Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Zab Judah became one of the most electrifying fighters of his era. A two-division world champion at junior welterweight and welterweight, Judah was known for his lightning-fast hands, explosive combinations, and fearless style inside the ring.
From his early days as a standout amateur to his rise as a professional, Judah faced some of the toughest fighters of his generation and never shied away from a challenge. He earned respect not only for his skill but for his heart, resilience, and the ability to turn fights around with precision counters and devastating power.
Zab’s fights were always must-see events, blending speed, technique, and pure excitement. Even today, his name is remembered among the sport’s most dynamic champions and innovators in the lighter weight divisions.
Brooklyn-born, world-class, unforgettable—Zab Judah truly earned the nickname “Super.”
Harry Lewis, all-time great pound-for-pound fighter, world welterweight champion from 1908 to 1911. Known for his speedy counterpunching, feinting, and powerful left hook, a fellow fighter once described him as "one of those madmen who goes at you like a mouse after cheese".
Inductee Profile
Harry Lewis
Born in 1886 as Harry Besterman, Harry Lewis was recognized as welterweight champion of the world from April, 1908, to March, 1911. Nat Fleischer, founder, editor & publisher of “The Ring” magazine, rated Lewis the sixth-greatest welterweight of all time. With a strong jaw, and an impressive defensive style, Lewis was knocked out only twice in 172 fights spanning his 10-year career.
The family moved from New York City to Philadelphia when he was a child. At 17, he began boxing professional as a featherweight (126 pounds) in 1903 and took his ring surname “Lewis” from a local fight manager.
Moving up to lightweight (135 pounds) in 1905, he quickly demonstrated his potential as a serious contender. Considered an expert counter-puncher, Lewis’ early and mid-career were characterized by powerful left hooks to the body.
Future rival Willie Lewis said Harry Lewis “specialized in knocking out guys who never were knocked out before. Harry Lewis was an artist in feinting and countering. His punches only went a few inches, but boy what authority they carried.”
Lewis boxed Hall-of-Fame and reigning World Lightweight Champion Joe Gans in Philadelphia in 1906. Though the fight ended in a six round No Decision, Lewis was viewed as a future champion despite being down twice. He had competed favorably with one of history’s greatest lightweights.
Lewis claimed pieces of, and then all of, the world welterweight championship in 1908 with victories over Frank Mantell, Terry Martin, and Honey Mellody. He held the crown for three years.
Unable to make the welterweight limit in 1911, Lewis relinquished the title and fought almost exclusively as a middleweight. With fights in France and England, Lewis and his friend Willie Lewis fought twice in front of packed houses. Both bouts were billed as world welterweight title fights. Each fight went 25 rounds and even as draws.
Lewis boxed until 1913, the year he suffered a head injury after being involved in a traffic accident while riding in a taxi. Taken to the hospital, he was diagnosed with a blood clot on his brain. He was 27 years old when he retired and he suffered from partial paralysis the remainder of his life.
Lewis was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2008.
In 1906, Harry Lewis was involved in a fatal match in Grand Rapids, Michigan, against an opponent named Mike Ward. After Lewis knocked out Ward in the ninth round, Ward died later in hospital. Lewis was subsequently charged with murder.
Dark Corners of History
Knockout: the Strange Saga of Harry Lewis, Pugilist (1906)
By: Tobin T. Buhk
The wind howled on the evening of Thursday, November 15, 1906, but the temperature inside the Grand Rapids Auditorium was balmy as a standing-room-only crowd huddled together while they watched the main event: a scheduled ten rounds between two heavy-hitters with quick hands. Harry Lewis and Mike Ward both weighed in at 128, but Ward had a half inch height advantage, standing five seven and a half.
The two pugilists had slugged their way through eight rounds in a contest that many in the audience considered one of the most brutal matches in Grand Rapids history. “The fight was one of the fiercest ever witnessed here,” wrote a Grand Rapids Herald sports writer in his day-after coverage.
Twenty-year-old Harry Lewis sat on his stool and stared across the ring at his opponent, twenty-five-year-old Mike Ward. The native of Sarnia, Ontario, who began fighting in 1900 at the age of fifteen, Ward had compiled a record of twenty-three wins, two losses, and six draws in his seven-year career, including several matches fought in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Lewis shook his head as he studied Ward, whose face had begun to show the punishment of eight rounds. He could barely see out of his swollen eyes; his bent, contorted nose appeared broken; and spots of blood speckled his torso.
He glanced down at his hands. He was used to the lighter, four-and-a-half ounce gloves used in prize fights. These six-ounce gloves felt like weighted balloons.
Ward wobbled out of his corner to begin the ninth round. Lewis moved deftly toward him and began jabbing. Ward couldn’t get his hands up to block the blows—a sign that he was about to tumble.
Unleashing a flurry of jabs and crosses, Lewis backed Ward into the ropes and floored him with a particularly hard right cross. Ward braced himself on one knee and managed to stand up at the count of nine.
Ward was still dazed. He lifted his hands to defend himself, but he lacked the energy to bring them up to his face. Lewis landed another left cross on Ward’s jaw. The force of the blow knocked Ward off his feet and backward. Unconscious, he landed on the canvas headfirst with a thud. Police Sergeant Howell, at ringside, described the knockout punch. “Ward fell partially on his side and lay there unconscious. His head struck the floor with a loud crash.”
Ward lay motionless as the referee finished his count. Exhausted, Lewis fell into the stool set out by his corner men while Ward’s two brothers fanned him. Unable to bring him to his senses, they lifted him off the canvas and carried him back to his corner.
When the fallen boxer didn’t regain consciousness in the minutes following the count, it became evident to everyone that something was wrong. In his dressing room, three doctors examined him while a Catholic priest stood ready to administer last rites. Ward opened his eyes briefly before lapsing back into unconsciousness.
While doctors at St. Mary’s desperately tried to revive Mike Ward, three of the key players nervously waited behind bars at the county jail: Harry Lewis; Eddie Ryan, the referee; and Frank O’Brien, Lewis’ trainer. If Ward died, the three men faced possible criminal charges.
Lewis, visibly shaken, sat with his elbows resting on his knees. “I am sure that the injury was due to his fall,” he mumbled. “When he came up after the first knock-down he looked all right and the blow I hit him afterwards was not hard. It seems that in his semi-conscious condition he was unable to break his fall.”
At 7 a.m. on Friday morning, Mike Ward lost the final fight of his life, and Harry Lewis was about the face his toughest opponent yet.
The autopsy took place on Friday afternoon, November 16. Simeon LeRoy discovered a maroon-colored mass at the back of Ward’s skull—a hemorrhage caused when the back of his head struck the hard mat of the ring. Ward died from “concussion of brain.”
By Friday afternoon, word of the fatal match reached Governor Fred M. Warner, who sent out a message condemning such “pugilistic exhibitions.” Warner pledged to end all boxing matches in Michigan—even exhibitions—and encouraged sheriffs to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law.
Back in Grand Rapids, however, a debate as the nature of a prize fight raged. Lewis and his corner held their ground, while other figures in the case began to backpedal, especially with possible criminal charges looming. Alderman John Fallon, allegedly one of the money men behind the match, insisted he had nothing to do with it. He pointed the finger at events promoter Frank Lynch as the mastermind.
Lewis, Ryan, and O’Brien were given a spacious cell on the second story of the county jail. The jailors never closed the door and gave free access to family, friends, counsel, and reporters. On Friday evening, the accused trio sat with a local reporter doing a front-page feature on the case.
The Grand Rapids Herald reporter read Prosecuting Attorney William B. Brown’s statement explaining the logic behind a murder charge. “The charge will be murder because the state law makes prize fighting a felony, and there is another statute that makes a party guilty of the commission of a felony resulting in the taking of life, even if unintentional, also guilty of murder. But,” Brown added, “whether this was a prize fight or a mere athletic contest is a question of fact to be decided by the court.”
Lewis stared at the newspaperman, who stood at the corner of the cell with notebook in hand. “I don’t see how this case could be made out to be a prize fight,” he said. “It was nothing but a boxing match, given by the club, for which the club had received license from the mayor, and we were simply hired by the club to come here. The money we received was compensation for our services. We signed a contract to this effect.”
He paused to let the reporter finish scribbling notes. “Why, the fact is, we did not even use the four and one-half ounce glove used in prize fighting, but a six ounce glove, a large soft glove of about the same weight as those used in gymnasiums. A case like this came up once in a match I had in Washington, where we were held up for alleged violation of the law against prize fighting. But when it was provide that we were using large gymnastics gloves, six ounce gloves, the same as we used Thursday night, it was decided that the bout was not a prize fight and therefore not a violation of law.”
Besides, he added, he knew of several fatal boxing bouts that did not land the winner in jail on a murder charge. Lewis rattled off several matches during which one of the combatants died after striking his head against the floor. In New Orleans, Lewis explained, Andy Bowen died after a knockout punch from Kid Lavigne. Likewise, Frank Neil killed Harry Tenney in San Francisco. Both Lavigne and Neil avoided any charges whatsoever.
Eddie Ryan chimed in. “It is a regrettable affair,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “and now I wish I had stopped the fight. But there was absolutely no reason to do it after Ward was knocked down the first time in the ninth round. He came up strong. I counted seven before he rose, and he was on his feet on the ninth count and struck at Lewis. And Lewis could not have quit after knocking Ward down the first time, for War was one of the kind that never gives up, and that kind of people when they are apparently clear out sometimes get in a last blow which is often a knockout, and Lewis was afraid of that. And when Lewis struck the last blow it was simply a left hook and not a full swing.”
Frank O’Brien pulled a copy of the contract out of his coat pocket: proof, he argued, that it was an exhibition and not a prize fight.
He read the contract to the Herald man. “Articles of agreement entered into between Frank J. Lynch, party of the first part, and Mike Ward of Sarnia, Ont., and Harry Lewis of Philadelphia, parties of the second.” O’Brien cleared his throat. It had been a long night, and none of the three slept much.
He continued. “Whereby the party of the first part does hereby agree to pay parties of the second part 50 per cent of the gross receipts,” his voice rose an octave, “to spar” he paused and gazed at the reporter for a few seconds, “for points to a decision.”
By Michigan law, O’Brien pointed out, a prize fight meant that some award hinged on the outcome of the fight. It was fight to the finish to win a purse or a belt. In this case, however, the payment was predetermined and the match was scored on points. The loss of Mike Ward was a tragedy, he argued, but not a crime.
William Brown, however, was determined to put the matter in front of a jury. The Grand Jury convened at 9 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, November 17, 1906.
