Word: chuvalo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Cassius Clay looks ahead. Not to his next $1,000,000, of course: that is already assured if Sonny Liston can only learn how to drive a Cadillac in a straight line. But after Liston, what? Champion Clay thought he had just the thing: Canada's George Chuvalo, 27, a slabsided, 208-lb. heavyweight who had won 29 out of 39 fights, 23 by knockouts. Chuvalo seemed to be a pressagent's dream: broken-nosed, granite-chinned, he had never been knocked off his feet ("Belt him in the face," said one admirer, "and all he does...
White Hope. Clay handled the publicity himself. He touted Chuvalo as "the white hope," nicknamed him "The Washerwoman" for his rough, free-swinging style. Patterson was "The Rabbit"; Cassius went so far as to visit his training camp and present him with a bunch of carrots. The campaign worked like a charm: every one of Madison Square Garden's 18,400 seats was sold three days before the fight, and sidewalk scalpers were getting $10 for standing-room tickets. Closed-circuit TV carried the fight to 51 cities across the U.S. and Canada-with Clay doing the between-rounds...
...last week's fight he weighed 197¼ lbs., the heaviest of his career-and the bulge of fat around his middle was obvious. He had also been taking ultrasonic treatments for a sore knuckle on his left hand. But in the first round he bloodied Chuvalo's nose; in the second, he unleashed a series of six straight combination punches that buckled Chuvalo's knees; in the fourth, he raised a nasty mouse under Chuvalo's eye, and went on to box rings around the plodding Canadian. At ringside, Clay shouted into his microphone...