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How To Box by Joe Louis: Part 2 – The Jab and the Hook

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In the build-up to Rocky Marciano’s first confrontation with Ezzard Charles, The Miami Herald cast an eye back to The Rock’s heartbreaking 1951 destruction of Joe Louis. In an article entitled “Louis Jab Hurt Rock, Boxing Bothers Him,” the newspaper recalled the testimony of Arthur Donovan, who refereed some twenty Joe Louis fights in his storied career. Donovan talked “half fearfully” of the Joe Louis jab and his concern that the Bomber would one day catch someone moving in, chin up and that the Champ would “break his neck.”

Everyone knows that Joe Louis is one of the greatest punchers of all time, that the unparalleled mixture of speed, power and accuracy combined to create one of the most devastating offensive machines in history, but his jab is now somewhat forgotten. Whilst YouTube and similar sights bless us with hours of boxing footage and allow a new generation to discover the ruination Louis wrought upon his opposition, these highlight packages often stress power punches and knockouts at the expense of the techniques that buy these scintillating moments—not least the jab.

Well, Louis did hurt Rocky Marciano with the jab. He hurt everyone he ever fought with the jab. Although, at 76 inches, Joe’s reach is two inches shorter than perennial peer Muhammad Ali and three inches shorter than a modern giant like Vitali Klitschko, I think it rests comfortably amongst some of the best jabs in heavyweight history. This was certainly not in question in his own time, the press labeling it “a piston of a punch,” “a brutal blow,” “Joe’s best punch” and according to the same Miami Herald article that recalled the discomfort it aroused in the era’s most preeminent referee (not to mention Rocky Marciano), “a punch that could rock a man back on his heels.”

And his left hook wasn’t bad either.

The Jab

“The left jab is seldom if ever a knockout blow,” says the 1948 British edition of How to Box by Joe Louis, “but many bouts are won by the skillful use of it. It is used to keep your opponent off balance and create opening for your more powerful blows.”

Anyone who has read the first part of this series, The Foundation of Skill, won’t be surprised to read that Joe Louis stressed disrupting the opponent’s balance as much as he stressed maximizing his own and it is indeed one of the major benefits of a busy, correct jab. Joe’s was absolutely correct and in the early phase of his career this is demonstrated beautifully in his desolation of Max Baer. Arguably his most frightening display of concentrated punching power, the fight is facilitated by Baer’s granite chin, which allows Louis to continue delivering crushing punches long after most men would have been under the care of the ringside doctor. But the jab is the punch that defines the fight.

It is also the only punch Joe throws for the first minute, underlining his technical maturity and reliance upon the punch Holman Williams drilled into him several years before. Film makes these punches appear extended or glancing, but these are the same punches that James J. Braddock described as a series of “light bulbs exploding in your face.” Louis has Baer under control from the first minute, and when Max finally throws his first punch, a leaping right hand that misses by more than a foot, Louis had already landed four jabs and a winging uppercut to the body (one count would have Louis missing just two punches the entire fight).

Moving away from the wild Baer but now sitting down even harder on the jab, Louis is clearly taking the advice in his manual to “jab through the mark, not at it, this will give you a follow-through effect.” He threw thirty-six assorted jabs in that first round and he threw them with wonderful variety mixing body blows with shots aimed at Baer’s mouth and higher on his head. He varies the speed of the jab beautifully, a skill all but lost today, he varies the power judiciously and in keeping with a wider tactical theme, for example throwing rangefinders as he begins to circle before sitting down on the snapping punches as he counters Baer‘s own jab, landing the shots that left Baer looking “like an Apache wearing war-paint” according to one writer.

Thirty-six jabs, and only a handful of other punches, but by the end of the round, Baer is all but beaten.

It is deeply ironic that what was the night upon which Joe’s jab matured to such devastating effect, he also happened to put on his first immortal power punching display. The jab is the punch that puts the “box” in “box-puncher” but Louis, as always, eclipsed his own skill with a display of violence so terrifying that it prompted Paul Gallico to write in The Daily News, “I wonder if his new bride’s heart beat a little with fear that this terrible thing was hers.”