Sgt. Howell, who stood ring side and watched the entire, pathetic spectacle, provided key testimony. Brown asked Howell to recreate the event. “Lewis knocked Ward down with his back against the ropes.” He stood up, placed his hands in front of his face like a boxer defending himself, and leaned backward. “After the count of nine he got up slowly, put up his hands and then Lewis struck him again. Ward fell partially on his side and lay there unconscious. His head struck the floor with a loud crash. His seconds carried him to his corner and doctors were called.”
“What was on the floor?”
“Canvas,” Howell said.
“How many thickness?”
“I don’t know.”
“What rule, if you know any, is there relative to the thickness of padding in the ring of boxing matches?”
“I don’t know of any.”
O’Brien also described the knockout punch. “Lewis struck him first on the head and Ward went down this his back against the ropes. He got to his feet, strong on the count of nine. His hands were in position and he swung for Lewis. Harry stepped back and hooked him again on the head with his right hand. He went down again and his head hit the floor.”
Brown asked O’Brien if, in such a match, the boxer’s goal was to hit an opponent on the jaw or chin in order to knock him out, but O’Brien didn’t take the bait. It was, he said, not a prize fight, but a match scored on points. The goal was simply to land the most punches and score the most points.
By Monday morning, November 19, the jury had not yet returned their verdict, but Harry Lewis had reached a decision of his own. Scarred for life by the death of Mike Ward, he decided to hang up his gloves for good.
Reporters from the city’s two major newspapers—the Herald and the Press—crowded into Lewis’ cell at the county jail to hear his declaration.
“No one will ever see my name in connection with a boxing match again,” Lewis said, “whatever may be the outcome of the proceedings against me.”
The Herald reporter asked Lewis had written to his mother in Philadelphia.
Lewis shrugged. “I have not written to her yet. What could I write?” He paused. “No good of telling her all about what happened. I could only say, ‘All’s well,’ and we have done that by telegram.” He smiled. “And talk about writing, wouldn’t it seem peculiar to write on this stationery with ‘Kent County Jail’ printed across the top.”
The case made national headlines. While 1906 became a banner year for boxers who died in the ring, Harry Lewis became the first boxer charged with willful murder. By the end of the year, however, Brown softened a bit. He reduced the charge to manslaughter and released Lewis.
Even with criminal charges looming, Harry Lewis broke his word and went back into the ring. He fought three matches in Colorado, knocking out Rube Smith in the eighth round, beating Mike “Twin” Sullivan on points after ten rounds, and sending Jimmy Perry home with a sixth round technical knockout.
In March, 1907, he returned to Grand Rapids for one final fight.
The people’s case against Harry Lewis ended like a fifth-round TKO. The murder charge lingered into 1907, when charge against Lewis devolved to manslaughter.
On Thursday, March 7, 1907, Lewis and his co-defendants met with their lawyer, Judge Doyle, and Brown’s successor, Prosecutor John S. McDonald. Lewis’ father, Jacob Besterman, wanted to plead guilty, but his attorney advised him against it. He had examined the case from all angles and saw no way a jury would convict Harry Lewis. Besides, fight promoter Frank Lynch faced the music in court and won an acquittal.
Besterman, afraid of an adverse verdict and possible prison time for Harry, insisted. They reached a plea agreement: if all three defendants pled guilty to minor charges and agreed to pay the fines, the state would drop the murder charge against Lewis. McDonald brought the plea to Judge Stuart.
Stuart addressed the three men before meting out their sentences.
“It makes no matter how this case goes into court, the court must enforce the laws,” he said with a hint of regret in his voice. “I cannot see how I can do otherwise than give Lewis and his father a heavy fine.”
Stuart continued. “The father is really more to blame than Lewis, for he has allowed his son, yet a boy, to go into such business. I could give both fines and prison sentence,” he paused and Jacob Besterman’s face drained of color, “but will omit the latter.”
O’Brien stood to receive his sentence. Stuart fined him $200—the minimum—for aiding and abetting a prize fight. He received the lightest sentence, Judge Stuart noted, because he was “here only as a hired man.”
Lewis was next. He stood and received a fine of $1,000 for participating in a prize fight.
Finally, Lewis’ father Jacob Besterman stood to receive his sentence. Judge Stuart also fined him $1,000 for aiding and abetting a prize fight.
McDonald faced the press after sentencing. In a dig at his predecessor, he characterized the murder charge as ludicrous. “And the charge of engaging in a prize fight is the one which should have been entered against Harry Lewis in the first place, instead of murder, for I do not believe that he could be convicted of the latter before any jury.”
Harry Lewis on the cover of La Vie Au Grand Air, a significant French weekly magazine, published from 1898 to 1922, focusing on sports, early aviation (aeroplanes, airships), cycling, automobiles, and outdoor activities, offering a visual record of technological innovation and sports history.
The great Harry Lewis, fascinating fighter, "specialized in knocking out guys who never were knocked out before", wish there was fight film of him available.
“I loved luring a guy into throwing a punch, then landing my own right hand and hurting him and dropping him. It was the only way I was ever able to express myself. I loved the fight crowd, and they all come for one reason; to see you knocked down and pull yourself up. They want to see you put it on the line, and when you do, that's like you telling them; 'This is what I have to give you tonight.”
I meant to post this earlier in the thread, fascinating interview with Ron Lyle about his career.
Mile High Mauler: Rumblin’ With Ron Lyle
By: Mike Casey
Imagine that you are a Great White Shark and that you are transported back to the Miocene and Pliocene epochs of some 60 million years ago. Not being short on confidence and unaware of the level of competition in your new surroundings, you assume that the balance of power will not be radically disturbed and that you will continue to boss the oceans. Any pretenders to your throne will be quickly dispatched and you will carry on eating as much as you can get as the good life endures.
Then you come upon your ancestral brother, Megladon. He is three or four times your size at a length of up to a hundred feet, his temperament is just as vicious and his massive jaws make yours look like those of a goldfish. He eats whales for lunch. He is the reigning world champion and you know at once that he will beat you every time and probably snack on your remains into the bargain. To heap insult on injury, you might not even make it past some of your fellow contenders in this awesome age of giants.
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DETAILS
Megladons and sharks popped into my mind when I decided to write about Denver’s former heavyweight contender Ron Lyle and the top quality era in which he fought. There were all sorts of fish in that great sea of the 1970s, all hungry and dangerous in their different ways.
There were stingrays and swordfish in the likes of Floyd Patterson, Jimmy Ellis, Jimmy Young, Gregorio Peralta and Larry Middleton. There were whales of varying sizes and aggressive tendencies in George Chuvalo, Oscar Bonavena, Joe Bugner and Buster Mathis. There was even an octopus on the comeback trail in Ernie Terrell.
The members of boxing’s shark family were plentiful and assorted in their potency and staying power. In the back waters were those who flattered to deceive in Jeff (Candy Slim) Merrit, Stan Ward, Mac Foster, Jose Urtain, Jose Luis Garcia and Alvin (Blue) Lewis.
Then there were the big sharks with real and enduring teeth, the thrilling quartet of Jerry Quarry, Ken Norton, Ron Lyle and Earnie Shavers. The heavy punching Lyle, from the Centennial State of Colorado, was a bona-fide member of that select group of contenders, even if he wasn’t the leader of the pack. But they all suffered the same, cruel twist of fate. They were ruled by three megladons in Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Joe Frazier.
Lyle
Ron Lyle was sitting on a park bench on a fine sunny day, looking calm and relaxed and bearing that slightly glazed look that afflicted many others when they were talking to boxing announcer, Howard Cosell. Lyle was being asked about how he got into boxing after a lengthy prison stretch and Cosell was taken aback by the casual way in which Ron related the details of a stormy and near disastrous early life.
He discussed murder and a near fatal stabbing with the matter-of-fact air of a nine-to-fiver describing another tedious day at the office. “It was back in 1961 when I first got involved in a gang fight and a guy got killed. I was sent to the penitentiary for first-degree murder. I was tried for first-degree murder but found guilty of second degree. That was when I first started boxing.”
Watching other prisoners in the ring, Lyle didn’t think that boxing looked too hard and figured he could do well at it. He fought for the first time in 1964, but quickly got derailed in an arena where the fighting and the jostling for power never stops at the ring of a bell.
“I got stabbed. When you’re in prison, man, everybody’s mean or they wouldn’t be there. I was stabbed in the abdomen. One of the prison doctors signed my death certificate, but another doctor wouldn’t give up. I guess he thought he could get to the artery. I was bleeding internally. When they opened me up, they couldn’t find the artery because of all the blood.
“They had to give me thirty-six blood transfusions. I went on the operating table at ten o’clock that morning and didn’t get off it until about five that afternoon.
“They sent me to the hole (solitary confinement). You have nothing there but the letters you get from home and I wasn’t getting too many letters.”
To while away the long hours, Lyle began to exercise and strengthen his body. He was a naturally big and strong man at 6’ 3” and around 215lbs at his fighting weight, and all the hard work soon bore fruit. Setting himself new targets every day, Ron reached the point where he could do a thousand push-ups in an hour. He made the decision to channel his energy into boxing. He made his mind up about something else to. He would win the heavyweight championship of the world.
Lyle always had a formidable presence about him, as well as a suitably mean look. What he also possessed was great determination, fighting spirit and heavy punching power in both hands. Ron additionally had the capacity to learn fast and he quickly matured into an educated hitter who could mix up his shots and inflict significant damage with both hands. Watch the films of him as an amateur and as a learning professional, and you will not see a fighter who just blasts away and hopes for the best.
Lyle fared well as a Simon Pure, but time was of the essence after his seven-year stint at Uncle Sam’s pleasure and he had to move fast. He was already thirty when he turned professional in the spring of 1971 and he needed to make rapid and impressive progress if he were to realise his great ambition of winning the richest prize in sport. He was to come up short in his quest to attain that great goal, but how he tried and how he thrilled us in the attempt.
As a teenager with a typical love of the heavyweights, I was always scanning the rings around the world in various boxing publications, eager to spot the coming of the next colossus who would smash through the existing order and start a new era. One has yet to acquire a meaningful perception of talent at that age, and I was disappointed many times. I remember following the progress of Mac Foster, Jeff Merritt and Spanish slugger Jose Urtain, picturing them as thunder-punching destroyers who would blitz their way to the very top. New sensations would come and go, lighting up the sky briefly before being badly found out. Merrit would collapse in just 47 seconds against Henry Clark, Urtain would be easily humbled by an old Henry Cooper and Foster would be severely beaten by the eternal Comeback Kid, Jerry Quarry.
Ah yes, that great wrecker of reputations, Jerry Quarry. It was Jerry who rose up to halt the rampaging charge of Ron Lyle at Madison Square Garden in 1973, by way of a comprehensive boxing lesson that Quarry fans still love to recall. The master class snapped Ron’s winning streak at nineteen, but the Denver puncher showed his class by doffing his hat to his conqueror and vowing to improve.
