Chuvalo Read online

  GEORGE CHUVALO

  WITH MURRAY GREIG

  CHUVALO

  A FIGHTER’S LIFE

  THE STORY OF BOXING’S LAST GLADIATOR

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Part One: Weighing In

  Part Two: Prelims

  Part Three: Main Event

  Round 1

  Round 2

  Round 3

  Round 4

  Round 5

  Round 6

  Round 7

  Round 8

  Round 9

  Round 10

  Round 11

  Round 12

  Round 13

  Round 14

  Round 15

  Part Four: Post-Fight

  Part Five: Jabs & Hooks

  Photographic Inserts

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Dedication

  This is dedicated to my sons who are gone; to Lynne; to my beautiful grandchildren; and to the memory of my loving granddaughter Rachel—she was the beloved daughter of my late son Steven and his wife, Jacqueline; step-daughter of Tim Rowley; loving sister of Jesse; niece of Mitchell and Vanessa and my late sons Jessie and Georgie Lee; and cousin of Aaron, Elijah, Michaella and Adelayde. Rachel was a high-school teacher who spoke three languages, English, French and Spanish. In high school she received the Governor General’s Award for Academic Excellence, and school principals commended her efforts in tutoring and helping other kids who weren’t doing as well. She loved Zumba dancing and was an instructor and also taught school for a year in Veracruz, Mexico, and Pine Lake, Saskatchewan. Rachel passed away as we were completing this book on February 28, 2013. She had set aside money in her will for a Métis child to attend university or college. Joanne and I miss her deeply.

  PART

  ONE

  WEIGHING IN

  BITING INTO A BIG, FAT CHOCOLATE EASTER EGG. That’s my first conscious memory of life. And today, nearly 75 years later, I can close my eyes and still recall the sticky sweetness and intoxicating aroma as I contentedly munched that sumptuous treat, which was a gift from my godfather.

  The momentous occasion took place in the spring of 1939 at my uncle Tony’s house, not far from my childhood home on Hook Avenue in the heart of the Junction, an ethnic working-class neighborhood on the west side of Toronto.

  Fast-forward four decades and a few miles east, to St. Lawrence Market at the corner of Jarvis and Front streets. It’s December 11, 1978. That night I climbed through the ropes for the 93rd time as a professional fighter, aiming to do what I’d done 63 times previously: make the other guy see the black lights. That’s how old-timers described what it feels like to drift into unconsciousness.

  On this occasion, the “other guy” was George Jerome, a plodding, nondescript logging-camp cook from Vancouver with a record of 11–11–5. That he was ranked the No. 1 challenger for the Canadian heavyweight title that I’d owned, almost continuously, since 1958 only underscored how low the sport had sunk in a country that has produced some of boxing’s all-time greats—guys like George Dixon, Sam Langford, Tommy Burns and Johnny Coulon.

  The 2,000 fans jamming the joint couldn’t have cared less who was in the opposite corner; they were there for the blood sacrifice. That crowd was a far cry from the 15,000-plus who once routinely watched me headline at Madison Square Garden, and the $7,500 payday was a fraction of what I’d gotten to slug it out with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman just a few years earlier, but I was too keyed up to think about the past. I was 41 years old and doing the only thing I ever wanted to do, the one thing I was born to do. I didn’t care who was standing in front of me; I just wanted to whack him hard enough to make him see those black lights.

  That was my rush. That’s what I lived for.

  It was even better than that chocolate Easter egg.

  Jerome didn’t put up much of a fight. Midway through the second round I hurt him against the ropes with a three-punch combination, then backed him up with a left hook to the ribs. As he dropped his hands in anticipation of another body shot, I ripped another left upstairs that split his forehead like a melon, slicing open a two-inch gash above his right eye. Within seconds his face was a mask of blood, and the crowd went nuts. At the end of the round, the ring doctor examined the wound and ordered the fight stopped.