The jab’s excellence is built primarily upon skill. It is not a punch that requires great speed to land quickly or great power to jolt the opponent. It can be the shortest punch, often travelling the shortest distance, from the lead hand to the head of the opponent boring in or from the shoulder of the fleet-footed matador trying to place the bull-rushing pressure-fighter under control. But like all punches, natural gifts help to cover shortcomings in technique. For Louis, proof of the perfection of his jab comes not on the night he met Baer, when the beginnings of his greatness were beginning to be understood, but many years later.

In August of 1951, broke and fighting only for the money, his speed and power having deserted him, a few pounds heavier than he had been in his prime, balding, trying to come back from his own failed comeback having already lost to Ezzard Charles more than a year earlier, Louis was embracing every single cliché that exists for a washed-up pug when he re-matched Cesar Brion.

At the opening bell that night, Brion bought with a brush of his shoulder what other men had paid for in blood and concussion in the previous two decades, bullying Louis back to the ropes as if he were nothing. But upon extracting himself, Louis goes directly to the jab and just like he did against Baer all those years before, he almost immediately has his opponent under control. His jab has evolved, just slightly, and he often snaps it up slightly, driving Brion’s head back a little more than the straight jab would, a heavy, thudding punch. Almost every time he lands it flush, Brion takes a step back, blinks, and thinks about the punch sportswriter Bill Corum called “the stiffest and surest jab the ring has ever seen.”

Brion tried to solve this punch by dipping deep and coming up with his own punches or showing head movement. Louis, by then a canny general, just hit him when he came up or when he stopped moving, now shooting the jab straight down the middle, his unerring accuracy and technique yet to desert him. The punch means Brion is reduced, on the outside, to throwing single shots, and even then reluctantly, as Louis tends to hit him with a jab either side. In the final round, Louis landed his first real burst of punches but he also threw twenty-six left jabs. This would leave him just outside the top ten for jabs thrown per-round in 2023. Joe Louis had a great jab, one of the best at his weight. It was so good he could beat ranked fighters with that punch alone, control ranked fighters with that punch alone. Perhaps it should not rank alongside the very, very best in the division and it seems likely that he could have been out-jabbed by the great technical giants, men like Sonny Liston and Larry Holmes, but I believe these may be the only fighters who I would rank clearly above him in this department. For various reasons of technique, accuracy, persistence, incredible variety and most of all the openings he would carve and the traps he would set with it, Louis can be ranked alongside the other jabbing behemoths in the open class, men like Wladimir Klitschko, Muhammad Ali and Lennox Lewis.

Louis, like these men, was a fighter who could win a fight “on the jab alone.”

The Left Hook

“The shorter this blow,” says How to Box, “the better the effect.”

This is a summary of the Louis offence spoken specifically about the left hook. Joe’s hook was at its absolute best when he threw it downstairs and we are going to look at his body work in detail in Part Four, but when he went upstairs it was his shortest power punch. In his second title defense in 1938 against Nathan Mann, he proved it an unusually flexible punch, too, and it would remain the most varied and improvised finishing blow in his arsenal long after the press had begun criticizing him, in some cases justifiably, for being a “robotic fighter.” Louis fought along disciplined lines, operating almost exclusively in a given kill-zone, working to bring that kill-zone to the opponent or the opponent to that kill-zone but usually in pre-determined, technically proficient ways. Against Mann though, as the broad-shouldered challenger rushed him for the first time, Louis propelled himself sharply back and away. His left foot no longer in touch with the canvas, up on the toes of his right, Louis corkscrewed a whipcord of a hook from his loosely hanging left hand. This punch illustrates two things concerning the Louis hook. Firstly, the positioning of his jab-hand and the frequency with which he throws that punch makes it a blow he can disguise, a natural counter. Secondly, it underlines the strangest fact of all concerning the Louis left hook: he drove it with his right leg.

In Box Like the Pros, his own, more detailed manual on boxing, Joe Frazier is very clear on how the left foot should be used when throwing the punch that made him famous. It is to be kept firmly planted; it is to drive the punch; when you bring your left hip around to follow through keep the left foot planted; “adjust your balance as you follow through with the punch, move a little if you have to”; but keep the left foot planted.