I wondered about Ron Lyle after that defeat. Would he simply trail off and become another in-and-out journeyman? Quarry, for all his erratic ways, had a peculiarly permanent effect on others. Thad Spencer never won another fight after being pounded by Jerry. Mac Foster became a trial horse. Buster Mathis never hit the heights again.
But there was something gloriously rugged and contrary about Lyle. He didn’t care for being anybody’s doormat. He had first caught my eye in 1972 with crushing knockouts of Mathis and the tough and tricky Larry Middleton. Big Buster was often mocked, but he was an awfully tough man to knock over. Only Joe Frazier had managed the feat before Lyle. Middleton, just seven months before his third round knockout loss to Lyle, had won many plaudits in London by taking Quarry all the way and losing a razor-thin decision.
Lyle bounced back from the Quarry defeat by winning seven straight before being held to a draw in Germany by Argentina’s canny old fox, Gregorio Peralta. Ron’s next assignment would be against another fighter from the land of the Gauchos. On March 19, 1974, Oscar (Ringo) Bonavena came to Denver.
Let’s get physical
“I never thought I was in trouble,” said Lyle, after sharing Bonavena’s company for twelve bruising rounds on a rough old Tuesday night. “But he’s very physical. The first three rounds were the worst. Man, this guy is tough. Bonavena’s a lot more physical than Jerry Quarry, though Quarry had the finesse. Oscar hits a lot harder.”
Brawling Bonavena, never shy about promoting himself, predicted an early knockout victory over Lyle and came out in determined style. The thick-set, muscled Argentinian wasted no time in swinging big punches at Ron, scoring with a meaty left and a succession of body punches. Lyle was always a slow starter and those hard lefts troubled him for the first three rounds. But Ron seemed to be finding his rhythm by the third as he used his four-inch advantage in height and began hit back at Ringo. Lyle was the heavier man by nine pounds at 216lbs and Oscar was forced to crouch and grapple as his opponent’s stinging blows struck home more often.
Bonavena had broken his hand two years before and injured it again more recently, but it was serving him well and continued to be his most effective weapon as the fight went into the later rounds. Oscar had a game plan, but Ron wouldn’t oblige him for long enough. The South American bull repeatedly tried to trap Lyle on the ropes and shell him with heavy artillery, but Ringo was taking some jarring shots in return. He appeared to lose his orientation for a few fleeting seconds in the sixth round when Ron connected with a slamming right cross. The punch knocked out Bonavena’s mouthpiece, but he fought back viciously as Lyle followed up with combinations.
Oscar continued to come on strong in the seventh round, but he was always making up the slack and never quite reeling himself back on level terms. He got a break of sorts in the tenth, albeit a painful one as Lyle winged one south of the border. Referee Joe Ullman called a time-out as Ringo retired to his knees in some discomfort.
Bonavena knew he needed a big finish and upped his work rate over the last two rounds as the fighters traded heavy blows. But his big surge came too late in the day. He credited Lyle for being a strong and powerful man.
Ron continued to show that power throughout the remainder of his exciting and eventful career, but the boxing ‘cuties’ would always give him trouble. Four months after the Bonavena victory, Ron was going the full route again to gain a unanimous win over the faded but still crafty former WBA champion, Jimmy Ellis. Lyle rumbled on with stoppage victories over Boone Kirkman and Memphis Al Jones, but then ran into an artful trickster in Jimmy Young, who had run into a rich vein of form. Young had been an erratic journeyman for the best part of his career, plying his trade in different parts of the world as one of the game’s classic spoilers. Then he had suddenly learned how to win consistently. Oddly enough, it was after getting stopped in three rounds by Earnie Shavers that Jimmy seemed to see the light. He was unbeaten in eight bouts coming into his match with Lyle in Honolulu and had held Shavers to a draw in their return.
Ron never could figure out Jimmy Young. Lyle was widely outpointed in one of the great heavyweight surprises of 1975, and the result was no fluke. Twenty-one months later, Jimmy would repeat the trick in a return engagement in San Francisco.
But that first loss in the Aloha State handed Ron the opportunity he had long sought. The word was out that Lyle couldn’t handle the smart guys, and the smartest guy of them all decided that the big hitter from Denver was a sufficiently safe option for a title defence. World champion Muhammad Ali gave Ron his big chance at the Convention Center in Las Vegas on May 16, 1975.
If Muhammad figured that Lyle’ ambition was to simply look respectable, it was a foolish assumption. The strong challenger fought with great heart and determination and was ahead on the judges’ scorecards going into the eleventh round. His movement was intelligent and he had scored effectively to the body throughout. It was then that Ali, so often slothful until he was pushed to the very edge, woke up to the realisation that he needed to work and fashion a major offensive. A sudden right to the jaw shook Ron badly and sent him staggering to the ropes. Ali continued to fire well placed punches, driving the challenger into a corner where he sagged under the hail. Referee and former middleweight contender Ferd Hernandez halted the fight, much to Lyle’s anger.
Like every brave and proud fighter, Ron would remain bitter about the stoppage, regarding it as premature. “It was tough,” he said. “I felt I was robbed of the greatest honour in all sports.”
Shooting Down Shavers
The man from the mountains went back to his hometown of Denver angry and motivated. Lyle was never the best man to have a fight with when he was in a bad mood and it seemed only fitting that he should hook up with another renowned gunslinger to clear the air. Lyle against Earnie Shavers was a match made in heaven for heavyweight thrill seekers. To this day, a good old Rocky Mountain pal of mine describes the meeting of Ron and Earnie as one of the greatest slugfests he has ever seen. And he has seen a great many.
The big guns clashed in Denver on September 13, 1975, firing everything they had at each other in fifteen minutes and forty-seven seconds of mayhem. When it was all over, Lyle’s business partner Bill Daniels threw up one of the most loved questions in boxing: What if?
Ali had hurt Lyle in Las Vegas but had failed to deck him. What if Ron had hit the canvas in that fight and got up as flaming mad as he did against Shavers? Lyle was livid over his carelessness when Earnie drew first blood in the second round. The two fighters were exchanging punches when Ron stepped back a little too leisurely and got hammered flush on the jaw by the famous Shavers left hook. It required an awful lot to knock Mr Lyle off his feet and he went slowly as he first wobbled against the ropes before dropping to one knee. He took the eight count and was seething when he straightened up his big body.
“I saw him come out mad in the third round,” recalled Bill Daniels. “That’s the real test of an athlete – to come back – and Ron did it. If that had happened in the Ali fight, Ron might be champion today. We needed this one badly. That comeback showed how badly Ron wanted it.”
And how Lyle came back! He and Earnie continued to test each other’s mettle with some tremendous blows before Ron brought the curtain down with a devastating right cross early in the sixth round.
Foreman at Caesars
Depending on who you are, or perhaps more importantly, what you are made of, a fight with George Foreman can either be perceived as a plum award for all your hard work or an invitation that is only marginally less intimidating than a personal audience with the Prince of Darkness.
After Lyle knocked out Shavers, Big George came back to boxing to get a piece of the action for the first time in fifteen tortuous months. The only fighting he had done since his monumental loss to Ali in Zaire was in a series of embarrassing exhibitions in which Foreman’s lack of confidence was plainly evident.
When George got serious and returned against Lyle at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in January 1976, the erstwhile ‘invincible’ colossus of the division was spinning the wheel of fortune every bit as hopefully as Ron. All sorts of doubts continued to penetrate Foreman’s mind. He became obsessed with what he perceived to be his lack of stamina in the Zaire fight and began to tinker with his natural style in an attempt to better pace himself. He had a new trainer in wise old Gil Clancy, who was secretly concerned and irritated that George was listening to advice from too many other people.
The Foreman-Lyle confrontation was therefore a dangerous match for both men and might well have been more appropriately staged at those famous crossroads down in Mississippi, where Old Nick is reputed to come strolling up those in need of a favour with his latest brochure of attractive offers.
A battle of big punchers always generates a big buzz and a packed crowd of 4,500 simmered with anticipation as Foreman and Lyle answered the first bell and squared off. It is quite amusing now to look back on that opening round, since nothing much happened. The fireworks didn’t go off and the expectant thousands weren’t moved to jump up and spill their popcorn. Today’s more impatient Vegas natives would have probably been booing Ron and George for their caution.
The fighters circled each other warily, as if bracing themselves for the inevitable collision that would assuredly wreck one of them. From the second round, the wonderful and the bizarre took full rein. Foreman began to force Lyle back, something that Ron resented as one of the ring’s natural hunters. He lashed out at George with a series of powerful hooks, but the growing excitement of the crowd was rudely terminated by the premature sound of the bell. A faulty electronic clock had cut the round short by a full two minutes!
It mattered little to such no-nonsense men. Each knew that one would get the other, irrespective of time or any other intervention. Both were fired up for the challenge and began punching in earnest in the third round, rocking each other with heavy blows. It was interesting to study their facial expressions as the pressure increased.
Lyle’s face hid nothing and showed the full effects of the struggle: eyes wide with the intensity of the effort, mouthpiece bared. Foreman, ever impassive, had the slightly bored look of a man who was being made to watch a film he had already seen before.
There were moments in the round when both men looked on the verge of going down as they coldly hammered each other with their best punches. It was the kind of see-saw brawl where fortunes changed so rapidly that anyone with a sizeable bet on the outcome must have been suffering fits.
Yet the best was still to come. The fourth round sprang so many sensations that Caesars Palace seemed to shake to its very foundations from the thunderous noise of the crowd. It was a round of primitive, hit-or-be-hit action, a round of three knockdowns and three shattering minutes in which Foreman and Lyle probably learned more about themselves than in all their previous fights.
Memories of the Ali fight must have come flooding back to George when Lyle suddenly cut him down with a clumping right-left combination. There was pandemonium at Caesars when Foreman hit the deck. Getting knocked down wasn’t expected of George, even after the Ali fight, any more than it was expected of Sonny Liston after being humbled by the same tormentor at Miami Beach and Lewiston. Monsters don’t get slain and we don’t believe it even when they do.
George arose quickly to take the mandatory eight count and gamely took the play away from Lyle by knocking out Ron’s mouthpiece and flooring him with a clubbing right.
Now each man had sampled the full impact of the other’s power, and it was clear that the survivor of this war of wills would be the man with the biggest heart. Foreman’s advantage was short-lived. Amazingly, Lyle turned the fight around again as he stormed back to pound George to the canvas for the second time.
Fight announcer Howard Cosell claimed that he heard something very significant at this point. What he heard was Gil Clancy saying of his fallen charge, “He’s through.” Gil, of course, later denied that he had said anything of the sort.