  Jerome’s corner didn’t complain. If he had come out again, he might have needed a blood transfusion.

  Did I feel bad for the guy? Not a bit. It was just another night at the office. The only thing I was concerned about was that my beautiful 11-year-old daughter, Vanessa, was in the crowd. She’d never seen her daddy “work” before, and she looked a little scared. I could only imagine what was going through her head.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be my last fight.

  Jerome was the 35th opponent I dispatched in three rounds or less and my 64th knockout in 73 pro victories—a KO-per-win ratio of 87.6 per cent. It wasn’t until 1997, when I was inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame in Los Angeles, that my buddy, Edmonton Sun columnist Murray Greig, pointed out that Bob Fitzsimmons (89.5), George Foreman (89.4) and Mike Tyson (88.1) were the only lineal world heavyweight champions up to that time with a higher ratio.

  But nobody talked about my punching. I got far more ink during my career for having a great chin and for never being knocked down, but for a long time I thought those were negative accolades. Until my first fight with Ali in 1966, nobody mentioned my chin, but afterward it was big news. After I retired, some writers declared I had the best chin in boxing history. If that’s true, I chalk it up to three things: being born with a short neck, training to absorb punishment (like a linebacker in football), and chewing a lot of bubble gum to strengthen my jaw muscles.

  I’m prouder of the fact that, on the way to compiling a record of 73–18–2, I had more knockouts than both Jack Dempsey (47) and Joe Louis (51), and my 64 KOs are more than Rocky Marciano, Ali, Frazier or Tyson had total fights.

  Never kissing the canvas will undoubtedly be my lasting legacy in boxing, but there was a lot more to my career than that. Today, most people think I was a tough guy who took a good rap, which is fine. But I was a much better defensive fighter than I ever got credit for. I didn’t get hit with half the punches people think I did. If that were true, I’d be walking around on my heels today. Nobody’s that tough.

  I’ll be remembered as a guy who fought the best of his time, beat a lot of them and lost to some others. I was a world-ranked contender for the better part of two decades, during the reigns of some of the greatest heavyweight champions in history. I knocked on their door a few times, but was I satisfied with that? Hell, no! If you’ve never been champion of the world, you can never be 100 per cent satisfied.

  A fighter always thinks he could’ve done better than he did, and I’m no different. There’s always a gnawing feeling that I might have become a world champ; there’s a piece of me that always feels kind of incomplete. Still, I did better than most guys. I won the Canadian amateur title at 17, then held the national professional championship for almost 20 years. I was ranked No. 2 in the world at one time; not many can say that.

  Was it worth all the blood and the sweat and heartaches?

  Absolutely. Besides, what else could I have become? With education and the right breaks, anyone can aspire to become a doctor or a lawyer—but you have to know real poverty to want to earn your living as a fighter. During much of my career, poverty was a constant companion.

  If I could go back and change anything, I would’ve had better management right from the start and I’d have forced myself to become a southpaw, too. Left-handers are the worst guys to
fight because they do everything ass-backwards—but that’s a big advantage if you’re the guy doing the punching.

  I also should have fought out of a crouch more; I stood too straight a lot of times. When people see film of some of my early fights, they’re always surprised that I started out as a boxer, a stick-and-move guy. It wasn’t until I moved to Detroit that I really learned to use my strength and became more of a brawler. But even when they see it, a lot of folks don’t believe it. In their eyes I was always just a “catcher” who never threw anything back.

  Maybe they should check with those 64 guys I knocked out.

  Throughout my career, a lot of members of the press were just as ignorant. I always found it curious that writers in New York and Detroit and Miami were more knowledgeable about me than their counterparts in Toronto. The media in my hometown was always very negative, even when I won. A lot of the hacks writing about boxing in those days weren’t qualified to be writing grocery lists. They didn’t know the first thing about the game, so they all jumped on the same bandwagon. They’d write that I was “punch drunk” or that I should quit before I got brain damage. To them, I was a freak of nature, a human shock absorber. Reading the old clippings, you’d think I never did anything except get hit.

