Word: norton
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...time last week Ken Norton might almost have believed that. Heavyweight Champion Foreman certainly seemed to be going out of his way to avoid a fight. The scene was Caracas, where Norton and Foreman were supposed to be preparing for a title bout. Foreman, though, was doing a lot more posturing and protesting than preparing...
Pinched Nerve. At first his complaint was the selection of a referee. Foreman wanted Jim Rondeau, an experienced American. Norton and the Venezuelan fight officials demanded a local referee. Like a traveling circus, representatives of the two fighters and boxing officials dashed from hotel to hotel in Caracas, holding meetings that did little to resolve the dispute and press conferences that did much to exacerbate...
...fight, Foreman developed a "pinched nerve" in his knee. He was rushed to the hospital amid increasing rumors that the fight would be canceled. Meanwhile, Foreman's camp was announcing that Rondeau was not the referee it wanted after all. "This is a vicious doublecross against us," Norton's manager first declared. Then he turned the tables himself and insisted that Rondeau be in the ring...
...that the multimillion-dollar sports palace El Poliedro was only half full by fight time. Nor should it have really been a surprise when Foreman walked in without the slightest trace of a limp. (He attributed his recovery to prayer.) Score Round 1 in the psychological fight to Foreman. Norton seemed to sense that he had been outmaneuvered. As Rondeau briefed the fighters at mid-ring, Norton carefully avoided Foreman's menacing glare by staring at the canvas...
Five minutes after the fight started, Norton was sprawled across that canvas in a daze. Nonviolent George Foreman dispatched Norton just as he had Joe Frazier and 38 other opponents -with brute force. Stalking Norton like a boxing Frankenstein, Foreman tossed aside his opponent's punches as though they were irrelevant and delivered brutal blows to his body and head. Early in the second round he landed one below Norton's heart. "I heard him grunt," said Foreman later, "and I knew I had him." He finished the challenger with a volley of uppercuts and right-left combinations...