Sports Poets Society

THE DAILY NEWS, ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND, MARCH 25, 1975 Falls in corner  after winning CLEVELAND (AP) Muhammed Ali , fighting when he felt like it, tempered Chuck Wepner with left jabs and flurries of punches to the head in the late rounds and stopped the challenger in the final round of their 15-round heavyweight title fight Monday night . Ali knocked Wepner down in the 15th round and when the count reached eight, referee Tony Perez signalled the fight was over. There were 19 seconds left in the 15- round fight , but it had been over for Wepner long before that. No sooner had the fight ended than Ali fell to the floor of the ring, near his corner, as his handlers rushed to his aid. It was not apparent what was wrong with the heavyweight champion, but Ali appeared groggy after he regained his feet. Meanwhile, Wepner's handlers carried the fallen challenger to his corner and had to hold him to keep him from falling off his stool. It appeared that Wepner was going to go the lim...

Not in peak condition and overweight but ... CLEVELAND (AP) - Muhammad Ali, not at peak condition and at one of the highest weights of his career, is still fa- vored to beat Chuck Wepner tonight and retain the world heavyweight cham- pionship he took from George Foreman in Africa. Ali showed up Sunday at the Coliseum, site of the fight, about three hours before the nationally-televised weigh-in and shadow boxed four rounds and skipped rope for two. When he stepped on the scales, he weighed 2232 pounds. He has been heavier, but it's the most he has ever weighed for a title bout. He scaled 227 when he fought Buster Mathis in 1971 and 226 when he beat Mac Foster in 1972. "Look at me now," Ali shouted at ABC commentator Howard Cosell. "You tell everybody how fat I am, but look at me now." The champion had weighed 225 after aturday's workout. But although Ali boasted about his weight being lower than many observers had thought it would be, he has said during work...

Getty Images Chuck Wepner photographed in his native Bayonne in 2006 https://www.bbc.com/sport/64392108 ​ 26 January 2023 Ben Wyatt BBC Sport in New Jersey The 83-year-old Chuck Wepner stands 6ft 5in tall , with broad shoulders and heavily knuckled hands; bone calluses serve as reminders of a life spent punching.  His vocation as a fighter scarred other parts of his body, too.  "I was a big bleeder. I had 328 stitches in my career. My nose was broken nine times in 16 years . And, uh, it never fazed me, you know?" Wepner tells BBC Sport, with a shrug.  In fact, so likely was his face to suffer injury in the ring that he eventually adopted the nickname others gave him as an insult.  The Bayonne Bleeder - Bayonne being the New Jersey town that Wepner still calls home - was a fighter who lived up to his billing.  So maybe it was fitting that the most famous bout of his career came soaked in claret. " Tony Perez was the referee for my fight with Muhammad Ali ," r...

En 1974, les deux boxeurs que tout oppose, dans le style comme dans l’image s’affrontent dans un Kinshasa acquis à «The Greatest», qui éreintera son adversaire sur le ring et l’humiliera en dehors. 20 Aug 2026 - Libération Par Jacques Denis  «Je serai la malédiction de la momie !» Ces mots de Mohamed Ali donnent le ton de ce qui va devenir l’un des plus terribles duels de la boxe. Le combat du siècle, pour paraphraser le titre du livre que lui consacrera Norman Mailer en 1975. La momie, c’est George Foreman , qui doit ce surnom à sa manière de se mouvoir sur le ring. A l’automne 1974, il remet en jeu son titre de champion du monde poids lourds face à celui qui le fut avant d’être déclassé pour avoir refusé de partir au Vietnam, pour une guerre qui ne le concerne pas. «Ma conscience ne me laissera pas aller tirer sur mes frères, ou des pauvres gens affamés dans la boue, pour la grande Amérique puissante. Et pourquoi leur tirer dessus? Ils ne m’ont jamais traité de nègre, ils ne m’...

Muhammad Ali in Chicago, Illinois, March 1974.  (National Archives and Records Administration) https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/importance-muhammad-ali History Now, Issue 23 (Spring 2010) Turning Points in American Sports by Thomas Hauser Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., as Muhammad Ali was once known, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1942 —a time when blacks were the servant class in Louisville. They held jobs such as tending the backstretch at Churchill Downs (the famous race track where the Kentucky Derby is held) and cleaning other people’s homes. In Louisville in the 1940s, the highest career goal that most black people could realistically set for their children was that they join the clergy or teach at an all-black public school. Ali’s father, Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr., supported a wife and two sons by painting billboards and signs. Ali’s mother, Odessa Grady Clay, worked on occasion as a household domestic. "I remember one time when Cassius...

Leon Gast at his home in Manhattan in 1997. His film about the heavyweight fight billed  as  “the Rumble in the Jungle” won the Academy Award that year for best documentary feature.  Credit... Librado Romero/The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/movies/leon-gast-dead.html Skip to content He spent 22 years making an Oscar-winning movie about the 1974 Ali-Foreman boxing match, considered one of the greatest sporting events of all time. By Clay Risen Published March 12, 2021Updated April 6, 2021 Leon Gast, a filmmaker whose 22-year quest to make “When We Were Kings,” a documentary about Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s epic 1974 boxing match, involved a Liberian shell company, the Hells Angels, a drug deal gone bad, the singer Wyclef Jean and ultimately an Academy Award, died on Monday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 84. His wife, Geri Spolan-Gast, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Gast was a young filmmaker who had already d...

https://dailybruin.com/1997/02/09/upper-cut By Daily Bruin Staff Feb. 9, 1997 9:00 p.m. Monday, February 10, 1997 After struggling for over two decades, documentary director Leon Gast will let his praised boxing documentary ‘When We Were Kings’ give audiences a powerful punch of Muhammad Ali’s charisma. By Ricky Herzog Daily Bruin Contributor Most films take only about a year to be completed. Leon Gast’s film took 23 years to reach the big screen. Gast took on the role of editor, producer and director for his critically acclaimed documentary "When We Were Kings." Because the film took over two decades to make, the long process was difficult for Gast at times. "There were times when it was very frustrating," Gast says of his attempts over the years to find financing. "I thought I had deals so many times and companies would pull out for one reason or another. At one time I was ready to sell all the film to somebody. Thank God I didn’t." "When We Were Ki...