  I wasn’t contemplating retirement after I knocked out Jerome on that December night in ‘78. I was still in love with the sport, in love with its culture and atmosphere. And more than anything, I wanted a crack at the British Commonwealth title—something I’d been chasing for more than two decades. But the pipsqueaks in the Canadian Professional Boxing Federation never lifted a finger to help make that happen, even though in the world rankings I was ahead of Commonwealth champions like Henry Cooper, Jack Bodell and Danny McAlinden for the better part of two decades. Not once did the faint-hearted Canadian authorities pressure the British Boxing Board to get me a title shot. Neither did my so-called manager, Irving Ungerman. He was too busy with the movers and shakers in New York, so advancing my career in that direction was little more than an afterthought. Irving never considered the Commonwealth title worth pursuing.

  The CPBF took away my Canadian title for what they called “inactivity,” but it was really just bullshit politics. At 75, I could come back and win it tomorrow. Or 10 years after I’m dead.

  In early 1979, I accepted an offer to defend against Trevor Berbick in Edmonton for $38,000, but the Federation turned around and dictated that the fight had to be in Halifax—Berbick’s adopted hometown—because they said the Edmonton promoter, my buddy Nick Zubray, “wasn’t qualified.” He’d only done 14 of my previous fights, including three Canadian title defenses, and with Murray Pezim he co-promoted my 1972 bout with Muhammad Ali in Vancouver. On top of that, I’d only get $25,000 in Halifax. I started a lawsuit to set things right, but my lawyers told me even if I won, there was no money in it. So I thought, “Screw you, you gutless bastards.” And I quit.

  It wasn’t the best way to go out, but I did it on my own terms. A lot of fighters have their careers aborted early, so they’re always saying, “I wish I could have done this or that.” Not me. I fought six world champions, I headlined nine times in the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden, and I fought in the golden era of heavyweights against some of the best ever.

  I had a good shot at it all, and I enjoyed every single minute.

  But I digress.

  To me, boxing has always represented the purest and truest form of athletic competition. It’s much more natural to fight than it is to play football or hockey. A caveman or an alien from another planet would understand boxing, but he sure as hell wouldn’t understand golf or tennis.

  It’s all about respect for power—and no other sport more clearly demonstrates one man’s superiority over another. When a guy goes down for the 10 count and can’t get back on his feet, everybody knows who won. I guess I was lucky, because I never had to deal with getting back on my feet. Not in the ring, anyway.

  Outside the ropes has been a different story.

  What’s happened to my family and me since I left boxing has been a personal holocaust. If you added up every punch I ever took and then multiplied the total by 10,000, it wouldn’t begin to equal the pain of losing three sons and a wife to drugs and suicide.

  It started in the spring of 1984 when my youngest son, Jesse, tore off his left kneecap in a dirt bike accident just a few weeks after his 20th birthday. Complex surgery repaired the damage but left him in constant pain. Not long after the surgery, Jesse went to a party, where he complained to someone about the pain in his knee. That someone replied he had something that would help—and that was my son’s introduction to heroin. Unable to live with what quickly became a full-blown addiction, on February 18, 1985, Jesse went into his bedroom, put the barrel of a .22-caliber rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  When you have one heroin addict in the family, it’s almost a guarantee there will be more. Son number three, Georgie Lee, was next. He died on Halloween night, 1993, in a seedy Toronto hotel room. He was still seated in a chair, wearing only a pair of undershorts, with a syringe sticking out of his left arm.

  Four days after Georgie Lee died, my wife, Lynne, scrawled out a short suicide note and gulped down a handful of Fiorinal. Haunted by the special pain that only a mother can feel, she simply couldn’t bear it any longer. First Jesse, then Georgie Lee. It was too much for her.

