Jerry Izenberg’s new book, “Once There Were Giants,” is a vivid tribute to the heavyweight division, from Floyd Patterson’s time through Mike Tyson’s.
It is also a requiem for the days when everybody knew the name of the champ.
But on the streets of London, they still do.
Anthony Joshua is 27, with 18 knockouts in 18 fights. He is the soul of efficient demolition. On April 29, he’ll risk his IBF championship against Wladimir Klitschko, the eminence grise of the division, who turns 41 in March.
Already, Joshua-Klitschko has sold 80,000 Wembley Stadium tickets. Boxing is like tennis, you see. It isn’t dead. It just moved overseas.
But there’s an American champ, too.
Deontay Wilder is 6-foot-6, as athletic as a Crimson Tide linebacker and every bit as mean. The Bronze Bomber is 37-0 with 36 knockouts. On Feb. 25 ,he meets Gerald Washington, the former USC football player, in Birmingham, Ala.
There is also Tyson Fury, the 6-9 Brit who stunned Klitschko but lost his belt after a cocaine spree. There is Luis “King Kong” Ortiz, the 36-year-old Cuban who is 6-foot-4, 260 and is a menacing 27-0 with two no-contests.
“The heavyweight division is alive and well,” Wilder said.
Well, at least it’s off the ventilator.
Wilder also says “there’s no bigger fight” than himself against Joshua. Aside from Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez, he’s right.
Wilder-Joshua would be transatlantic, young, fresh and oozing with the promise of violence. If promoted properly, it would have everything, including rematch potential.
“Joshua has to beat Klitschko first,” Wilder said. “In my heart I go for Joshua, but in my head I go for Klitschko. He’s seen the things Joshua is just beginning to see. Both have a robotic style, a good build. Whoever lands the perfect punch wins the fight.
“Father Time might be knocking at Klitschko’s door. But you look at what George Foreman did. Age ain’t nothing but a number.”
Foreman is one of the American legends who parades through Izenberg’s book. But it starts with Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo and the underworld hammerlock on boxing.
Patterson and manager Cus D’Amato worked around the gangsters, but Patterson lost two one-round knockouts to the mobbed-up Sonny Liston. It took Muhammad Ali’s two wins over Liston to liberate the game and launch the most dramatic career in boxing history.
Everything in the ’70s stopped whenever Ali, Foreman or Joe Frazier climbed into the ring. People flocked to arenas to watch grainy closed-circuit, even listened to boxing on the radio. Izenberg rightly identifies Ali-Frazier III as the boxing war to end all wars. But that wasn’t the end of the era.
Izenberg shows how trainer George Benton, working in secret, made a champion out of Leon Spinks during sessions in a hotel bathroom. And how Larry Holmes and Ken Norton staged the best 15th round in heavyweight history, with Holmes fighting through a torn pectoral muscle to win.
Tyson kept it going through the ’80s, a terrifying predator with a child’s heart. He struggled with the deaths of trainer Cus D’Amato and manager Jim Jacobs, and as Izenberg was interviewing him, he suddenly put his head on Izenberg’s chest and began sobbing.
Then Tyson went back to legally sanctioned assault. Trainer Teddy Atlas told Izenberg about a bus ride during an amateur tournament, when one fighter told another, “I let you win. Because I didn’t want to fight that animal,” and pointed at Tyson.
What separated those heavyweights was valor. Frazier’s vision was gone at the end of the Thrilla in Manila, yet it took his trainer, Eddie Futch, to call a halt. Everyone remembers Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear, but most forget that Holyfield kept fighting, and bleeding, until he won.
Despite the efforts of Klitschko, his brother Vitali and Lennox Lewis, it has been a brutal drought. Rock bottom arrived in 2003, when Roy Jones Jr. easily decisioned John Ruiz to take the WBA heavyweight title. Jones went from 174 3/4 pounds to 193 for that victory, then returned to 175. It was indecent exposure of an entire division.
Wilder and Joshua aren’t yet giants of the game. But they don’t deserve guilt by association.
“I believe I’m the best in the world,” Wilder said. “People misunderstand my awkward style. They’ve never seen it from somebody my size. I’m able to decode what the other guy does.
“If Klitschko beats Joshua, then it’s Klitschko against Wilder. It must happen. If it’s Joshua against Wilder, I’ll fight him anywhere. I’m already hearing people talk about Vegas.”
Any talk about any heavyweight is disco to the ears.
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