The History of the Heavyweight Championship - 1979

In 1979 not one of the three living legends of the heavyweight division had a fight – it was the first year since 1959 that neither Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier or George Foreman had stepped into the professional boxing ring.

Officially, Ali was still the WBA heavyweight champion in January of the year – he had won that piece of jewellery when he performed his last act of boxing magic to bamboozled Leon Spinks and get revenge the previous September.

Ali had the belt, one of the two available, but nobody expected to see him back in a ring – any ring – anytime soon. His boxing life had drained him – making miracles happen is a hard job.

Sure, the three fighters would all return at some point – Ali to furious exposure, Frazier in an undignified replica of the great Smokin Joe and Foreman to reclaim the world title in a fairy tale … many, many years later.

In their absence, the heavyweight world belonged to Larry Holmes – the WBC champion, the former Ali sparring partner, the loner, the arrogant one – the young kid with the wonderful jab and the vast heart – the boxer that deserved to be mentioned with the best, but struggled for kind coverage from the press. It wasn’t just his perceived attitude, it was what he had inherited. Holmes recognised the problem right then, and talked about it decades later:

“The shadow of Ali would, I now realised, obscure Larry Holmes and whatever he accomplished.”

Holmes was determined to be a busy world heavyweight champion, helping to create the illusion that the WBC version of the title was more prestigious. The truth is that both sanctioning bodies – the WBC abs WBA – were equally damaging to the sport, both toxic masters of a business with enough bad elements.

The increasing annoyance at the influence the sanctioning bodies enjoyed – and the fees they demanded for their title fights – encouraged others … and by the the end of the Eighties two more sanctioning bodies had been formed. It was carnage and 1979 is the year that it really all started. All four would have their own recognised champion by the end of the next decade – often the consensus heavyweight champion held one of the newly created titles. The fighters, their promoters and their rival television companies share a strange reluctance to fight each other. By 1979, the future possibility of memorable, historic heavyweight title fights that “shook the world”, as Ali said, looked grim. Nearly ten years later, Mike Tyson would do his best to change that.

Holmes would fight anybody that was available – he was from the oldest of old schools. He was also not adverse to taking a soft touch.

In March he beat Puerto Rico’s Ossie Ocasio. It was easy, Ocasio was dropped four times before the fight was called off in round seven. Holmes knew the limitations of his opponents:

“In the seventh round, I even dropped him with a jab. At this level of boxing, guys are supposed to be too tough to floor with a jab. But damned if he didn’t fall.”

Ocasio was unbeaten in 13 fights when he met Holmes and was actually so tough that Richie Giachetti, the gnarled Cleveland figure in the champion’s corner, screamed at Carlos Padilla, the referee:

“Stop it before Larry kills him.” Padilla did … after one last knockdown.

Pat Putnam, the chief boxing writer for Sports Illustrated, was also unimpressed with the third man in the ring:

“If Padilla hadn’t called a halt when he did, the only way Ocasio would have made it back to the corner would have been on a stretcher. There was no excuse for letting the young and inexperienced Puerto Rican take that much punishment. He was being paid 250,000 dollars to fight, not to be demolished.”

Holmes left Las Vegas and moved onto Madison Square Garden for his next defence in June – in the opposite corner was one of the sport’s enigmas: Mike Weaver was known as Hercules because of his physique. He had lost eight of his 27 fights – beaten nobody special, but under new management he was on a run of five wins, five knockouts. And, Weaver was talking like a winner:

“Holmes is a good fighter, not a great one. I believe I can beat him. Hercules is a myth, I’m not”

The television networks turned their back on Weaver as a challenger. In the end HBO, a new channel, picked the fight up. On the night at the Garden 14,136 paid. It was, strangely, only the second heavyweight title fight at the Garden since the Fight of the Century between Ali and Frazier back in March 1971.

Weaver made it hard for Holmes, but in the 11th Holmes connected cleanly and Weaver went down heavily. He somehow beat the count, but the bell sounded to deny Holmes the seconds he needed to finish Hercules off.

Weaver never recovered and came out for the 12th with no chance of surviving. Holmes was ruthless, the fight ended after 44 seconds of the 12th when Weaver was rescued from his own bravery.

Holmes kept his WBC title – Weaver actually won the WBA version of the heavyweight title nine months later in March of the following year. Weaver is another member of the Lost Generation, a label given to the heavyweights who fought and failed and crashed and burned and held versions of the title in the Eighties. Their combined history is sad, too many early deaths, too much real talent wasted, too many crack cocaine scandals. It was an ugly but equally gripping time for the heavyweights. They were all on the boxing horizon by 1979, jostling for position and fighting for their dream to come true.

Holmes finished his year back in Las Vegas in September making his fourth defence of the WBC heavyweight title, his third of the year. This fight was the test.

In March, Earnie Shavers, the veteran of nearly 70 fights, with 55 ending in knockout wins, had met Kenny Norton at the Hilton in Las Vegas. It is a classic Seventies fight – right there with Ron Lyle and George Foreman. The type of fight that never escaped the decade. The old heavyweights knew about sacrifices – the truth is that they all suffered for their trade.

Norton had beaten Ali, lost to Foreman and in 1978 lost the WBC version of the title to Holmes in a stunning fight – the 15th round that night being one of the greatest rounds ever.

Shavers had been slugging his away across the boxing wasteland since 1969, feared, avoided and always a one-punch danger. On the night in Las Vegas, Norton was 33 and having his 47th fight, Shavers 34 and having his 66th fight. They threw away the mould after men like Shavers and Norton were made.