Similarly, Bernard Hopkins stresses this left foot drive:

“I dip a little to the left and rotate slightly to the left, my body weight shifts from both legs to mostly the left one…as I bring the punch up I’m driving with the left leg and at the same time bringing my hips around…”

In How to Box by Joe Louis, the transfer of weight is through the right leg.

“From the proper stance…turn your body to the right, shifting your weight to the right leg, throw the left arm in an arc to the opponent’s head. Make sure to hit through the mark and not at it.”

This is not unheard of. I have been told that Ray Leonard threw and even taught the left hook right legged, or rather he was not a slave to the left leg and preferred to gain the leverage where he could. That sounds like Leonard, but it doesn’t really sound like Joe. It isn’t in keeping with Joe’s reputation for technical exactitude and this right foot pivot interested me.

Later in the second round against Mann we see Louis push through with the right foot for the hook once again. As Mann is finally baited forwards upon seeing Joe with his back to the ropes, the Champion throws out a lightning-fast softener, comes the other way with a clubbing punch to the side of Mann’s head before striking out with the punch the trap was set for, a left hook that combines the best attributes of the other two punches. Once more, Louis is turning through his right foot. Mann is stunned and almost goes to his haunches, his face an open question mark, his steps a trickling stream. It is a double blow for the men surprised by Louis, they come forwards as the aggressor into his kill-zone having landed some token punch (in this case a hard right hand) to which Joe gives ground before nearly taking the opponent’s head off with punches. And what punches! Louis still has his elbow crooked in the defensive position when he throws the first left hook, he’s throwing it across that famous and oft-quoted distance, mere-inches, perfectly disguised, impossible to see coming, the power generated in a fashion so brilliant and dynamic that they are almost beyond technically correct; that is, nobody would ever try to teach a fighter to punch in this fashion because it just doesn’t occur to most trainers that the person standing in front of them hitting the pads is the fistic equivalent of a primo ballerina. But it is perfect. The second punch was more fully born but it is still a mere forearm’s length in flight, punching all the way through the target.

Two more left hooks score the first knockdown of the fight just seconds later. Mann flapped after he felt the first one, arching back and to the side, but Louis looked like he was hitting a static heavy bag as he delivered and calmly made his way to the neutral corner. When the action resumed, Louis walked up to Mann and hit him with two more, one up, one down as the gutsy Connecticut man sagged on the ropes. The bell saved him and he wandered off to a neutral corner of his own, confused by the absence of a stool. The inevitable occurred at 1:56 in the third.

I’d nominate Mann as Joe’s best hooking performance, but it did not contain the most devastating hook he ever threw. Louis saved this dubious honour for a fighter who infuriated him personally more perhaps than even Max Schmeling, “Two Ton” Tony Galento. Employing the unfortunate language he has remained famous for, Galento (pictured on his backside) managed to find his way under Joe’s skin, before adding injury to insult by dropping him with a left of his own in the third. In the fourth, Louis sent over what may have been the punch of his career, a left hook which Joe says “started [Galento’s] mouth, nose and right eye bleeding.” There is a beautiful series of photographs in How to Box showing Louis cock and wing in that punch. We see him adjust it in flight so the knuckle part of the glove connects with the point of the chin before Louis follows all the way through, his left hand resting calmly in front of his right, Zen-like. As Galento is falling, he too is Zen-like, but for different reasons.

Also of interest: we see Louis pivoting through his right foot. Why? Perhaps it was just the way he threw them and when his trainer Jack Blackburn saw how well they worked he refused to adjust them. Perhaps Louis had a strange ambidextrousness where his left hook was concerned and like Ray Leonard he was able to generate torque with either one of his legs dependent upon circumstances; there do seem to be times when he is driving through his left.

Or just maybe, Joe Louis didn’t like the adjustment Joe Frazier describes at the end of his procedure for throwing the perfect left hook: “Adjust your balance as you follow through, move a little if you have to.” Maybe he found a better way to stay balanced. A more correct way, for him, to throw the punch. Stop—rewind that. There is no “better way” than Frazier’s way when a fighter is throwing a left hook, right?

Right?

If this question makes you uncomfortable, keep an eye out for Part Three. We’re going to talk about the right hand. We don’t have to worry about any peers butting in for that one.

None exist.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 303: Spotlights on Lightweights and More

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Those lightweights.