The bell rang within seconds of the knockdown, but the count continued and Big George staggered to his feet at ‘four’. As he and Lyle made their way groggily back to their corners, Caesars was a cacophonous hub of frantic activity. Phil Spector couldn’t have concocted a more formidable wall of sound. Spectators bounced up and down like excited children, reporters hurriedly updated their notes and cornermen worked feverishly on their respective fighters. I don’t know of any other sport that could paint such a beautifully chaotic picture.
What was Foreman thinking during the minute’s rest? His world had been so full of thunder and lightning over the previous fifteen months. After Ali, was it all going to end for good here? Nobody had ever floored the big man twice in a round before, yet any negative thoughts going through George’s mind must have surely been tempered by the satisfaction of pulling himself back from the brink of oblivion to keep his championship dream alive. The stakes were so much higher in those still largely innocent days. There was still only one heavyweight championship and sometimes only one chance to get it back, whatever the small alphabet family of the WBA and WBC told us to the contrary.
Lyle had snatched back the initiative in that uproarious fourth round and he threw the dice in the fifth in a grandstand effort to finish Foreman off. He staggered George with a combination of punches, but he was now going after a man who was desperate to prove himself a warrior to a cynical public. Wounded men of Foreman’s talent, much like wounded bears, never stop being dangerous.
Launching a violent counter attack, George sent Lyle’s mouthpiece spinning from his mouth a second time as he drove his hurt opponent into a corner with a volley of blows. This time Ron was too stunned to respond. One could see the resistance seeping out of the Denver slugger as his body took the full force of Foreman’s big swings and hooks.
Lyle sagged as if to go down, but he was trapped in the corner and for a moment he had nowhere to fall. Then he slowly toppled forward and rolled onto his side as referee Charley Roth picked u the count. Ron struggled manfully to get up, but Foreman’s incessant attack had proved decisive.
What a fight! What a finish!
Fighting Man
Ron Lyle came again but never quite so gloriously. He never did win the heavyweight championship of the world, but he survived and prospered admirably in a heavyweight era of numerous, true giants. He was a fighting man who continues to be a source of intrigue and something of a cult figure to boxing fans and historians. I called him the Mile High Mauler. After all, he was from classic Dempsey country!
Ron Lyle, brutal fighter, that article was right, Lyle was a shark. Joe Bugner said the worst beating he ever took was from Ron Lyle in 1977, Bugner couldn't breathe after the fight and went to the hospital and the doctors discovered he was bleeding internally. Bugner took a beating from Lyle, after the fight Bugner ended up with purple welts on his sides from Lyle's continuous body shots. Lyle was a big dude, 6'3", powerful, and hit like a mule kicks.
Lyle was a scary dude, he spent 7 years in prison for murder, he was stabbed himself while in prison and was pronounced dead twice but survived the attack after many blood transfusions. Facing a guy like Lyle in the ring would have been quite intimidating.
This is a photo of Ron Lyle taken in 1977 right before his fight with Howard "Big City" Robinson. At the time this photo was taken Lyle was out on bail from a second murder charge, Lyle was arrested and charged with murder after shooting and killing Vernon Clark, a former employee, at Lyle's Denver home during an altercation where Lyle claimed self-defense, stating Clark threatened him with a gun. At the time the shooting happened, Lyle was holding a family gathering and his family was there in another room. Lyle was acquitted in December 1978 after a trial, with the defense successfully arguing the gun fired accidentally during a struggle, though his boxing career faced turmoil during the legal process. Lyle lived a wild, violent life. In this photo, Robinson is holding up a pair of handcuffs and telling Lyle that he's going back to prison, trying to get into Lyle's head before their fight, it didn't work, Lyle knocked him out.
Ron Lyle vs Jack "The Giant" O'Halloran in 1971, great photos showing the brutality of Ron Lyle. O'Halloran is remembered for his role as the menacing-but-mute member of the trio of Kryptonian supervillains banished to the Phantom Zone by Jor-El (Marlon Brando) in Superman (1978) and inadvertently released by Superman in Superman II (1980). Lyle dominated the fight and knocked O'Halloran out in the 4th round.
Ron Lyle vs Earnie Shavers in 1975, one of my all-time favorite fights, two B-29 Superfortress bombers going nuclear. If you haven't seen the fight I would suggest you watch it. The only way I can describe the fight is...bombs away. Lyle survived an early shotgun blast of a knockdown from Shavers, was able to somehow pick himself up, hang in there, and wear Shavers down, finally knocking Shavers out with a barrage of brutal power shots in the 6th round. Both fighters took apocalyptic punishment, there was nothing scientific about this fight, it was a shootout, a war of attrition. Shavers would later say that Ron Lyle was the hardest he'd ever been hit.
Ron Lyle vs George Foreman in 1976. Again, two B-29 Superfortress bombers going nuclear. You got to hand it to Ron Lyle, back-to-back shootouts with two of the most murderous punchers in boxing history, first Shavers and then Foreman, Lyle was fearless. Foreman was asked on more than one occasion who the hardest puncher he ever faced was, and he would usually credit Gerry Cooney, Cleveland Williams, and Ron Lyle as being the hardest hitters. He said those three guys hit so hard that it didn't even hurt. When George Foreman said it didn't hurt, he meant the impact of their punches was so intense it created a numbing, almost anesthetic effect on the brain, overwhelming the pain receptors, making it feel unreal, like a physical shockwave rather than a typical blow, a testament to their incredible power. On one occasion, Foreman flat-out said Lyle hit him the hardest:
"This guy hit me so hard that it didn’t even hurt. Joe Frazier caught me with the left hook but he couldn’t hit like Lyle and although Muhammad knocked me down I was exhausted and still got to my feet. Lyle was the hardest hitter.
The thing about Lyle was he was completely unafraid and challenged me at ring center. Nobody, other than Sonny Liston in sparring, stood and punched it out with me with any success. Joe Frazier only tried once and even the great Muhammad Ali couldn’t back up quick enough. Ron Lyle would not back up.”
This photo of Foreman always gets me, the busted lip and the swelling around his eye, of all the people Foreman went up against in his legendary career, Ron Lyle hurt him the most, he had Foreman on dream street a few times in that fight. Nobody ever battered Foreman around like Lyle did.
Ron Lyle vs Vincent Rondon in 1972. This one got a bit out of control, Lyle shoved the referee. Great photo, look at the camera man laying down in the corner to get his shot.
"Denver heavyweight Ron Lyle pounded out a TKO in the 2nd round of a scheduled 10 rounder over former world light heavyweight champion Vicente Rondon from Venezuela at Mile High Stadium. Lyle showed the crowd of 8,340 that he can come out smoking if he wants to instead of feeling out his opponent as he has in the past. In the 2nd round, Rondon came out swinging, but Lyle returned the fire and pinned Rondon in a corner. As soon as Lyle saw an opening he started battering the Venezuelan with right and left blows. Referee Ray Keech moved in to separate Lyle from Rondon and Lyle responded by pushing Keech to the side and continued to go after his opponent. The reason for Lyle's fury was that Rondon began jabbing his thumb and glove laces into Lyle's eyes." - Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph
Post fight comments:
"Sure he pushed the referee. He was getting a thumb and laces in the face. Lyle was mad, and what would you do if that happened to you?" - Bobby Lewis, Lyle's trainer
"He got me twice in the eyes, but I got him into the corner in the 2nd round and he had to come to me." -Ron Lyle
Ron Lyle vs German heavyweight Jurgin Blin in 1973.
"Ron Lyle registered his 25th pro triumph against one setback with a smashing two-round KO over Germany's Jurgen Blin in Denver. Blin opened with a rush, fists swirling. But Ron, countering with wrist-deep shots to the German's gut, soon had his foe covering up and frantically back-pedaling. Lyle continued his body assault in the 2nd frame, then suddenly switched his attack to the head. A right uppercut stunned Blin and a follow-up left hook dumped Jurgen to the canvas. At the count of nine Blin staggered to his feet but was obviously defenseless and referee Joe Ullmer wisely rescued him at the 1:01 mark of the round." -INTERNATIONAL BOXING, February 1974 issue
The silhouette of Ron Lyle during a visit to Colorado State Penitentiary, where he was a prisoner for seven and a half years, where he was stabbed and pronounced dead on the operating table twice. The man went through pure hell in that place and was lucky to make it out alive. I would love to own the original type 1 photo of this image, I've been searching ebay for literally years, but it hasn't popped up yet.
Ron Lyle with his International Boxing Trophy, this photo was taken in 1971 right before he turned pro, this is the image that was used on his 2011 Leaf Ali Opponents card. There's a Bronze version of this card which is the base, a Silver version that is numbered to 25 copies, and a Gold version that's numbered to 10 copies. This is the Silver parallel version of the card numbered to 25 copies.
Fritz Chervet was a Swiss flyweight who challenged for the WBA flyweight title twice in 1973 and 1974. At regional level he held the European flyweight title twice between 1972 and 1974. Chervet's boxing career began on 18 May 1962 in Geneva against Daniel Villaume. He became the European flyweight champion on 3 March 1972 after a victory against Fernando Atzori by referee stoppage in the eleventh round. He lost the European title the next year but regained it on 26 December 1973. He was twice defeated for the world title by Chartchai Chionoi in 1973 and 1974. Chervet also fought the likes of Henry Nissen in Australia and Masao Ohba in Japan. He retired in 1976 with a record of 59 wins, 9 losses, 2 draws, and 1 no contest. Chervet was hugely popular in his day and is hailed as the best fighter ever from Switzerland.
Fritz Chervet came from a family of boxers, and even as a teenager, his wish was to become a professional boxer. Under the guidance of Bernese trainer Charly Bühler, he consistently implemented Bühler's style, which involved maintaining an impenetrable double guard and avoiding head shots. Chervet began his professional career in 1962 and won the European flyweight title in 1972 with his victory over Fernando Atzori. The following year, he lost to Thai boxer Chartchai Chionoi in a fight for the vacant world title at the National Stadium Gymnasium in Bangkok. In 1974, he challenged Chionoi again at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, losing on points. He ended his professional boxing career in 1976 and became an assistant usher and wardrobe attendant at the Federal Parliament Building.
Let's get some photos of Fritz Chervet in here, I like giving some recognition for these Gladiators that don't get much mention. This is my favorite image of Chervet, taken during his fight with Chartchai Chionoi in 1974, it's just a beast of a photo, Chervet looks like he's ready to go, the hand holding the cigarette, awesome photo.
Comments
Time for a music break, a gem from the 90s.
Zab “Super” Judah
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Zab Judah became one of the most electrifying fighters of his era. A two-division world champion at junior welterweight and welterweight, Judah was known for his lightning-fast hands, explosive combinations, and fearless style inside the ring.
From his early days as a standout amateur to his rise as a professional, Judah faced some of the toughest fighters of his generation and never shied away from a challenge. He earned respect not only for his skill but for his heart, resilience, and the ability to turn fights around with precision counters and devastating power.