Big Earnie arrived in the ring with the Star Wars theme playing. They each bounced lightly, throwing warm-up punches only the heavy-fisted giants of the Seventies scene could throw. It was the type of fight where, sitting at ringside, you take a few deep breaths to steady your hand before the opening bell and the action starts – there will be action, and it will most likely be immediate and lethal.

Shavers drops Norton heavily, a series of thunderous punches slowly separate Norton from his senses – he is down but not out. Like the finest, the bravest and some might say …. the dumbest… Norton is up: there is over a minute of the first round left on the timekeeper’s clock: in Shavers language that is an eternity of hurt. A right uppercut ends the fight, Norton is down again and the referee, Mills Lane, calls it off as he struggles to get back up one more time. Official time: 1:58 of round one.

For Shavers, the win secured a fight with Holmes for the WBC heavyweight title, back in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace. It would be the final big fight for Big Earnie.

Holmes had been too slick for Shavers when they fought the year before, not taking any risks in a WBC eliminator. It had been a shut-out, a forgotten piece of boxing science from Holmes. The rematch for the title would be different – it would also be a fight that is too often overlooked.

Holmes knew the dangers going in:

“You didn’t have to be Einstein to know what the deal was when you fought Earnie. Earnie was no ballet dancer, he was the heavy artillery of his weight class – and Lord help you if that right hand if his landed.”

Holmes was controlling the fight, he had cut Shavers over the right eye – it would later require 27 stitches to close – in the fifth round; by round seven, Holmes insists, he was telling Earnie to quit: “C’mon, man, I’m beating you up. Don’t keep taking this.” Holmes speaking 25 years later laughs when he recalls that moment. That moment of stupidity.

Bang, Shavers lands and Holmes goes down heavy in round seven. He is gone. He somehow gets up at nine, still groggy, but buys a crucial few seconds walking away from Shavers during the mandatory eight count. The referee, Davey Pearl, takes a long, hard look at Holmes:

“An ordinary fighter would have stood there dazed and helpless, waiting to be knocked down again. But as stunned as he must have been, Holmes reacted the way a smart seasoned fighter should.”

Somehow Holmes held, grabbed to survive and at the bell to end round seven, he collapsed into the corner stall: Giachetti broke an ammonia capsule under his nose and just to make sure, Freddie Brown, the assistant cornerman, broke another. Holmes was desperate. It remains one of the finest recoveries by a heavyweight in a world title fight. Holmes boxed beautifully from that point and a battered, bloody but forever defiant Shavers was saved in round eleven.

Holmes was done for the year, it was time to try and get the two titles back together. And that was never going to be easy.

In June of 1979, Muhammad Ali announced that he was retiring. He would be back the following year in a truly disastrous fight, one which damaged him, his reputation and the republicans of every single man and woman in the Muhammad Ali business.

In the early summer his WBA heavyweight title was suddenly vacant – the boxing power brokers had their plans. A WBA eliminator series was in place, the search to replace Ali as champion was on … again – there had been a massive eight-boxer tournament to find a WBA champion back in 1967 and 1968 when Ali was sent into exile.

In 1979, just four boxers would be involved: The WBA plan was simple and revolved around a couple of South African boxers – Gerrie Coetzee and Kallie Knoetze – two contrasting fighters from the apartheid state.

The other two in the WBA plan were Big John Tate and Leon Spinks. In February, Tate knocked out the fallen contender Duane Bobick in the first round. Bobick had been heavily touted as the future if the division just 18-months before Tate’s fists destroyed what was left of his heavyweight dreams. Spinks had not fought since the genuine lunacy of his defeat to Ali in September of the previous year.

The heavyweight division was moving fast, fighters coming in from all angles and with dubious reputations.

June was the month: In South Africa, Tate stopped Knoetze in six rounds. It was a fight with real edge. Knoetze, a policeman, had shot a black kid, a protestor, at a rally in 1977. The kid survived. In early 1979 Knoetze had his work visa initially revoked by the American government on the grounds of “moral turpitude”. He did eventually fight in Miami, beating Bill Sharkey in the fourth; Sharkey had served nearly five years in prison for a 1971 manslaughter conviction. Sharkey had killed a man in street fight in New York. The boxing business knows no boundaries when it wants to make a fight happen.

That is some backdrop for a fight between a White South African and a Black American. Tate did his diplomatic best to not get sucked into a political fire-fight. However, Big John was given a Zulu name to cherish:

He was called – Intaba Enkele E Tafeni. It means A Big Mountain on the Plain.

In Monte Carlo, also in June, the second semi-final in the WBA series finished fast. It was sweltering in the ring when Spinks came out fast against unbeaten Coetzee. This South African stood accused of being a liberal, he had spoken out about apartheid. However, he was at the centre of the “bionic fist” controversy. Big Gerrie had soft hands and during surgery to fix his busted digits, metal was used to enhance their strength: it was his right hand … and Spinks got to feel it early. The fallen idol, the madcap Neon Leon was down three times before it was stopped after just 123 seconds of the first round. It was only Spinks’s tenth fight. He would have another 36 before his last fight in 1995.

So it was Coetzee – unbeaten in 22 – against Tate – unbeaten in 19 – for the vacant WBA heavyweight title in front of 86,000 people – mostly white South Africans, but not exclusively – at the Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria in October. Tate won in points over 15 rounds.

Coetzee, known as the Boksburg Bomber, would get another couple of chances and would, in 1983, win the WBA heavyweight title.

The search for a unification of the WBA and WBC titles was over by November. Nobody could agree a deal. In 1980 there would be six heavyweight title fights – four for the WBC and two for the WBA – all finished inside the distance. It was entertaining, make, no mistake but it was also damaging.