Word: foremans
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...been billed as the "Sunshine Showdown." But the heavyweight title bout between Champion Joe Frazier, 29, and Challenger George Foreman, 24, in Jamaica last week was more like a midnight mugging. In front of 36,000 fans at a stadium in Kingston, Foreman managed one of the swiftest and most savage upsets in heavyweight history...
Although oddsmakers had installed Frazier as a 3-1 favorite, there were more than the usual number of prefight imponderables. The line on Foreman was that he was untested. True, he had won 37 straight fights, 34 by knockouts, but his opponents were the most graceless gang of pugs this side of a waterfront brawl. He was undeniably a heavy hitter, but his attack seemed so lacking in finesse that he was sometimes booed in victory. He outweighed Frazier 217½ to 214 Ibs., had an advantage of 3½ in. in height and 5 in. in reach...
...HOWEVER, FOREMAN himself has another explanation. He says that he always carries three talismen in the pocket of his warm-up coat when he goes into the ring, including the miniature flag and a rabbit's foot. After he won the gold medal, he waved the flag "because I wanted people to know where I'm from," not knowing at the time that his skin was all the identifying color he needed...
...Foreman earned his shot at the title by winning 37 consecutive professional fights, the last 21 straight by knock-outs. Burn in Houston, he was a high school drop-out who began fighting in organized competition after he joined the job Corps, which is how he came to the attention of Sargent Sargent Shriver, now one of his principal backers. In the ring against Frazier and during the last weeks of his preparation for the fight. Foreman won the allegiance of flocks of Jamaicans, who sensed in him something of the same quality that had drawn them to Muhammad...
What was it about Foreman that captured the crowed as Ali does but Frazier never could? Don't ask Joe Frazier. Six times he got up from the ice-blue canvas after seeing it without seeing it at all and went back after Foreman to look for it. But, he never saw it. Two of the last three times, it hit him so hard that he was lifted several inches into the air. The final time, it just sort of crumbled him. But, he got up, like a twisted yo-yo, still looking, not quite understanding the sound...