George Chuvalo, a hard-nosed heavyweight who never hit the canvas despite taking on the world's best boxers, has died.
Sully’s Boxing Gym in Toronto, where Chuvalo trained during his career, confirmed his death in a social media post Saturday. The gym said Chuvalo died on his 89th birthday.
“Today, Sully’s lost a piece of its history,” the gym said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford also paid tribute to Chuvalo, calling him “a heavyweight boxing legend, a family friend and a Canadian icon.”
“My thoughts are with all of George’s family and loved ones as we mourn his passing,” Ford said in a social media post.
Chuvalo was a Canadian amateur champion at 17, held the national title as a pro for almost 20 years and was ranked as high as No. 2 in the world.
He was 73-18-2 as a pro with 64 knockouts in a pro career that stretched from 1956 to 1978.
His career was defined by two mega-bouts with Muhammad Ali, in 1966 at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens and 1972 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, in which Chuvalo drew kudos for standing toe-to-toe with the most gifted and charismatic boxer of the era.
"When people think of me, they think of me fighting Muhammad," Chuvalo said. "It's hard for them to think of anything else.
"But I had close to 100 fights. The perception of me is as a tough guy who could take a shot. I was supposed to have the best chin in boxing. It clouds my other abilities."
Chuvalo would point out that it took more than an ability to absorb punches to record 73 wins and be ranked in the top 10 in the world in an age of heavyweight greats like Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman.
Chuvalo took pride in noting he had more knockouts than Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey — and that they exceeded the total number of fights that Ali, Frazier, Rocky Marciano and Mike Tyson had.
"I'll be remembered as a guy who fought the best of his time, beat a lot of them and lost to some others," Chuvalo wrote in his 2013 autobiography "Chuvalo: A Fighter's Life: The Story of Boxing's Last Gladiator."
Chuvalo retired in 1978 having never been knocked down as pro.
"I guess I was lucky, because I never had to deal with getting back on my feet," he wrote. "Not in the ring, anyway. Outside the ropes has been a different story."
Chuvalo lost three sons and his first wife Lynne to drugs and suicide.
"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," he wrote.
Ali made most opponents look slow and predictable, especially a stocky fighter who liked to get in close and work the body. But he could not finish Chuvalo, who had just 17 days notice to prepare for Ali the first time around after the champion's fight with Ernie Terrell fell through.
"They had a contest between a bull and a bumblebee at Maple Leaf Gardens last night — with the usual result. The bull came out of it with his face looking like a bucket of balls at a golf driving range," Toronto Star columnist Milt Dunnell wrote at the time.
But Ali, after going the full 15 rounds for the first time, went to hospital to be treated for internal bleeding. Chuvalo had other plans.
"I went dancing with my wife," Chuvalo said. "I got the best of that deal."
He did not do so well when it came to his payday. Chuvalo said he ended up with $12,500, with manager Irving Ungerman taking the lion's share of the $49,000 purse after expenses.
Chuvalo lost a rematch to Ali six years later by 12-round decision.
Despite the defeats, the Ali fights made Chuvalo a star in Canada and in the boxing world as the tough, unrelenting underdog.
"Icon — that's the only way I can describe George Chuvalo," said Lennox Lewis, a Canadian boxing star of another generation.
"He gave as good as he got, and then some," reads Chuvalo's Canada Sports Hall of Fame bio. "George Chuvalo was an extraordinary fighter and competitor — inside and outside of the boxing ring."
Ali was 24 years old and had won all 21 of his fights, with 18 knockouts, when he first faced Chuvalo. Chuvalo was four years older, with a record of 30-11-2 that included 17 KOs.
Ranked 10th among heavyweight contenders at the time, Chuvalo came into the bout a 6-1 or 7-1 underdog.
There was menace in the ring from the start as the two fighters stood silently nose-to-nose while referee Jackie Silvers gave his pre-fight instructions.
Chuvalo stalked, Ali danced and jabbed — using his speed and three-inch reach advantage. When they clinched or Ali was cornered, Chuvalo looked to punish the body.
The rest of the time, Ali punched away from the outside. Chuvalo absorbed the punishment, looking to close the distance to get to a place where he could inflict his brand of pain.
"The rougher the better,' Chuvalo said later of his strategy.
It went that way for 15 relentless rounds. But Chuvalo soon realized what he was up against.
"It took all of about 30 seconds for me to realize he was the fastest fighter I'd ever seen," Chuvalo wrote.
Ali threw more than 110 punches in the final round but still Chuvalo, his face showing damage, kept coming.