  By 1996 I’d remarried and was looking forward to embarking on a cross-Canada tour with son number two, Steven, after his release from prison for drugstore robberies. Like Jesse and Georgie Lee, Stevie was a heroin addict, but he was determined to beat it. The Fifth Estate, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television program, even featured us in a documentary. Stevie and I were going to tour the country together to tell the story of how drugs destroyed our family. But it was not to be.

  On August 17, 1996—11 days after his release—Steven was found dead in his sister Vanessa’s apartment. She had gone to visit friends out of town but had told him she’d be back the following afternoon. Stevie was found slumped over a desk, clad in a pair of undershorts. There was a syringe sticking out of his left arm and an unlit cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand. After he shot the heroin into his vein, before he could light the cigarette, he was gone.

  When people ask me how I cope, it’s tough to find an answer. It never goes away. But I’m trying. When you’re awake and fully conscious, your mind kind of shields and protects you. But once I stop, once things slow down and the TV is off, the lights are out and I’m alone in the dark with my own thoughts, I have a hard time. A very hard time. Always. It’s like an anxiety attack that takes your breath away. I think, “How can you even live after all that? How the hell did it all happen?”

  On his 2002 album Raised by Wolves, Canadian recording artist Colin Linden included a song about me that contains the line “Gladiators cry alone.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  I know in my heart that I’m not solely guilty for what happened to my family, but rather than absolving myself of guilt, I’ve tried to teach myself to live with certain things. You can never absolve yourself; that’s like jiving yourself. You just can’t do it. There are plenty of things I feel guilty about, that I second-guess or wish I had done differently. But at the end of the day, all I can do is continue to roll with the punches and live my life the best way I know how.

  That’s why I wanted to set the record straight by writing it all down. It’s all here: the good, the bad and the ugly. And more tears and heartache than any man needs.

  In 93 pro fights, I never pulled a punch. Still can’t. And even if I wanted to, the truth won’t let me.

  So here’s my story, warts and all …

  PART

  TWO

  PRELIMS

  MY PARENTS, STIPAN (STEVE) CHUVALO AND Kata Kordic, were married on February 2, 1926, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which at the time was a republic of what used to be Yugoslavia. Seven months later to the day, my father
arrived in Canada, looking for the Promised Land. He got off the boat in Quebec City and was supposed to take a train out west to Alberta or Saskatchewan, where the government had assigned him to work on a farm. But he jumped off the train and headed the other way, for the East Coast, finally ending up as a road builder in the Antigonish-Truro area of Nova Scotia. Later he worked in the bush in northern Ontario.

  My dad’s dream was to work in the mines in Noranda, Quebec, because of the relatively high pay, but they wouldn’t let him because of his handicapped arm, which was broken when he fell off a donkey at age 10. Before he could get the arm fixed, my dad’s uncle said to my grandfather, “Keep Steve a cripple; that way he won’t get drafted into the army.” So it never got fixed. As a result, for the rest of his life my dad could never fully straighten his arm. It looked like it was in an invisible sling, hanging at about a 45-degree angle, with this huge elbow sticking out. Because of that, he couldn’t work in the mines. Ironically, his older brother George, who was the first Chuvalo to come to Canada and the guy I was named after, died of pneumonia after he was crushed by an ore car in a Noranda mine. The car slipped off the track and slammed into him. His injuries weren’t life-threatening, but in the hospital he got pneumonia and died 14 days later.

  My mother didn’t come to Canada until 1936, but that was only because my father didn’t send for her! On the two-week boat trip across the Atlantic from Le Havre, France, all she had to eat was oranges. Not being able to speak French or English, she didn’t know how to ask for any other food, so she just kept pointing at “naranja” (oranges). That’s all she ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  As happy as my mother was to finally be joining her husband in Canada, that boat trip must have been sad and terrifying, knowing she’d probably never again see her parents or her eight sisters and one brother. She was 30 years old and had never gone to school, so I can only imagine her awful sense of loss.