BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Kenneth Howard Norton Sr. born August 9, 1943, Jacksonville, Illinois is an American former heavyweight boxer and former WBC Heavy weight Champion. He is best known for his 12-round victory over Muhammad Ali, when he famously broke Ali's jaw, on March 31, 1973, becoming only the second man to defeat a peak Ali as a professional (after Joe Frazier, who won a 15-round unanimous decision against Ali on March 8, 1971).
He and Ali would fight twice more in their trilogy, with Ali officially winning narrowly both return bouts, although many felt Norton truly deserved their third fight. Norton was awarded the WBC title (by virtue of his win over Jimmy Young in a 1977 title elimination bout) when Leon Spinks declined a mandated title defense against Norton, the number one contender. However, Norton lost it in his first defense on a split decision by 1 point to Larry Holmes in a great contest (Holmes-Norton is ranked as the 10th-greatest heavyweight fight of all time by Monte D. Cox, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization).
Early years
Norton was an outstanding athlete at Jacksonville High School. He was a member of the state championship football team and was selected to the all-state team on defense as a senior in 1960. His track coach entered him in eight events, and Norton placed first in all of them. As a result, the "Ken Norton Rule", which limits participation of an athlete to a maximum of three track and field events, was instituted in Illinois high school sports. After graduating from high school, Norton went to Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) on a football scholarship and studied elementary education.
Boxing career
Norton started boxing when he was in the United States Marine Corps from 1963 to 1967, compiling a 24-2 record en route to three All-Marine Heavyweight titles. Following the National AAU finals in 1967, he turned professional.
Norton built up a steady string of wins, some against journeyman fighters and others overs fringe contenders like the giant Jack O'Halloran. He was learning and improving. But he suffered a surprise defeat, ironically just after Ring magazine had profiled him as a prospect, at the hands of Jose Luis Garcia in 1970. It was Garcia's career peak.
Norton was given the motivational book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which, as he states in his autobiography, Going the Distance, changed his life (Norton, et al., 2000, p. 46). Upon reading it, he went on a 14-fight winning streak, including a shocking victory over Muhammad Ali in 1973 to win the North American Boxing Federation heavyweight champion title. To quote Norton from his autobiography noted above "These words (from Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich) were the final inspiration in my victory over Ali: Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can."
An article which appeared in The Southeast Missourian discussed that Norton credited Napoleon Hill's philosophy for his success. To quote from the article "Norton says he's a believer in Napoleon Hill's philosophy, that a person can do anything he puts his mind to. 'So I train for my fights,' he says, 'mentally as well as physically. One thing I do is only watch films of the fights in which I've done well or in which my opponent has done poorly.'"
Ken Norton once said, "In boxing, and in all of life, nobody should ever stop learning!"
Versus Ali, first & second fight
'Name' opponents were elusive in Norton's early career. His first big break came with a clear win over respected contender Henry Clark. This helped get him his world recognition break when Ali agreed to a match. Joe Frazier, who'd sparred with Norton, presciently said of Ali, "He'll have plenty of trouble!" Though both were top boxers in the mid 1970s, Norton and Frazier never fought each other. In part because they shared the same trainer Eddie Futch.
On March 31, 1973, Muhammad Ali entered the ring at the San Diego Sports Arena wearing a robe given to him by Elvis Presley as a 5-1 favorite versus Ken Norton in a bout televised by ABC's Wide World of Sports. Norton won a 12-round split decision over Ali in his adopted hometown of San Diego to win the NABF heavyweight title.[9] In this bout, Norton broke Ali's jaw (he maintains in round eleven, though Angelo Dundee said it was earlier), leading to only the second defeat for "The Greatest" in his career. (Ali's only previous loss was to Joe Frazier, and Ali would later go on to defeat George Foreman to regain the heavyweight title in 1974.)
Almost six months later, at The Forum in Inglewood, California, on September 10, 1973, Ali avenged the Norton loss, but only just, when he got the return by another split decision. Norton weighed in at 205 lbs (5 pounds lighter than his first match with Ali) and boxing scribes discussed that his preparation was too intense and that perhaps he had overtrained. There were some furious exchanges in this hard-fought battle. From Ali's point of view, a loss here would have seriously dented his claim of ever being "The Greatest".
Championship challenge against Foreman
In 1974, Norton fought George Foreman for the World Heavyweight Championship but was stopped in two rounds.
In 1975, Norton regained the NABF heavyweight title when he impressively defeated Jerry Quarry by TKO in the fifth round. Norton then avenged his above-mentioned 1970 loss to Jose Luis Garcia by decisively knocking out Garcia in round five.
Third Ali match
On September 28, 1976, at Yankee Stadium in New York City, Norton would again fight Ali, who was now the world heavyweight champion since regaining the title with an eighth-round knockout of George Foreman in 1974. Many observers have felt this was the beginning of Ali's decline as a boxer. It was a tough bruising battle for Ali. In one of the most disputed fights in history, the fight was even on the judges' scorecards going into the final round, which Ali won on both the referee's and judges' scorecards to retain the world heavyweight championship. The judges scored the bout 8-7 for Ali, and the referee scored it 8-6 for Ali. At the end of the last round, the commentator announced he would be "very surprised" if Norton has not won the fight.
At the time of the third Ali-Norton bout, the last time a heavyweight champion had lost the title by decision was Max Baer to Jim Braddock 41 years earlier, and Ali-Norton III did not set a new marker. The January 1998 issue of Boxing Monthly listed Ali-Norton as the fifth most disputed title fight decision in boxing history. The unofficial UPI scorecard was 8-7 for Norton, and the unofficial AP scorecard was 9-6 for Ali.
But Ali had received a pounding. His tactics were to try to push Norton back, but they had failed. He'd refused to 'dance' until the 11th when in sheer desperation, although the crowd massively roared it's appreciation. Norton has said the third fight with Ali was the last boxing match for which he was fully motivated, owing to his disappointment at having lost a fight he believed he had clearly won.
Aftermath: Norton becomes champion
1977 was a top year for Norton. He knocked out previously unbeaten top prospect Duane Bobick in one round, and after dispatching European title holder Lorenzo Zanon easily, he beat number two contender Jimmy Young (who himself had beaten George Foreman and Ron Lyle) in a 15-round split decision in a WBC big mandatory title-elimination fight, with the winner to face reigning WBC champion Ali, but Ali's camp told Ring Magazine they did not want to fight Norton for a fourth time. Both boxers fought a smart fight; however, observers thought the decision controversial.
Plans, however, changed on February 15, 1978. On that night, in front of a nationwide television audience, Ali lost his title to Leon Spinks. The WBC then ordered a match between the new champion and its number one contender, but Spinks chose instead to give the fallen champion the first shot at taking his title rather than face the still dangerous Norton. The WBC responded on March 18, 1978, by retroactively giving title fight status to Norton's victory over Young the year before and awarded Norton their championship, which split the heavyweight championship for the first time since Jimmy Ellis and Joe Frazier were both recognized as champions in the early 1970s.
No comments:
Post a Comment