Jonathan Eig’s Biography of Muhammad Ali Distorts Ali’s Post–Exile Fights

Published

6 years ago

February 6, 2019

BOOK REVIEW BY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT MIKE CAHILL — I just finished reading Jonathan Eig’s “Ali: A Life.” Although I enjoyed the first half of the book, after finishing the second half I was greatly troubled. Two things gnawed at me: his view of Ali the man and his opinion of Ali the boxer.

Thomas Hauser in his review of Eig’s book for The Ring addressed both of these deficiencies. “There are times when Eig doesn’t give Ali full credit for his ring skills when he was near his peak,” wrote Hauser. What I would add is that much of what Eig wrote about Ali’s post-exile fights was also off base.

Correcting this matters a great deal because often the last word in biography becomes the standard by which a public figure is judged. If Eig can falsely diminish Ali on his platform – boxing — it makes his social, political, and spiritual legacy easier to diminish, as well. So let’s set the record straight.

The best place to start is with a critique of what evidence Eig chooses to use — and, more importantly, not to use — in judging Ali’s fights. As Hauser noted, Eig is enthralled with CompuBox. Even if one concedes that the CompuBox punch counts are accurate (which they often are not), Eig consistently uses the total number of punches landed as proof of which fighter was superior. But boxing matches aren’t scored by punches landed across the entire spectrum of a fight; they are scored by round. A fighter could conceivably give away a couple rounds (as Ali, maddeningly, sometimes did) and thus get hit more often than his opponent. But if that fighter won eight rounds or more of a 15-round fight, the grand total of punches is irrelevant.

This is obvious to all true fight fans, but what about other readers of Eig’s book, less familiar with the scoring of boxing, who are now left with a false impression?

Let’s examine one group of fights and then five individual fights to make the point.

In 1972 Ali fought six times, winning by KO or TKO four times and twice by one-sided decisions, including his second fight against George Chuvalo that was widely regarded as his best fight since 1967. Ali’s weight was coming down for most of the 1972 fights compared to his 1971 bouts, and he was finding most of his old skills returning, if not his speed.

Eig devotes one paragraph to these fights while later noting that they helped him recover some of his finesse as a boxer. Well, yes — enough that The Ring named him their Fighter of the Year! Yet, in a supreme irony, Eig ends his chapter on this period quoting Bob Foster, who was knocked out in the eighth and was down seven times in all, saying Ali never hurt him.

Ali’s second fight with Joe Frazier in 1974 produced a unanimous decision. The scores of the three officials were 8-4, 7-4-1, and 6-5-1. In addition, the following scorecards are public record:

Associated Press: 8-4 for Ali
United Press International: 7-4-1 for Ali
World Boxing: 6-5-1 for Ali
International Boxing: 7-4-1 for Ali

Despite this, Eig chooses to tell his readers that Red Smith, who despised Ali, once comparing him to “unwashed punks,” had scored the fight for Frazier. (Who cares?) He then paraphrases Smith who suggested that judges were giving Ali rounds. Eig concludes his section on this fight by saying, “Whether the judges were biased or not,” they named Ali the winner. Here begins a pattern, seen at least three more times, of Eig associating Ali’s wins with biased judges.

Eig also gets mostly wrong his description of the famous 1974 Rumble in the Jungle. He claims Ali’s Rope-a-Dope was “a feat of masochism” and, quoting boxing writer Mike Silver, “a non-strategy.” And he wrote that “Ali lacked the speed to escape and lacked the power and stamina to fight back for more than a fraction of each round.”

He may have lacked speed, but certainly not power, not in this fight. Did Eig see Foreman’s battered face? And no one had more stamina than Ali. In fact, in this fight, the man lacking speed, power, and stamina was George Foreman, not Ali.

Ali’s strategy involved laying against the ropes, yes, but it was brilliant. What Eig misses here is that Ali was not just resting; he was counterpunching like crazy – from the ropes – and then coming off those ropes to pummel Foreman even more. The official cards had Ali comfortably ahead through the completed rounds: 4-2-1, 4-1-2, and 3-0-4.

Boxing author Michael Ezra wrote: “You very well may hear that Ali scored a dramatic victory by backing against the ropes, weathering a brutal battering, and then delivering a sudden knockout. They’d be wrong, though, because what really happened was that Ali whipped Foreman comprehensively from start to finish.” Eig seems only partially to grasp this. At the end of the year, The Ring once again named Ali its Fighter of the Year on the strength of his two strong victories against the two best heavyweights around other than himself. He had won back his title. Reading Eig, you’d never know it.

Now we come to Ali’s 1976 defense against Jimmy Young. In this instance, Eig was correct in that the judges seemed biased for Ali, at least the two that had Ali winning by the scores of 11-4 and 10-3-2. (The third judge also scored it for Ali, but more reasonably at 7-5-3.)

Ali may well have lost that fight; I’m not arguing it either way. Young clearly won the first three rounds and he finished strong. But in the middle rounds, in the eyes of many, Ali had the best of it. “Most ringside writers seemed to agree with the verdict,” wrote Ron Rapoport in the Los Angeles Times. Sports Illustrated’s Mark Kram, noting that Young ducked his head out of the ropes on six occasions, said the decision was correct.

