Word: ezzard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...This is the first time Tyson is going to meet some talent; Spinks is a thinking fighter," says the venerable trainer Ray Arcel, 89, who carted 13 opponents to Louis before beating him with Ezzard Charles. ("And you know something? As happy as I was for my guy, that's how sad I was for Joe.") Nothing can touch boxing for beautiful old men. "Tyson is learning how to think too," Arcel says. "He's picked up a lot from those old films he studies, including a little Jack Dempsey." He first saw Dempsey in 1916 in New York City...
...Ezzard Charles' misfortune was to succeed Joe Louis, Holmes' sorest miscalculation came in following Muhammad Ali, who claimed to be bigger than boxing and was correct. Often graceless in public, Holmes has a gentler streak that comes out in private, for instance, when discussing Ali, whom he served as a sparring partner and studied as a man until Holmes' embarrassing skills & necessitated his firing. "I always sat myself in the back," he says, "and just watched. Today's fighters don't discipline, they don't dedicate. But worst of all, they don't sit themselves in the back...
Arcel has frequently referred to Holmes as "the most underrated heavyweight champion in history. He followed that overpowering salesman Muhammad Ali. Gene Tunney beat Jack Dempsey, but Dempsey was still called champ. Ezzard Charles was never forgiven, even by his own people, for beating Louis. It's just time Larry Holmes was recognized as a true and great champion." After all, he has worn the belt for more than four years...
...take solace from the fact that they once held the most coveted title in boxing. Three of the ex-champs since Joe Louis are dead: Rocky Marciano was killed in a plane crash in 1969, Sonny Liston died of an overdose of drugs in 1970, and in 1975 Ezzard Charles succumbed to the lingering muscular disease that killed baseball's Lou Gehrig. Louis and the other five surviving champions have coped with life without the title in a variety of ways...
...Died. Ezzard Charles, 54, hard-luck heavyweight boxing champion from 1949 to 1951; after a seven-year bout with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative muscular disease; in Chicago. A superb tactician, Charles took the heavyweight crown from Jersey Joe Walcott in 1949, but even then he faced an uphill battle for popularity. It became steeper when he ended a comeback try, outpointing the aging Joe Louis in 15 rounds in 1950. Knocked out a year later by Walcott, Charles made several comeback attempts before slipping into obscurity and penury...