Whether junior lights, super lights or lightweights, it’s the 130-140 divisions where most of boxing’s young stars are found now or in the past.

Think Oscar De La Hoya, Sugar Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather.

Floyd Schofield (17-0, 12 KOs) a Texas product, hungers to be a star and takes on Mexico’s Rene Tellez Giron (20-3, 13 KOs) in a 12-round lightweight bout on Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotion card that includes a female undisputed flyweight championship match pitting Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz and Gabriela Fundora.

Like a young lion looking to flex, Schofield (pictured on the left)  is eager to meet all the other young lions and prove they’re not equal.

“I’ve been in the room with Shakur, Tank. I want to give everyone a good fight. I feel like my preparation is getting better, I work hard, I’ve dedicated my whole life to this sport,” said Schofield naming fellow lightweights Shakur Stevenson and Gervonta “Tank” Davis.

Now he meets Mexico’s Tellez who has never been stopped.

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” said Tellez.

Even in Las Vegas.

Verona, New York

Meanwhile, in upstate New York, a WBC junior lightweight title rematch finds Robson Conceicao (19-2-1, 9 KOs) looking to prove superior to former titlist O’Shaquie Foster (22-3, 12 KOs) on Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, N.Y. ESPN+ will stream the Top Rank fight card.

Last July, Conceicao and Foster clashed and after 12 rounds the title changed hands from Foster to the Brazilian by split decision.

“I feel that a champion is a fighter who goes out there and doesn’t run around, who looks for the fight, who tries to win, and doesn’t just throw one or two punches and then moves away,” said Conceicao.

Foster disagrees.

“I hope he knows the name of the game is to hit and not get hit. That’s the name of the game,” said Foster.

Also on the same card is lightweight contender Raymond Muratalla (21-0, 16 KOs) who fights Mexico’s Jesus Perez Campos (25-5, 18 KOs).

Perez recently defeated former world champion Jojo Diaz last February in California.

“We’re made for challenges. I like challenges,” said Perez.

Muratalla likes challenges too.

“I think these fights are the types of fights I need to show my skills and to prove I deserve those title fights,” said Fontana’s Muratalla.

Female Undisputed Flyweight Championship

WBA, WBC and WBO flyweight titlist Gabriela “La Chucky” Alaniz (15-1, 6 KOs meets IBF titlist Gabriela Fundora (14-0, 6 KOs) on Saturday Nov. 2, at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. DAZN will stream the clash for the undisputed flyweight championship.

Argentina’s Alaniz clashed twice against former WBA, WBC champ Marlen Esparza with their first encounter ending in a dubious win for the Texas fighter. In fact, three of Esparza’s last title fights were scored controversially.

But against Alaniz, though they fought on equal terms, Esparza was given a 99-91 score by one of the judges though the world saw a much closer contest. So, they fought again, but the rematch took place in California. Two judges deemed Alaniz the winner and one Esparza for a split-decision win.

“I’m really happy to be here representing Argentina. We are ready to fight. Nothing about this fight has to do with Marlen. So, I hope she (Fundora) is ready. I am ready to prepare myself for the great fight of my life,” said Alaniz.

In the case of Fundora, the extremely tall American fighter at 5’9” in height defeated decent competition including Maria Santizo. She was awarded a match with IBF flyweight titlist Arely Mucino who opted for the tall youngster over the dangerous Kenia Enriquez of Mexico.

Bad choice for Mucino.

Fundora pummeled the champion incessantly for five rounds at the Inglewood Forum a year ago. Twice she battered her down and the fight was mercifully stopped. Fundora’s arm was raised as the new champion.

Since that win Fundora has defeated Christina Cruz and Chile’s Daniela Asenjo in defense of the IBF title. In an interesting side bit: Asenjo was ranked as a flyweight contender though she had not fought in that weight class for seven years.

Still, Fundora used her reach and power to easily handle the rugged fighter from Chile.

Immediately after the fight she clamored for a chance to become undisputed.

“It doesn’t get better than this, especially being in Las Vegas. This is the greatest opportunity that we can have,” said Fundora.

It should be exciting.

Fights to Watch

Sat. ESPN+ 2:50 p.m. Robson Conceicao (19-2-1) vs O’Shaquie Foster (22-3).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Floyd Schofield (17-0) vs Rene Tellez Giron (20-3); Gabriela Alaniz (15-1) vs Gabriela Fundora (14-0).