Zab’s fights were always must-see events, blending speed, technique, and pure excitement. Even today, his name is remembered among the sport’s most dynamic champions and innovators in the lighter weight divisions.
Brooklyn-born, world-class, unforgettable—Zab Judah truly earned the nickname “Super.”
Zab Judah was a Gladiator.
Harry Lewis, all-time great pound-for-pound fighter, world welterweight champion from 1908 to 1911. Known for his speedy counterpunching, feinting, and powerful left hook, a fellow fighter once described him as "one of those madmen who goes at you like a mouse after cheese".
Inductee Profile
Harry Lewis
Born in 1886 as Harry Besterman, Harry Lewis was recognized as welterweight champion of the world from April, 1908, to March, 1911. Nat Fleischer, founder, editor & publisher of “The Ring” magazine, rated Lewis the sixth-greatest welterweight of all time. With a strong jaw, and an impressive defensive style, Lewis was knocked out only twice in 172 fights spanning his 10-year career.
The family moved from New York City to Philadelphia when he was a child. At 17, he began boxing professional as a featherweight (126 pounds) in 1903 and took his ring surname “Lewis” from a local fight manager.
Moving up to lightweight (135 pounds) in 1905, he quickly demonstrated his potential as a serious contender. Considered an expert counter-puncher, Lewis’ early and mid-career were characterized by powerful left hooks to the body.
Future rival Willie Lewis said Harry Lewis “specialized in knocking out guys who never were knocked out before. Harry Lewis was an artist in feinting and countering. His punches only went a few inches, but boy what authority they carried.”
Lewis boxed Hall-of-Fame and reigning World Lightweight Champion Joe Gans in Philadelphia in 1906. Though the fight ended in a six round No Decision, Lewis was viewed as a future champion despite being down twice. He had competed favorably with one of history’s greatest lightweights.
Lewis claimed pieces of, and then all of, the world welterweight championship in 1908 with victories over Frank Mantell, Terry Martin, and Honey Mellody. He held the crown for three years.
Unable to make the welterweight limit in 1911, Lewis relinquished the title and fought almost exclusively as a middleweight. With fights in France and England, Lewis and his friend Willie Lewis fought twice in front of packed houses. Both bouts were billed as world welterweight title fights. Each fight went 25 rounds and even as draws.
Lewis boxed until 1913, the year he suffered a head injury after being involved in a traffic accident while riding in a taxi. Taken to the hospital, he was diagnosed with a blood clot on his brain. He was 27 years old when he retired and he suffered from partial paralysis the remainder of his life.
Lewis was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2008.
In 1906, Harry Lewis was involved in a fatal match in Grand Rapids, Michigan, against an opponent named Mike Ward. After Lewis knocked out Ward in the ninth round, Ward died later in hospital. Lewis was subsequently charged with murder.
Dark Corners of History
Knockout: the Strange Saga of Harry Lewis, Pugilist (1906)
By: Tobin T. Buhk
The wind howled on the evening of Thursday, November 15, 1906, but the temperature inside the Grand Rapids Auditorium was balmy as a standing-room-only crowd huddled together while they watched the main event: a scheduled ten rounds between two heavy-hitters with quick hands. Harry Lewis and Mike Ward both weighed in at 128, but Ward had a half inch height advantage, standing five seven and a half.
The two pugilists had slugged their way through eight rounds in a contest that many in the audience considered one of the most brutal matches in Grand Rapids history. “The fight was one of the fiercest ever witnessed here,” wrote a Grand Rapids Herald sports writer in his day-after coverage.
Twenty-year-old Harry Lewis sat on his stool and stared across the ring at his opponent, twenty-five-year-old Mike Ward. The native of Sarnia, Ontario, who began fighting in 1900 at the age of fifteen, Ward had compiled a record of twenty-three wins, two losses, and six draws in his seven-year career, including several matches fought in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Lewis shook his head as he studied Ward, whose face had begun to show the punishment of eight rounds. He could barely see out of his swollen eyes; his bent, contorted nose appeared broken; and spots of blood speckled his torso.
He glanced down at his hands. He was used to the lighter, four-and-a-half ounce gloves used in prize fights. These six-ounce gloves felt like weighted balloons.
Ward wobbled out of his corner to begin the ninth round. Lewis moved deftly toward him and began jabbing. Ward couldn’t get his hands up to block the blows—a sign that he was about to tumble.
Unleashing a flurry of jabs and crosses, Lewis backed Ward into the ropes and floored him with a particularly hard right cross. Ward braced himself on one knee and managed to stand up at the count of nine.
Ward was still dazed. He lifted his hands to defend himself, but he lacked the energy to bring them up to his face. Lewis landed another left cross on Ward’s jaw. The force of the blow knocked Ward off his feet and backward. Unconscious, he landed on the canvas headfirst with a thud. Police Sergeant Howell, at ringside, described the knockout punch. “Ward fell partially on his side and lay there unconscious. His head struck the floor with a loud crash.”
Ward lay motionless as the referee finished his count. Exhausted, Lewis fell into the stool set out by his corner men while Ward’s two brothers fanned him. Unable to bring him to his senses, they lifted him off the canvas and carried him back to his corner.
When the fallen boxer didn’t regain consciousness in the minutes following the count, it became evident to everyone that something was wrong. In his dressing room, three doctors examined him while a Catholic priest stood ready to administer last rites. Ward opened his eyes briefly before lapsing back into unconsciousness.
While doctors at St. Mary’s desperately tried to revive Mike Ward, three of the key players nervously waited behind bars at the county jail: Harry Lewis; Eddie Ryan, the referee; and Frank O’Brien, Lewis’ trainer. If Ward died, the three men faced possible criminal charges.
Lewis, visibly shaken, sat with his elbows resting on his knees. “I am sure that the injury was due to his fall,” he mumbled. “When he came up after the first knock-down he looked all right and the blow I hit him afterwards was not hard. It seems that in his semi-conscious condition he was unable to break his fall.”
At 7 a.m. on Friday morning, Mike Ward lost the final fight of his life, and Harry Lewis was about the face his toughest opponent yet.
The autopsy took place on Friday afternoon, November 16. Simeon LeRoy discovered a maroon-colored mass at the back of Ward’s skull—a hemorrhage caused when the back of his head struck the hard mat of the ring. Ward died from “concussion of brain.”
By Friday afternoon, word of the fatal match reached Governor Fred M. Warner, who sent out a message condemning such “pugilistic exhibitions.” Warner pledged to end all boxing matches in Michigan—even exhibitions—and encouraged sheriffs to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law.
Back in Grand Rapids, however, a debate as the nature of a prize fight raged. Lewis and his corner held their ground, while other figures in the case began to backpedal, especially with possible criminal charges looming. Alderman John Fallon, allegedly one of the money men behind the match, insisted he had nothing to do with it. He pointed the finger at events promoter Frank Lynch as the mastermind.
Lewis, Ryan, and O’Brien were given a spacious cell on the second story of the county jail. The jailors never closed the door and gave free access to family, friends, counsel, and reporters. On Friday evening, the accused trio sat with a local reporter doing a front-page feature on the case.
The Grand Rapids Herald reporter read Prosecuting Attorney William B. Brown’s statement explaining the logic behind a murder charge. “The charge will be murder because the state law makes prize fighting a felony, and there is another statute that makes a party guilty of the commission of a felony resulting in the taking of life, even if unintentional, also guilty of murder. But,” Brown added, “whether this was a prize fight or a mere athletic contest is a question of fact to be decided by the court.”
Lewis stared at the newspaperman, who stood at the corner of the cell with notebook in hand. “I don’t see how this case could be made out to be a prize fight,” he said. “It was nothing but a boxing match, given by the club, for which the club had received license from the mayor, and we were simply hired by the club to come here. The money we received was compensation for our services. We signed a contract to this effect.”
He paused to let the reporter finish scribbling notes. “Why, the fact is, we did not even use the four and one-half ounce glove used in prize fighting, but a six ounce glove, a large soft glove of about the same weight as those used in gymnasiums. A case like this came up once in a match I had in Washington, where we were held up for alleged violation of the law against prize fighting. But when it was provide that we were using large gymnastics gloves, six ounce gloves, the same as we used Thursday night, it was decided that the bout was not a prize fight and therefore not a violation of law.”
Besides, he added, he knew of several fatal boxing bouts that did not land the winner in jail on a murder charge. Lewis rattled off several matches during which one of the combatants died after striking his head against the floor. In New Orleans, Lewis explained, Andy Bowen died after a knockout punch from Kid Lavigne. Likewise, Frank Neil killed Harry Tenney in San Francisco. Both Lavigne and Neil avoided any charges whatsoever.
Eddie Ryan chimed in. “It is a regrettable affair,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “and now I wish I had stopped the fight. But there was absolutely no reason to do it after Ward was knocked down the first time in the ninth round. He came up strong. I counted seven before he rose, and he was on his feet on the ninth count and struck at Lewis. And Lewis could not have quit after knocking Ward down the first time, for War was one of the kind that never gives up, and that kind of people when they are apparently clear out sometimes get in a last blow which is often a knockout, and Lewis was afraid of that. And when Lewis struck the last blow it was simply a left hook and not a full swing.”
Frank O’Brien pulled a copy of the contract out of his coat pocket: proof, he argued, that it was an exhibition and not a prize fight.
He read the contract to the Herald man. “Articles of agreement entered into between Frank J. Lynch, party of the first part, and Mike Ward of Sarnia, Ont., and Harry Lewis of Philadelphia, parties of the second.” O’Brien cleared his throat. It had been a long night, and none of the three slept much.
He continued. “Whereby the party of the first part does hereby agree to pay parties of the second part 50 per cent of the gross receipts,” his voice rose an octave, “to spar” he paused and gazed at the reporter for a few seconds, “for points to a decision.”
By Michigan law, O’Brien pointed out, a prize fight meant that some award hinged on the outcome of the fight. It was fight to the finish to win a purse or a belt. In this case, however, the payment was predetermined and the match was scored on points. The loss of Mike Ward was a tragedy, he argued, but not a crime.
William Brown, however, was determined to put the matter in front of a jury. The Grand Jury convened at 9 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, November 17, 1906.
Sgt. Howell, who stood ring side and watched the entire, pathetic spectacle, provided key testimony. Brown asked Howell to recreate the event. “Lewis knocked Ward down with his back against the ropes.” He stood up, placed his hands in front of his face like a boxer defending himself, and leaned backward. “After the count of nine he got up slowly, put up his hands and then Lewis struck him again. Ward fell partially on his side and lay there unconscious. His head struck the floor with a loud crash. His seconds carried him to his corner and doctors were called.”
“What was on the floor?”
“Canvas,” Howell said.
“How many thickness?”
