January 2002 - July 2006 - The Jerry Quarry Foundation

good champion. He fought often with a bad back, just as Cleve Williams had a
kidney missing, Ali had chronically sore and brittle fingers/knuckles, and
Liston eventually had a heroin addiction. There is a legend that Sonny sat
in a Vegas casino once, and a white hick came up behind him and put a '45 to the
back of Sonny's skull or ear. "You're gonna die, nigger," he said, or something
very close to that. Sonny had to sweat it out for a minute, then the guy laughed
and got away. After that, Sonny's will to live and win began to deteriorate.
(Yes, I know, Jerry would have taken the gun from the guy and made him eat it.)
From the beginning of his career, Sonny was owned many times over by the St.
Louis rackets. It seems to me there are 10 or so basic patterns (or
arcs) a good heavyweight's career can take, based on recent history. #1 is the
sensational slugger who finally meets his match: Liston, Foreman, Tyson. #2 is
the fantastic underdog who wins fight after fight but never make it to the top:
Jerry Quarry, Zora Folley, Eddie Machen, and others. #3 would be the consummate
champion who rarely if ever fights a top foe: Larry Holmes, Rocky Marciano, etc.
#4 is the indestructable opponent, like George Chuvalo, Earnie Shavers, etc. #5
is of course the Great White Hope who's a sensation for maybe 15 or fewer fights
before getting creamed: Tommy Morrison, Gerry Cooney, presently these Russian
brothers, Alfredo Evangelista, others. #6 is the not-quite-good-enough
journeyman, like maybe Cleveland Williams, Ernie Terrell, Jerry's old buddy,
Joey Orbillo; maybe David Tua and guys like that. #7 is draws who really can't
fight much with contenders, like Tex Cobb. It's almost as if you could draw a
graph of their fights, Time on the Y axis and Success on the X axis, and
recognize some without seeing their names. Maybe a Bill James (baseball super-
expert) of boxing has already done this. Another would be #8, heavyweights who
were just a little too small, like Jerry, Billy Conn, Bob Foster when he fought
as a hvyweight, Patterson, and more. We could actually say, "He had a
Tyson career", or "He had a George Chuvalo graph." What's the Irish
heavyweight scene like these days, Evren? Any good kids coming up?|
|8/5/04 10:21:36 PM|Ernie Laxalt|Reno, NV||elax66@aol.com||||10|Pattern #9 would
be a colossal fighter like Jimmy (Mighty Joe Young) Dorsey able to kick King
Kong's or Superman's ass and have enough left to knock Godzilla cold, too -- on
one night. Jimmy's uppercuts could lift an opponent so far off the ground that
his final opponents in the early '70s are still believed to be orbiting Earth. |
|8/5/04 11:46:00 PM|Gerry|Cleveland||same||||10|Bob B., have always like your
posts. Holyfield-Tyson was rigged first in the media before the fight.
Holyfield, glowing christian good guy ( later a much different story emerged ),
Tyson, stupid, vicious bad guy. Tyson was bi-polar and on medication. When on
his pills, he could be lucid, even almost passive. Off the dope, he was
reckless, erratic, vicious, especially if he drank. This is how he was so widely
exploited. To train him, they would take away his pills. Pretty sick, huh? Mike
Tyson is the most manipulated athlete ever, in my opinion. Then in the fight,
the steriod-aided Holyfield was allowed to clinch and headbutt without penalty.
Tyson waited for the ref to intervene for him. When he saw there was no one to
defend him , he enraged and bit the guy. I don't condone that, but I understand
why he did it... I don't believe Ali-Foreman was rigged. Foreman simply allowed
Ali to seize control of the event. Foreman was off his center before he got off
the plane. Ali seized the public in Kinshasa, was treated like the champ, and
beat a confused fighter. He used similar tactics against Liston, who I rate
highly. I do not rate Larry Holmes top Ten. Thanks. |
|8/6/04 03:39:33 AM|Massimo|the center of the boot||Chinese food is
good.com||||10|Frazier-Bonavena 1 was a VERY GOOD fight, but not a classic. I
mean it wasn't unforgettable, it wasn't a real slugfest like Foreman-Lyle or an
epic battle like Ali'-Frazier 1-3. But it was very good indeed. I think Frazier
won narrowly but a draw would not have been a scandal. Do you think that the
second round was to score 2 points for Bonavena or 3 points ? There were two
knockdowns. The first one was a clear knockdown, the second one was 50 % a punch