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy

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Bakhram Murtalaziev was the Fighter of the Month in October

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As we close the book on October, let’s look back at the month’s stellar performances. Kenshiro Teraji added another exclamation point to his brilliant career with an 11th-round stoppage of Cristofer Rosales. England’s Jack Catterall, considered no more than a decent domestic-level talent for most of his career, showed that he had been underrated with a comprehensive 12-round decision over declining Regis Prograis. But the top performance, by a landslide, was delivered by Bakhram Murtalaziev who annihilated Tim Tszyu on Oct. 19 in Orlando, Florida.

Murtalaziev was undefeated (22-0, 16 KOs) and the reigning IBF junior middleweight champion, but he was the underdog and the “B” side. As champions go, and there are roughly five dozen across the 17 weight divisions, the California-based Russian ranked among the least well-known. He had won his title in Berlin with an 11th-round stoppage of an unexceptional 38-year-old German-Ecuadorian campaigner, Jack Culcay, and he would be making his first defense.

Managed by Egis Klimas who also handles Oleksandr Usyk and Vasiliy Lomachenko, among others, Bakhram Murtalaziev came from a good barn in the vernacular of a horseplayer, but on paper that alone was insufficient to get him over the hump against Tim Tszyu who a few short months earlier was widely considered the best 154-pound boxer in the world.

That was before he met up with Sebastian Fundora who blemished his record, but that setback could have been written off as a fluke.

As we recall, Tszyu was scheduled to fight Keith Thurman in the initial PBC offering on Amazon Prime Video, but Thurman suffered a biceps injury in training and Fundora was bumped up from the undercard to fill the breach. With only 12 days’ notice, Tim Tszyu went from fighting a five-foot-seven fighter who fights out of an orthodox stance to fighting a southpaw who stood almost a full foot taller. The “Towering Inferno” has his limitations, but poses a special problem to anyone, let alone an opponent with little time to formulate a good game plan.

Tszyu was hampered in the Fundora fight by a gash on his hairline that hampered his vision. The injury happened in the second round when he ducked under Fundora and walked into an elbow. The gash bled copiously throughout the fight and yet the best that Fundora could do was win a split (albeit fair) decision.

To say that Tszyu failed to rebound from the Fundora misadventure would be putting it mildly. Murtalaziev steamrolled him, knocking him to the canvas four times in all before Tszyu’s corner tossed in the towel at the 1:55 mark of the third stanza. It was painful to watch. Referee Chris Young was faulted for allowing the match to continue as long as it did. Compounding Tszyu’s misery, his celebrated father, a first ballot Hall of Famer, was ringside. Kostya Tszyu hadn’t seen his oldest son fight in the flesh since Tim’s pro debut in 2016.

Although the dichotomy is imperfect, Tim Tszyu, who turns 30 on Saturday, is more of a puncher than a boxer. That may work against him so far as clawing his way back to a position of prominence. The noted boxing coach Stephen “Breadman” Edwards, a keen student of the history of boxing in the modern era, expressed this sentiment in a Q and A story for Boxing Scene. “Destructive fighters usually don’t come back to full capacity after bad KO losses,” he said, citing John Mugabi, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, Sonny Liston, and Naseem Hamed to illustrate his point. Moreover, added Edwards, “No one will ever be afraid of him again.”

But there were two stories that emerged from the Murtalaziev-Tszyu fight. Tim Tszyu crashed, but Bakhram Murtalaziev emerged from obscurity, announcing his presence (pardon the cliché) as a force to be reckoned with. As for his next assignment, the best guess is that it will come against Sebastian Fundora or Errol Spence Jr. who are expected to meet early next year. And based on Murtalaziev’s stunning performance in Orlando, it will be impossible to bet against him.

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Foreman-Moorer: 30 Years Later

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Foreman-Moorer: 30 Years Later

By TSS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT JAMIE REBNER — In sports, middle-aged athletes are not supposed to beat opponents who are half their age and in their athletic primes. Only the greatest ones can use guile, technique, and experience to compensate for the dulling of speed, reflexes, and athleticism that have unavoidably eroded with time.