“I don’t know.”
“What rule, if you know any, is there relative to the thickness of padding in the ring of boxing matches?”
“I don’t know of any.”
O’Brien also described the knockout punch. “Lewis struck him first on the head and Ward went down this his back against the ropes. He got to his feet, strong on the count of nine. His hands were in position and he swung for Lewis. Harry stepped back and hooked him again on the head with his right hand. He went down again and his head hit the floor.”
Brown asked O’Brien if, in such a match, the boxer’s goal was to hit an opponent on the jaw or chin in order to knock him out, but O’Brien didn’t take the bait. It was, he said, not a prize fight, but a match scored on points. The goal was simply to land the most punches and score the most points.
By Monday morning, November 19, the jury had not yet returned their verdict, but Harry Lewis had reached a decision of his own. Scarred for life by the death of Mike Ward, he decided to hang up his gloves for good.
Reporters from the city’s two major newspapers—the Herald and the Press—crowded into Lewis’ cell at the county jail to hear his declaration.
“No one will ever see my name in connection with a boxing match again,” Lewis said, “whatever may be the outcome of the proceedings against me.”
The Herald reporter asked Lewis had written to his mother in Philadelphia.
Lewis shrugged. “I have not written to her yet. What could I write?” He paused. “No good of telling her all about what happened. I could only say, ‘All’s well,’ and we have done that by telegram.” He smiled. “And talk about writing, wouldn’t it seem peculiar to write on this stationery with ‘Kent County Jail’ printed across the top.”
The case made national headlines. While 1906 became a banner year for boxers who died in the ring, Harry Lewis became the first boxer charged with willful murder. By the end of the year, however, Brown softened a bit. He reduced the charge to manslaughter and released Lewis.
Even with criminal charges looming, Harry Lewis broke his word and went back into the ring. He fought three matches in Colorado, knocking out Rube Smith in the eighth round, beating Mike “Twin” Sullivan on points after ten rounds, and sending Jimmy Perry home with a sixth round technical knockout.
In March, 1907, he returned to Grand Rapids for one final fight.
The people’s case against Harry Lewis ended like a fifth-round TKO. The murder charge lingered into 1907, when charge against Lewis devolved to manslaughter.
On Thursday, March 7, 1907, Lewis and his co-defendants met with their lawyer, Judge Doyle, and Brown’s successor, Prosecutor John S. McDonald. Lewis’ father, Jacob Besterman, wanted to plead guilty, but his attorney advised him against it. He had examined the case from all angles and saw no way a jury would convict Harry Lewis. Besides, fight promoter Frank Lynch faced the music in court and won an acquittal.
Besterman, afraid of an adverse verdict and possible prison time for Harry, insisted. They reached a plea agreement: if all three defendants pled guilty to minor charges and agreed to pay the fines, the state would drop the murder charge against Lewis. McDonald brought the plea to Judge Stuart.
Stuart addressed the three men before meting out their sentences.
“It makes no matter how this case goes into court, the court must enforce the laws,” he said with a hint of regret in his voice. “I cannot see how I can do otherwise than give Lewis and his father a heavy fine.”
Stuart continued. “The father is really more to blame than Lewis, for he has allowed his son, yet a boy, to go into such business. I could give both fines and prison sentence,” he paused and Jacob Besterman’s face drained of color, “but will omit the latter.”
O’Brien stood to receive his sentence. Stuart fined him $200—the minimum—for aiding and abetting a prize fight. He received the lightest sentence, Judge Stuart noted, because he was “here only as a hired man.”
Lewis was next. He stood and received a fine of $1,000 for participating in a prize fight.
Finally, Lewis’ father Jacob Besterman stood to receive his sentence. Judge Stuart also fined him $1,000 for aiding and abetting a prize fight.
McDonald faced the press after sentencing. In a dig at his predecessor, he characterized the murder charge as ludicrous. “And the charge of engaging in a prize fight is the one which should have been entered against Harry Lewis in the first place, instead of murder, for I do not believe that he could be convicted of the latter before any jury.”
This is one of my all-time favorite boxing photos, Harry Lewis, he looks like a silent film star, sick photo.
Harry Lewis on a Police Gazette premium in the early 1900s.
Harry Lewis on "Health and Strength" postcards in the early 1900s.
Harry Lewis (left) and boxer Jack Hanlon on a cabinet card in the early 1900s.
Harry Lewis on a French postcard in the early 1900s.
Harry Lewis on a 1912 Cohen, Weenen & Company tobacco trading card.
Harry Lewis on the cover of La Vie Au Grand Air, a significant French weekly magazine, published from 1898 to 1922, focusing on sports, early aviation (aeroplanes, airships), cycling, automobiles, and outdoor activities, offering a visual record of technological innovation and sports history.
An on-site poster for the fight between Harry Lewis and Georges Carpentier in 1911.
The great Harry Lewis, fascinating fighter, "specialized in knocking out guys who never were knocked out before", wish there was fight film of him available.
“I loved luring a guy into throwing a punch, then landing my own right hand and hurting him and dropping him. It was the only way I was ever able to express myself. I loved the fight crowd, and they all come for one reason; to see you knocked down and pull yourself up. They want to see you put it on the line, and when you do, that's like you telling them; 'This is what I have to give you tonight.”
I meant to post this earlier in the thread, fascinating interview with Ron Lyle about his career.
Mile High Mauler: Rumblin’ With Ron Lyle
By: Mike Casey
Imagine that you are a Great White Shark and that you are transported back to the Miocene and Pliocene epochs of some 60 million years ago. Not being short on confidence and unaware of the level of competition in your new surroundings, you assume that the balance of power will not be radically disturbed and that you will continue to boss the oceans. Any pretenders to your throne will be quickly dispatched and you will carry on eating as much as you can get as the good life endures.
Then you come upon your ancestral brother, Megladon. He is three or four times your size at a length of up to a hundred feet, his temperament is just as vicious and his massive jaws make yours look like those of a goldfish. He eats whales for lunch. He is the reigning world champion and you know at once that he will beat you every time and probably snack on your remains into the bargain. To heap insult on injury, you might not even make it past some of your fellow contenders in this awesome age of giants.
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Megladons and sharks popped into my mind when I decided to write about Denver’s former heavyweight contender Ron Lyle and the top quality era in which he fought. There were all sorts of fish in that great sea of the 1970s, all hungry and dangerous in their different ways.
There were stingrays and swordfish in the likes of Floyd Patterson, Jimmy Ellis, Jimmy Young, Gregorio Peralta and Larry Middleton. There were whales of varying sizes and aggressive tendencies in George Chuvalo, Oscar Bonavena, Joe Bugner and Buster Mathis. There was even an octopus on the comeback trail in Ernie Terrell.
The members of boxing’s shark family were plentiful and assorted in their potency and staying power. In the back waters were those who flattered to deceive in Jeff (Candy Slim) Merrit, Stan Ward, Mac Foster, Jose Urtain, Jose Luis Garcia and Alvin (Blue) Lewis.
Then there were the big sharks with real and enduring teeth, the thrilling quartet of Jerry Quarry, Ken Norton, Ron Lyle and Earnie Shavers. The heavy punching Lyle, from the Centennial State of Colorado, was a bona-fide member of that select group of contenders, even if he wasn’t the leader of the pack. But they all suffered the same, cruel twist of fate. They were ruled by three megladons in Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Joe Frazier.
Lyle
Ron Lyle was sitting on a park bench on a fine sunny day, looking calm and relaxed and bearing that slightly glazed look that afflicted many others when they were talking to boxing announcer, Howard Cosell. Lyle was being asked about how he got into boxing after a lengthy prison stretch and Cosell was taken aback by the casual way in which Ron related the details of a stormy and near disastrous early life.
He discussed murder and a near fatal stabbing with the matter-of-fact air of a nine-to-fiver describing another tedious day at the office. “It was back in 1961 when I first got involved in a gang fight and a guy got killed. I was sent to the penitentiary for first-degree murder. I was tried for first-degree murder but found guilty of second degree. That was when I first started boxing.”
Watching other prisoners in the ring, Lyle didn’t think that boxing looked too hard and figured he could do well at it. He fought for the first time in 1964, but quickly got derailed in an arena where the fighting and the jostling for power never stops at the ring of a bell.
“I got stabbed. When you’re in prison, man, everybody’s mean or they wouldn’t be there. I was stabbed in the abdomen. One of the prison doctors signed my death certificate, but another doctor wouldn’t give up. I guess he thought he could get to the artery. I was bleeding internally. When they opened me up, they couldn’t find the artery because of all the blood.
“They had to give me thirty-six blood transfusions. I went on the operating table at ten o’clock that morning and didn’t get off it until about five that afternoon.
“They sent me to the hole (solitary confinement). You have nothing there but the letters you get from home and I wasn’t getting too many letters.”
To while away the long hours, Lyle began to exercise and strengthen his body. He was a naturally big and strong man at 6’ 3” and around 215lbs at his fighting weight, and all the hard work soon bore fruit. Setting himself new targets every day, Ron reached the point where he could do a thousand push-ups in an hour. He made the decision to channel his energy into boxing. He made his mind up about something else to. He would win the heavyweight championship of the world.
Lyle always had a formidable presence about him, as well as a suitably mean look. What he also possessed was great determination, fighting spirit and heavy punching power in both hands. Ron additionally had the capacity to learn fast and he quickly matured into an educated hitter who could mix up his shots and inflict significant damage with both hands. Watch the films of him as an amateur and as a learning professional, and you will not see a fighter who just blasts away and hopes for the best.
Lyle fared well as a Simon Pure, but time was of the essence after his seven-year stint at Uncle Sam’s pleasure and he had to move fast. He was already thirty when he turned professional in the spring of 1971 and he needed to make rapid and impressive progress if he were to realise his great ambition of winning the richest prize in sport. He was to come up short in his quest to attain that great goal, but how he tried and how he thrilled us in the attempt.
As a teenager with a typical love of the heavyweights, I was always scanning the rings around the world in various boxing publications, eager to spot the coming of the next colossus who would smash through the existing order and start a new era. One has yet to acquire a meaningful perception of talent at that age, and I was disappointed many times. I remember following the progress of Mac Foster, Jeff Merritt and Spanish slugger Jose Urtain, picturing them as thunder-punching destroyers who would blitz their way to the very top. New sensations would come and go, lighting up the sky briefly before being badly found out. Merrit would collapse in just 47 seconds against Henry Clark, Urtain would be easily humbled by an old Henry Cooper and Foster would be severely beaten by the eternal Comeback Kid, Jerry Quarry.
Ah yes, that great wrecker of reputations, Jerry Quarry. It was Jerry who rose up to halt the rampaging charge of Ron Lyle at Madison Square Garden in 1973, by way of a comprehensive boxing lesson that Quarry fans still love to recall. The master class snapped Ron’s winning streak at nineteen, but the Denver puncher showed his class by doffing his hat to his conqueror and vowing to improve.
