Word: chuvalo
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When he climbed into the ring against Canada's George Chuvalo last week, Ernie Terrell, 26, was under the impression-or delusion-that he was heavyweight champion of the world. The World Boxing Association, which is still sort of peeved at Cassius Clay, had told Ernie so last March. But the president of the W.B.A. is one James Deskin, who also happens to be executive secretary of the boxing commission in Las Vegas-where money talks and where Clay will fight Floyd Patterson Nov. 22. So there, before Terrell's wondering eyes at Toronto's Maple Leaf...
...arena had not seen the knockout punch; neither had the 500,000 others watching on closed-circuit TV. "Fix! Fix! Fix!" they chanted. "Fake! Fake! Fake!" At ringside, Joe Louis conceded that Clay had landed a right, "but it wasn't no good." Snapped Canadian Heavyweight George Chuvalo: "It's a phony, a real phony." Even Cassius was confused. "I think I hit him with a left hook and a right cross," he said. "But I want to see the video tape...
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...
...kidneys was covered with bloody welts. "I kept telling myself, 'You can't be knocked out, you can't be knocked out,' " he said afterward. He talked longingly about a title fight with Clay and another shot at Liston, and chided sportswriters who predicted that Chuvalo would put him down as soon as he tapped him on his china chin. "I proved that I could take a punch much better than you gentlemen gave me credit for," he said. "I would say that I am deserving of a chance to fight Cassius Clay for the heavyweight...