Venue: Sports Arena, San Diego, California. 31st March, 1973.
His last fight before taking
on Muhammad Ali had earned ken Norton precisely $300, but
he sneaked up on Ali and on heavyweight boxing and irrevocably
changed its order. His style was unrefined and his shape –
huge shoulders and waspish waist – more suited to bodybuilding
than boxing. Ken Norton had been a sparring partner of Joe
Frazier and become seasoned by the experience. He was also
trained by Eddie Futch, who had plotted Frazier’s defeat
of Ali.
Futch instructed Norton to jab Ali to the ropes and work
from head to body. Norton’s jab was a powerful weapon
and in round two, it forced Ali back into a corner. Once there,
Norton nailed him with a straight right hand. It landed precisely
at the point of Ali’s jaw where he had lost two back
teeth. Ali’s mouth was slightly open at the moment of
impact and these factors combined with Norton’s power
to fracture the bone.
Angelo Dundee realised immediately what had happened, “I
asked him to let me stop the fight,” Dundee remembered.
“He said, ‘no, I can beat this sucker. He wont
touch my jaw.” It was a remarkable display of courage
from Ali who fought for another 10 rounds losing a narrow
points decision.
Immediately after the fight, Ali had a 90-minute operation
on the jaw. The bones were separated by a quarter of an inch
and the surgeon who rewired them said: “I can’t
fathom how he could go the whole fight like that.”
Ali said that in the heat of the fight he barely felt the
injury. Indeed he claimed to have been troubled almost as
much by his relative lack of fitness. He had missed out on
fitness work after spraining an ankle while “revolutionising”
the game of golf by trying to hit the ball on the run.
While Ali was again philosophical in defeat, his career had
reached a crossroads. His 10-fight unbeaten run since the
Frazier defeat took on a different note – he had fought
no one of any note and now he had lost to a fighter most of
the world had never heard of. Howard Cosell was among those
who felt Ali’s career was over: “It was the end
of the road as far as I could see. So many of Ali’s
fights had incredible symbolism, and here it was again. Ken
Norton, former marine against the draft dodger in San Diego,
a conservative naval town. It seemed Ali would never get his
title back.”