I wondered about Ron Lyle after that defeat. Would he simply trail off and become another in-and-out journeyman? Quarry, for all his erratic ways, had a peculiarly permanent effect on others. Thad Spencer never won another fight after being pounded by Jerry. Mac Foster became a trial horse. Buster Mathis never hit the heights again.
But there was something gloriously rugged and contrary about Lyle. He didn’t care for being anybody’s doormat. He had first caught my eye in 1972 with crushing knockouts of Mathis and the tough and tricky Larry Middleton. Big Buster was often mocked, but he was an awfully tough man to knock over. Only Joe Frazier had managed the feat before Lyle. Middleton, just seven months before his third round knockout loss to Lyle, had won many plaudits in London by taking Quarry all the way and losing a razor-thin decision.
Lyle bounced back from the Quarry defeat by winning seven straight before being held to a draw in Germany by Argentina’s canny old fox, Gregorio Peralta. Ron’s next assignment would be against another fighter from the land of the Gauchos. On March 19, 1974, Oscar (Ringo) Bonavena came to Denver.
Let’s get physical
“I never thought I was in trouble,” said Lyle, after sharing Bonavena’s company for twelve bruising rounds on a rough old Tuesday night. “But he’s very physical. The first three rounds were the worst. Man, this guy is tough. Bonavena’s a lot more physical than Jerry Quarry, though Quarry had the finesse. Oscar hits a lot harder.”
Brawling Bonavena, never shy about promoting himself, predicted an early knockout victory over Lyle and came out in determined style. The thick-set, muscled Argentinian wasted no time in swinging big punches at Ron, scoring with a meaty left and a succession of body punches. Lyle was always a slow starter and those hard lefts troubled him for the first three rounds. But Ron seemed to be finding his rhythm by the third as he used his four-inch advantage in height and began hit back at Ringo. Lyle was the heavier man by nine pounds at 216lbs and Oscar was forced to crouch and grapple as his opponent’s stinging blows struck home more often.
Bonavena had broken his hand two years before and injured it again more recently, but it was serving him well and continued to be his most effective weapon as the fight went into the later rounds. Oscar had a game plan, but Ron wouldn’t oblige him for long enough. The South American bull repeatedly tried to trap Lyle on the ropes and shell him with heavy artillery, but Ringo was taking some jarring shots in return. He appeared to lose his orientation for a few fleeting seconds in the sixth round when Ron connected with a slamming right cross. The punch knocked out Bonavena’s mouthpiece, but he fought back viciously as Lyle followed up with combinations.
Oscar continued to come on strong in the seventh round, but he was always making up the slack and never quite reeling himself back on level terms. He got a break of sorts in the tenth, albeit a painful one as Lyle winged one south of the border. Referee Joe Ullman called a time-out as Ringo retired to his knees in some discomfort.
Bonavena knew he needed a big finish and upped his work rate over the last two rounds as the fighters traded heavy blows. But his big surge came too late in the day. He credited Lyle for being a strong and powerful man.
Ron continued to show that power throughout the remainder of his exciting and eventful career, but the boxing ‘cuties’ would always give him trouble. Four months after the Bonavena victory, Ron was going the full route again to gain a unanimous win over the faded but still crafty former WBA champion, Jimmy Ellis. Lyle rumbled on with stoppage victories over Boone Kirkman and Memphis Al Jones, but then ran into an artful trickster in Jimmy Young, who had run into a rich vein of form. Young had been an erratic journeyman for the best part of his career, plying his trade in different parts of the world as one of the game’s classic spoilers. Then he had suddenly learned how to win consistently. Oddly enough, it was after getting stopped in three rounds by Earnie Shavers that Jimmy seemed to see the light. He was unbeaten in eight bouts coming into his match with Lyle in Honolulu and had held Shavers to a draw in their return.
Ron never could figure out Jimmy Young. Lyle was widely outpointed in one of the great heavyweight surprises of 1975, and the result was no fluke. Twenty-one months later, Jimmy would repeat the trick in a return engagement in San Francisco.
But that first loss in the Aloha State handed Ron the opportunity he had long sought. The word was out that Lyle couldn’t handle the smart guys, and the smartest guy of them all decided that the big hitter from Denver was a sufficiently safe option for a title defence. World champion Muhammad Ali gave Ron his big chance at the Convention Center in Las Vegas on May 16, 1975.
If Muhammad figured that Lyle’ ambition was to simply look respectable, it was a foolish assumption. The strong challenger fought with great heart and determination and was ahead on the judges’ scorecards going into the eleventh round. His movement was intelligent and he had scored effectively to the body throughout. It was then that Ali, so often slothful until he was pushed to the very edge, woke up to the realisation that he needed to work and fashion a major offensive. A sudden right to the jaw shook Ron badly and sent him staggering to the ropes. Ali continued to fire well placed punches, driving the challenger into a corner where he sagged under the hail. Referee and former middleweight contender Ferd Hernandez halted the fight, much to Lyle’s anger.
Like every brave and proud fighter, Ron would remain bitter about the stoppage, regarding it as premature. “It was tough,” he said. “I felt I was robbed of the greatest honour in all sports.”
Shooting Down Shavers
The man from the mountains went back to his hometown of Denver angry and motivated. Lyle was never the best man to have a fight with when he was in a bad mood and it seemed only fitting that he should hook up with another renowned gunslinger to clear the air. Lyle against Earnie Shavers was a match made in heaven for heavyweight thrill seekers. To this day, a good old Rocky Mountain pal of mine describes the meeting of Ron and Earnie as one of the greatest slugfests he has ever seen. And he has seen a great many.
The big guns clashed in Denver on September 13, 1975, firing everything they had at each other in fifteen minutes and forty-seven seconds of mayhem. When it was all over, Lyle’s business partner Bill Daniels threw up one of the most loved questions in boxing: What if?
Ali had hurt Lyle in Las Vegas but had failed to deck him. What if Ron had hit the canvas in that fight and got up as flaming mad as he did against Shavers? Lyle was livid over his carelessness when Earnie drew first blood in the second round. The two fighters were exchanging punches when Ron stepped back a little too leisurely and got hammered flush on the jaw by the famous Shavers left hook. It required an awful lot to knock Mr Lyle off his feet and he went slowly as he first wobbled against the ropes before dropping to one knee. He took the eight count and was seething when he straightened up his big body.
“I saw him come out mad in the third round,” recalled Bill Daniels. “That’s the real test of an athlete – to come back – and Ron did it. If that had happened in the Ali fight, Ron might be champion today. We needed this one badly. That comeback showed how badly Ron wanted it.”
And how Lyle came back! He and Earnie continued to test each other’s mettle with some tremendous blows before Ron brought the curtain down with a devastating right cross early in the sixth round.
Foreman at Caesars
Depending on who you are, or perhaps more importantly, what you are made of, a fight with George Foreman can either be perceived as a plum award for all your hard work or an invitation that is only marginally less intimidating than a personal audience with the Prince of Darkness.
After Lyle knocked out Shavers, Big George came back to boxing to get a piece of the action for the first time in fifteen tortuous months. The only fighting he had done since his monumental loss to Ali in Zaire was in a series of embarrassing exhibitions in which Foreman’s lack of confidence was plainly evident.
When George got serious and returned against Lyle at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in January 1976, the erstwhile ‘invincible’ colossus of the division was spinning the wheel of fortune every bit as hopefully as Ron. All sorts of doubts continued to penetrate Foreman’s mind. He became obsessed with what he perceived to be his lack of stamina in the Zaire fight and began to tinker with his natural style in an attempt to better pace himself. He had a new trainer in wise old Gil Clancy, who was secretly concerned and irritated that George was listening to advice from too many other people.
The Foreman-Lyle confrontation was therefore a dangerous match for both men and might well have been more appropriately staged at those famous crossroads down in Mississippi, where Old Nick is reputed to come strolling up those in need of a favour with his latest brochure of attractive offers.
A battle of big punchers always generates a big buzz and a packed crowd of 4,500 simmered with anticipation as Foreman and Lyle answered the first bell and squared off. It is quite amusing now to look back on that opening round, since nothing much happened. The fireworks didn’t go off and the expectant thousands weren’t moved to jump up and spill their popcorn. Today’s more impatient Vegas natives would have probably been booing Ron and George for their caution.
The fighters circled each other warily, as if bracing themselves for the inevitable collision that would assuredly wreck one of them. From the second round, the wonderful and the bizarre took full rein. Foreman began to force Lyle back, something that Ron resented as one of the ring’s natural hunters. He lashed out at George with a series of powerful hooks, but the growing excitement of the crowd was rudely terminated by the premature sound of the bell. A faulty electronic clock had cut the round short by a full two minutes!
It mattered little to such no-nonsense men. Each knew that one would get the other, irrespective of time or any other intervention. Both were fired up for the challenge and began punching in earnest in the third round, rocking each other with heavy blows. It was interesting to study their facial expressions as the pressure increased.
Lyle’s face hid nothing and showed the full effects of the struggle: eyes wide with the intensity of the effort, mouthpiece bared. Foreman, ever impassive, had the slightly bored look of a man who was being made to watch a film he had already seen before.
There were moments in the round when both men looked on the verge of going down as they coldly hammered each other with their best punches. It was the kind of see-saw brawl where fortunes changed so rapidly that anyone with a sizeable bet on the outcome must have been suffering fits.
Yet the best was still to come. The fourth round sprang so many sensations that Caesars Palace seemed to shake to its very foundations from the thunderous noise of the crowd. It was a round of primitive, hit-or-be-hit action, a round of three knockdowns and three shattering minutes in which Foreman and Lyle probably learned more about themselves than in all their previous fights.
Memories of the Ali fight must have come flooding back to George when Lyle suddenly cut him down with a clumping right-left combination. There was pandemonium at Caesars when Foreman hit the deck. Getting knocked down wasn’t expected of George, even after the Ali fight, any more than it was expected of Sonny Liston after being humbled by the same tormentor at Miami Beach and Lewiston. Monsters don’t get slain and we don’t believe it even when they do.
George arose quickly to take the mandatory eight count and gamely took the play away from Lyle by knocking out Ron’s mouthpiece and flooring him with a clubbing right.
Now each man had sampled the full impact of the other’s power, and it was clear that the survivor of this war of wills would be the man with the biggest heart. Foreman’s advantage was short-lived. Amazingly, Lyle turned the fight around again as he stormed back to pound George to the canvas for the second time.
Fight announcer Howard Cosell claimed that he heard something very significant at this point. What he heard was Gil Clancy saying of his fallen charge, “He’s through.” Gil, of course, later denied that he had said anything of the sort.