Using the five-point must system that saw the winner of each round earn five points and the loser a lesser amount, Silvers and the two judges scored it 73-65, 74-63 and 74-62 for Ali.
Chuvalo was the son of Croat immigrants.
His mother worked in Toronto as a chicken plucker at Royce Poultry Packers owned by the father of Ungerman, Chuvalo's future manager. His father was a cattle skinner at Canada Packers.
George said he was drawn to boxing as a boy after setting eyes on a copy of The Ring, a magazine known as "the Bible of boxing." He egged his mother to get him boxing gloves, which she eventually bought at Eaton's department store.
He found a local church that offered boxing training and had his first organized fight at age 10, an exhibition bout declared a draw. He eventually joined a boxing club and by 15 was a 198-pound heavyweight.
He fought 19 times as an amateur, losing just once. In May 1995, he knocked out Peter Piper in Regina to win the Canadian amateur title.
Chuvalo was chosen to represent Canada at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne but turned pro instead. "It didn't make economic sense," he said of remaining an amateur and going to the Games.
Chuvalo went on to become a five-time Canadian heavyweight champion, back when that title still counted, owning the title for most of his 20-year pro career.
He never won a world title, losing to Terrell in a championship bout in 1965, a fight he feels was fixed by mobsters, but his resume includes wins over some of the best of his time, including Jerry Quarry in 1969.
He fought nine times at Madison Square Garden, going 3-6 against top pugilists like Frazier, Foreman, Floyd Patterson and Buster Mathis. His bloody 1965 encounter with Patterson was named fight of the year by The Ring.
"The only guy I really missed was Sonny Liston, because when I signed to fight him (in December 1970) he'd been dead for a week," Chuvalo told The Ring. "He passed away after I'd sent a telegram to the promoter, agreeing terms to the fight at the Montreal Forum."
He hoped to challenge for the Commonwealth title, but could not convince English champion Henry Cooper to fight him. He felt the Canadian Boxing Federation also let him down by not insisting that Cooper face him.
While he was stopped before the limit by Frazier (in July 1967) and Foreman (in August 1970) r, he was never knocked down. The referee stopped the fight in the fourth and third round, respectively, with Chuvalo cut by Frazier and spitting blood against Foreman.
Chuvalo was a busy fighter. He fought 10 times in 1966 alone.
His last bout was a TKO win over George Jerome, a logging camp cook from Vancouver who was the No. 1 contender in Canada, in December 1978 at Toronto's St. Lawrence Market to retain the Canadian title. Chuvalo was 41 and made just $7,500 for the bout.
A bloody Jerome lasted two rounds before the ring doctor stepped in.
"Jerome's corner didn't complain," Chuvalo wrote. "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."
Out of the ring, Chuvalo was a big, friendly man who loved to tell stories and make jokes. But his painful moments were almost beyond imagination.
In 1985 his son Jesse, who began using painkillers after an accident and became an addict, committed suicide. In 1993 another son, Georgie Lee, died of a drug overdose. Four days later, his wife was found dead with a suicide note.
Then, in 1996, his son Steven was found dead in a hotel room with a needle in his arm.
"After Steven died, I was barely able to function," Chuvalo wrote in Toronto Life in 2013. "I felt like I was suffocating every time I went to sleep in the dark.
"I blamed myself for my sons’ deaths — for letting them quit high school, for not putting them in rehab earlier. For years, I was as lifeless as they were. I'm still damaged goods, but I'm finally able to enjoy my life again."
He remarried, to Joanne O'Hara, and began visiting schools across Canada to deliver an anti-drug message. He had two remaining children and said he turned to "mush" whenever he saw his grandchildren.
Chuvalo was inducted in the Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1990 and the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997. He was named to the Order of Canada in 1998 and added to Canada's Walk of Fame in 2005.
A statue of Chuvalo was erected in his family's ancestral home of Ljubuski in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2011.
Some 24 years after his induction into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, Chuvalo took part in a new conference at Mattamy Athletic Centre, site of the old Gardens, honouring the 2014 inductees — and the bell he answered 15 times against Ali some 48 years earlier.
Chuvalo, then 77, rang the bell at the new conference before giving a thumbs-up and then shadowboxing.
"I get reminded of it just about every day of the week," he said of his first fight with Ali.
"I didn't win the fight. But it was a tough battle," he added. "People tell me that when they saw the fight, it made them proud to be Canadian. That makes me proud to be a Canadian. That makes me very, very proud to be a Canadian."
The bell was donated to the Hall of Fame by Michael Shillolo, whose father, Frank Shillolo, used to be the official bell man for the Ontario Athletics Commission.
