones when we met up in Missoula.
It wasn’t much of a fight, because Ray was in survival mode right from the opening bell. With one second left in the second round, I nailed him right in the solar plexus—and never before or since did I see a guy go down like he did.
After I whacked him in the belly, Archie jackknifed forward. I recall being surprised at how quickly he folded right over; in fact, it happened so fast that I never had time to step back. He was paralyzed, but as he pitched forward his head crashed into my right cheekbone before he crashed to the canvas.
Within minutes, blood started pooling on the spot where Ray’s head clipped me, and my right eye started to swell up like a balloon. I thought it would be okay, but it wasn’t.
When we got back to Toronto, I got a prescription for a medication called Orenzyme to break down the blood clots around my eye. I’d already resumed heavy sparring to get ready for Frazier, but I was worried because the eye felt injured every time I got hit. It go so bad that I mentioned to Teddy and Irving that maybe we should think about postponing Frazier, but Ungerman wouldn’t hear of it. I did have medical clearance to fight. They appealed to my macho side, convincing me there was too much at stake. I knew Teddy needed the money, too, so that was that. I can still hear Ungerman: “We need this fight; we won’t get this chance again. It’s New York City, the Big Apple … and if we beat him, we’ll get a world title shot.”
They made me feel like a sissy for not wanting to fight; still, I knew something was wrong. Even with big headgear on, my eye was blowing up every time I got hit upstairs, but I sucked it up and hoped I’d be able to take Joe out before he could do any more damage.
In retrospect, fighting Frazier with an injured eye was sheer lunacy. But first, a little historical perspective.
With Ali’s political problems canceling him out of the title picture, in May 1967 the World Boxing Association announced it would conduct an elimination tournament to determine a new champion. Frazier was on the original list of tournament invitees, but I wasn’t. Sonny Liston, Buster Mathis, Zora Folley and Manuel Ramos were likewise bypassed, despite the fact we were all ranked ahead of some of the other guys who got the call from the WBA.
I didn’t particularly care one way or the other because I’d already signed to fight Joe, and beating him would obviously be a shortcut to another title shot. Meanwhile, Frazier’s manager, Yank Durham, didn’t like the tournament format and basically told the WBA where they could stick it. Durham figured that if Joe got past me, he’d go straight into a fight with Mathis for New York State’s recognition of the title, which in some quarters was recognized as the world championship. It would also give Frazier an opportunity to avenge his two amateur losses to big Buster—but he’d have to beat me first.
When Joe pulled out, the WBA filled his spot with another Philly fighter, Leotis Martin.
As we headed into an abbreviated training camp, a puffy eye wasn’t the only thing on my mind. Lynne was pregnant again, which meant we had to start thinking about another mouth to feed. And for some reason, Ungerman decided we needed another voice in the corner to go along with him and Teddy McWhorter. Freddy Brown was brought in to work as my co-trainer—and he was a disaster.
You have to understand, the fighter-trainer relationship is based on mutual trust and respect, and those things don’t take root overnight. Teddy and I had been through thick and thin together, and I trusted him implicitly. He came across as laid-back, but he always knew what buttons to push to get the best out of me. Most of all, Teddy knew when to back off and just let me work. I loved him for that.
Brown was the exact opposite. He came into camp barking commands like a lion tamer. He was a “do this, do that” kind of drillmaster, which more than irritated me because nobody ever had to light a fire under me in training. If anything, Teddy knew how to pull in the reins in order to keep me from peaking too early.
Brown was just a hard guy to like; he thought the best way to get me to train harder was to try goading me into thinking I wasn’t doing enough, which is no way to establish trust or respect. He was a real control freak too, telling me when to eat, when to take a crap, when to go to bed. I just couldn’t relax around the guy. I remember he blew up on Teddy and Irving when he found out I liked to eat broiled fish for my pre-fight meal; he thought I should eat steak. It got so bad I threatened to leave camp a few days before the fight unless Ungerman got him to back off.
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