That is why George Foreman’s feat of reclaiming the heavyweight title at 45 is so impressive. It was thirty years ago this coming Tuesday, Nov 5, 1994, that Foreman scored a monumental upset in knocking out Michael Moorer to win back the title he had lost twenty years prior against Muhammad Ali in The Rumble in the Jungle. In doing so, Big George became the oldest heavyweight champion, breaking the record previously held by Jersey Joe Walcott, who had won the title at 38.

When Foreman beat Moorer, he was in the twilight of his second career, a comeback that began in 1987. George had retired in 1977 after losing to Jimmy Young and experiencing a spiritual awakening in his locker room. That led him to become a minister and devote himself to his family and congregation. During his retirement, he opened a youth center in Houston, which required much financial support, prompting him to return to the ring.

After winning 24 straight fights from 1987-1990, Foreman lost his first title shot by decision to Evander Holyfield in 1991. He rebounded from that loss with three more wins before getting a crack at the WBO title against Tommy Morrison in 1993. But his performance against Morrison was disappointing and he lost another decision. After that, Foreman was out of the ring for 17 months before he was gifted another title shot against Moorer.

Foreman got that gift because Moorer, due to his sullen demeanor and curtness with the media, was not a draw with the fans. He was also an unproven champion, having beaten Holyfield for two belts only seven months prior. So. Moorer needed a name opponent who could bring in the crowds for his first title defense. And the other top heavyweights like Oliver McCall (WBC champ), Lennox Lewis, and Riddick Bowe didn’t have close to Foreman’s drawing power. So. deserving or not, Foreman was chosen as the challenger to make a fight that would be worth the public’s attention and pockets.

Even Foreman was surprised by getting selected to fight Moorer. “I never in my wildest imagination thought I’d get a title shot again,” he told Associated Press sports columnist Tim Dahlberg. Still, George was determined to make his third time a charm.

But as motivated as George was, there was an irrefutable gap in speed between himself and the much younger champion. From the opening bell, Moorer used his superior quickness and reflexes to make Foreman look stiff and slow. And although George landed punches early on, he fired them one at a time while Moorer countered with multiple shots. But despite Moorer’s advantage in connects, his trainer Teddy Atlas advised him from the get-go not to stand in front of Foreman and make himself a stationary target for a right-hand bomb.

But Moorer failed to heed that advice as he continued to outwork Foreman in the middle rounds. Although he was winning, Moorer’s overconfidence kept him at close quarters, and he continued to circle unwisely to his left and into Foreman’s dangerous right hand. And despite absorbing many quality shots, Foreman never appeared hurt or discouraged thanks to his granite chin and unyielding resolve. He was determined to win and he was willing to walk through as many flush shots as he needed to do so.

With Moorer content to stay in range, Foreman gladly returned his firepower and he landed some telling right crosses, uppercuts, and plenty of thudding body blows during the battle. And while Moorer continued to pile up points and rounds, as long as George was marching forward and throwing shots, he had a puncher’s chance.

And with a minute to go in round ten, that punch came. After missing a three-punch combination, Foreman scored with a one-two, with the right hand landing on the forehead. He immediately repeated that combination but this time aimed the right hand lower on Moorer’s jaw. That slight adjustment caused his bulldozer right to collide perfectly with Moorer’s chin, sending the champion crashing to the canvas and sprawled onto his back. The champion couldn’t beat the count, and just like that, the fight was over, Moorer’s short-lived title run ending before it ever truly began.

With a single, shattering blow, Foreman etched his name into boxing history. Wearing the same trunks from Zaire 20 years before, he was now heavyweight champion of the world once again. It was a shocking result that defied conventional wisdom since seldom do 45-year-old boxers score knockouts over champions in their athletic primes. But Foreman reminded us that he was anything but your typical quadragenarian. He was special, and he had two distinct heavyweight championship reigns to prove it.

About the author:

Jamie Rebner lives in Toronto, Canada. He has been a freelance boxing writer since 2016 and his writing has appeared in The Fight City, Boxing News Online, The Ring, and Ringside Seat magazine. His Substack blog is Fight Fundamental, and he is currently writing a book about George Foreman’s comeback. He is also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow him on Twitter @J_NReb.

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