The point is that when Eig states that “everyone but the judges thought Ali had lost,” that simply is not true. A journalist or a historian shouldn’t change facts to fit a narrative.

On page 442 of his book, Eig describes the Ali-Norton rubber match. “Norton was doing most of the punching. He was the busier fighter, the more aggressive fighter, the more artful fighter.” He then claims Ali finished strong in the last minute of the final round.

Ironically, it was actually Norton who opened up in the final 20 seconds of the fight. Eig’s description of Round 15 makes me wonder if he actually watched the round.

If we accept the CompuBox stats of which Eig is so fond (which I do here solely for the sake of argument) they show that Ali landed and threw more punches in Rounds 1, 3, 7, 9, and 13. Norton did so in rounds 2, 5, 6, and 8. Not surprisingly, those rounds were scored unanimously for Ali and Norton respectively, with the exception that one of the supposedly biased judges scored the third round for Norton. In the remaining six rounds, according to CompuBox, Ali threw 404 punches to Norton’s 280, more than 20 more punches per round. CompuBox records Norton as out-landing Ali 108 to 80, a mere 4 punches per round.

Even assuming those numbers are correct, (which is highly doubtful; watch the fight and draw your own conclusion), one can see why Eig — who considers the percentage of punches landed to be the overriding factor in judging a fight — gravitated to those who thought Norton was robbed.

One thing is clear: Ali was busier and more aggressive. In fact, in the last six rounds, Ali out-threw Norton by almost 25 punches per round, while Norton supposedly out-landed Ali by less than three punches per round. I don’t claim Ali definitively won Ali/Norton III (for example AP scored it 9-6 Ali, while UPI had it 8-7 Norton). What I’m arguing is that Eig has ignored the clear evidence that this was a close fight and no one was robbed.

As to the charge that judges in this and other fights were loath to score rounds against Ali, the reality is different. Other than the Young fight, there is no reason to support this theory. At the end of six rounds, the Ali/Norton III fight was scored 5-1, 4-2, and 4-2 in favor of Norton. Had Norton continued to out-box Ali, nothing suggests that the judges wouldn’t have continued to score rounds for him.

It’s important to remember that Ali had by this time already lost decisions to Joe Frazier and Ken Norton. As for the argument that things changed when he became champion, the 1975 Ali-Lyle fight is instructive. Before the fight was stopped in the 11^th round, Ali was tied on one scorecard, behind one round on another card and behind 49-43 on another. The 49-43 card gave Ali only one of the 10 completed rounds while scoring two rounds even.

Finally, let’s look at Ali’s 1977 fight with Earnie Shavers. Once again, Eig skews the evidence to support his theory of a fading fighter being carried by the judges. He again writes about percentages of punches landed and thrown, and about how hard Ali was hit in this fight, which he was. But except for acknowledging Ali’s “astonishing” final round, he has nothing positive to say about Ali’s performance. “Once again, perhaps not surprisingly, the judges gave Ali the win,” says Eig.

Where is the evidence? Eleven of the 15 rounds had unanimous scoring, seven of those going to Ali, four to Shavers. In other words, very few rounds were in doubt and the doubtful rounds were split pretty evenly. The official scoring was 9-5-1, 9-6, 9-6. Both wire services, AP and UPI, had it for Ali, respectively 10-5 and 8-6-1. Earnie Shavers himself, in his biography, said Ali was deservedly victorious.

Muhammad Ali won this fight. As Michael Ezra wrote, “In that 15 round struggle, Ali’s ability, confidence, character and intelligence were all on display.”

As mentioned in my opening paragraph, I was also troubled by Eig’s depiction of Ali the man. I was gratified to read Hauser’s comments in his review of Eig’s book that Ali was not only a genuinely nice man, but a spiritual man, perhaps especially in his later, so-called diminishing years. My wife, Cathy, and I have an adult son and daughter who we raised to try to live a spiritual life based on love, service, acceptance of others, learning to rise above adversity, and standing up for what you believe. Although we are Catholic (and white), one of the prime examples of the kind of life worth living that I held up to them was the very imperfect, but yet very beautiful life of Muhammad Ali.

Editor’s note: Author Mike Cahill resides in Chicago.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First BWAA Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

Published

22 minutes ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-First-BWAA-Dinner-was-Quite-the-Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

Published

14 hours ago

April 20, 2025

David A. Avila

Gabriela-Fundora-KOs-Marilyn-Badillo-and-Perez-Upsets-Conwell-in-Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.

Will it be her last flyweight defense?

Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.

The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.

Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.

Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.

“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”

The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.

In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.

Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.

Perez Beats Conwell.

Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.

It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.

Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.

Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.

It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.

Other Bouts

Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.

It was very close.

Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.

Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.

One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.

Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.

Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.

Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.

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‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

Published

1 day ago

April 19, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Krusher-Kovalev-Exits-on-a-Winning-Note-TKOs-Artur-Mann-in-his-Farewell-Fight

At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.

Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.

Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.

The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.

Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.

Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11^th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.

That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.

Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.

Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.

In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.

Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30^th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.

Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.

The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.

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