The bell rang within seconds of the knockdown, but the count continued and Big George staggered to his feet at ‘four’. As he and Lyle made their way groggily back to their corners, Caesars was a cacophonous hub of frantic activity. Phil Spector couldn’t have concocted a more formidable wall of sound. Spectators bounced up and down like excited children, reporters hurriedly updated their notes and cornermen worked feverishly on their respective fighters. I don’t know of any other sport that could paint such a beautifully chaotic picture.
What was Foreman thinking during the minute’s rest? His world had been so full of thunder and lightning over the previous fifteen months. After Ali, was it all going to end for good here? Nobody had ever floored the big man twice in a round before, yet any negative thoughts going through George’s mind must have surely been tempered by the satisfaction of pulling himself back from the brink of oblivion to keep his championship dream alive. The stakes were so much higher in those still largely innocent days. There was still only one heavyweight championship and sometimes only one chance to get it back, whatever the small alphabet family of the WBA and WBC told us to the contrary.
Lyle had snatched back the initiative in that uproarious fourth round and he threw the dice in the fifth in a grandstand effort to finish Foreman off. He staggered George with a combination of punches, but he was now going after a man who was desperate to prove himself a warrior to a cynical public. Wounded men of Foreman’s talent, much like wounded bears, never stop being dangerous.
Launching a violent counter attack, George sent Lyle’s mouthpiece spinning from his mouth a second time as he drove his hurt opponent into a corner with a volley of blows. This time Ron was too stunned to respond. One could see the resistance seeping out of the Denver slugger as his body took the full force of Foreman’s big swings and hooks.
Lyle sagged as if to go down, but he was trapped in the corner and for a moment he had nowhere to fall. Then he slowly toppled forward and rolled onto his side as referee Charley Roth picked u the count. Ron struggled manfully to get up, but Foreman’s incessant attack had proved decisive.
What a fight! What a finish!
Fighting Man
Ron Lyle came again but never quite so gloriously. He never did win the heavyweight championship of the world, but he survived and prospered admirably in a heavyweight era of numerous, true giants. He was a fighting man who continues to be a source of intrigue and something of a cult figure to boxing fans and historians. I called him the Mile High Mauler. After all, he was from classic Dempsey country!
Ron Lyle, brutal fighter, that article was right, Lyle was a shark. Joe Bugner said the worst beating he ever took was from Ron Lyle in 1977, Bugner couldn't breathe after the fight and went to the hospital and the doctors discovered he was bleeding internally. Bugner took a beating from Lyle, after the fight Bugner ended up with purple welts on his sides from Lyle's continuous body shots. Lyle was a big dude, 6'3", powerful, and hit like a mule kicks.
Look at the arms on Lyle.
Lyle was a scary dude, he spent 7 years in prison for murder, he was stabbed himself while in prison and was pronounced dead twice but survived the attack after many blood transfusions. Facing a guy like Lyle in the ring would have been quite intimidating.
This photo of Ron Lyle training was taken while he was serving time, you can see the inmates watching behind him.
This is a photo of Ron Lyle taken in 1977 right before his fight with Howard "Big City" Robinson. At the time this photo was taken Lyle was out on bail from a second murder charge, Lyle was arrested and charged with murder after shooting and killing Vernon Clark, a former employee, at Lyle's Denver home during an altercation where Lyle claimed self-defense, stating Clark threatened him with a gun. At the time the shooting happened, Lyle was holding a family gathering and his family was there in another room. Lyle was acquitted in December 1978 after a trial, with the defense successfully arguing the gun fired accidentally during a struggle, though his boxing career faced turmoil during the legal process. Lyle lived a wild, violent life. In this photo, Robinson is holding up a pair of handcuffs and telling Lyle that he's going back to prison, trying to get into Lyle's head before their fight, it didn't work, Lyle knocked him out.
Ron Lyle poses with the great Joe Louis before his fight with George Foreman in 1976.
A younger Ron Lyle poses for the camera in 1972 before his fight with Tommy Garrett.
Ron Lyle vs Jack "The Giant" O'Halloran in 1971, great photos showing the brutality of Ron Lyle. O'Halloran is remembered for his role as the menacing-but-mute member of the trio of Kryptonian supervillains banished to the Phantom Zone by Jor-El (Marlon Brando) in Superman (1978) and inadvertently released by Superman in Superman II (1980). Lyle dominated the fight and knocked O'Halloran out in the 4th round.
Ron Lyle vs Earnie Shavers in 1975, one of my all-time favorite fights, two B-29 Superfortress bombers going nuclear. If you haven't seen the fight I would suggest you watch it. The only way I can describe the fight is...bombs away. Lyle survived an early shotgun blast of a knockdown from Shavers, was able to somehow pick himself up, hang in there, and wear Shavers down, finally knocking Shavers out with a barrage of brutal power shots in the 6th round. Both fighters took apocalyptic punishment, there was nothing scientific about this fight, it was a shootout, a war of attrition. Shavers would later say that Ron Lyle was the hardest he'd ever been hit.
Ron Lyle vs George Foreman in 1976. Again, two B-29 Superfortress bombers going nuclear. You got to hand it to Ron Lyle, back-to-back shootouts with two of the most murderous punchers in boxing history, first Shavers and then Foreman, Lyle was fearless. Foreman was asked on more than one occasion who the hardest puncher he ever faced was, and he would usually credit Gerry Cooney, Cleveland Williams, and Ron Lyle as being the hardest hitters. He said those three guys hit so hard that it didn't even hurt. When George Foreman said it didn't hurt, he meant the impact of their punches was so intense it created a numbing, almost anesthetic effect on the brain, overwhelming the pain receptors, making it feel unreal, like a physical shockwave rather than a typical blow, a testament to their incredible power. On one occasion, Foreman flat-out said Lyle hit him the hardest:
"This guy hit me so hard that it didn’t even hurt. Joe Frazier caught me with the left hook but he couldn’t hit like Lyle and although Muhammad knocked me down I was exhausted and still got to my feet. Lyle was the hardest hitter.
The thing about Lyle was he was completely unafraid and challenged me at ring center. Nobody, other than Sonny Liston in sparring, stood and punched it out with me with any success. Joe Frazier only tried once and even the great Muhammad Ali couldn’t back up quick enough. Ron Lyle would not back up.”
Man, looking at the photos from the Lyle-Foreman fight, it's like a car wreck.
This photo of Foreman always gets me, the busted lip and the swelling around his eye, of all the people Foreman went up against in his legendary career, Ron Lyle hurt him the most, he had Foreman on dream street a few times in that fight. Nobody ever battered Foreman around like Lyle did.
Some photos of Ron Lyle training.
God, Ron Lyle was a freak of nature, 6"3', powerful as hell.
Look at those arms, and that look in his eyes, Lyle was full of piss and vinegar. He was intimidating.
Ron Lyle vs Canadian heavyweight Bill Drover in 1971, Lyle Knocked him out in round 2. Look at this image of Lyle, what a monster.
Ron Lyle vs Vincent Rondon in 1972. This one got a bit out of control, Lyle shoved the referee. Great photo, look at the camera man laying down in the corner to get his shot.
"Denver heavyweight Ron Lyle pounded out a TKO in the 2nd round of a scheduled 10 rounder over former world light heavyweight champion Vicente Rondon from Venezuela at Mile High Stadium. Lyle showed the crowd of 8,340 that he can come out smoking if he wants to instead of feeling out his opponent as he has in the past. In the 2nd round, Rondon came out swinging, but Lyle returned the fire and pinned Rondon in a corner. As soon as Lyle saw an opening he started battering the Venezuelan with right and left blows. Referee Ray Keech moved in to separate Lyle from Rondon and Lyle responded by pushing Keech to the side and continued to go after his opponent. The reason for Lyle's fury was that Rondon began jabbing his thumb and glove laces into Lyle's eyes." - Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph
Post fight comments:
"Sure he pushed the referee. He was getting a thumb and laces in the face. Lyle was mad, and what would you do if that happened to you?" - Bobby Lewis, Lyle's trainer
"He got me twice in the eyes, but I got him into the corner in the 2nd round and he had to come to me." -Ron Lyle
Ron Lyle vs German heavyweight Jurgin Blin in 1973.
"Ron Lyle registered his 25th pro triumph against one setback with a smashing two-round KO over Germany's Jurgen Blin in Denver. Blin opened with a rush, fists swirling. But Ron, countering with wrist-deep shots to the German's gut, soon had his foe covering up and frantically back-pedaling. Lyle continued his body assault in the 2nd frame, then suddenly switched his attack to the head. A right uppercut stunned Blin and a follow-up left hook dumped Jurgen to the canvas. At the count of nine Blin staggered to his feet but was obviously defenseless and referee Joe Ullmer wisely rescued him at the 1:01 mark of the round." -INTERNATIONAL BOXING, February 1974 issue
The silhouette of Ron Lyle during a visit to Colorado State Penitentiary, where he was a prisoner for seven and a half years, where he was stabbed and pronounced dead on the operating table twice. The man went through pure hell in that place and was lucky to make it out alive. I would love to own the original type 1 photo of this image, I've been searching ebay for literally years, but it hasn't popped up yet.
Ron Lyle with his International Boxing Trophy, this photo was taken in 1971 right before he turned pro, this is the image that was used on his 2011 Leaf Ali Opponents card. There's a Bronze version of this card which is the base, a Silver version that is numbered to 25 copies, and a Gold version that's numbered to 10 copies. This is the Silver parallel version of the card numbered to 25 copies.
Great shot of Ron Lyle in a fight pose.
Another great fight pose photo of Lyle.
This is my personal favorite fight pose photo of Ron Lyle, he looks savage.
Ron Lyle, Brutal puncher.
Fritz Chervet was a Swiss flyweight who challenged for the WBA flyweight title twice in 1973 and 1974. At regional level he held the European flyweight title twice between 1972 and 1974. Chervet's boxing career began on 18 May 1962 in Geneva against Daniel Villaume. He became the European flyweight champion on 3 March 1972 after a victory against Fernando Atzori by referee stoppage in the eleventh round. He lost the European title the next year but regained it on 26 December 1973. He was twice defeated for the world title by Chartchai Chionoi in 1973 and 1974. Chervet also fought the likes of Henry Nissen in Australia and Masao Ohba in Japan. He retired in 1976 with a record of 59 wins, 9 losses, 2 draws, and 1 no contest. Chervet was hugely popular in his day and is hailed as the best fighter ever from Switzerland.
Fritz Chervet came from a family of boxers, and even as a teenager, his wish was to become a professional boxer. Under the guidance of Bernese trainer Charly Bühler, he consistently implemented Bühler's style, which involved maintaining an impenetrable double guard and avoiding head shots. Chervet began his professional career in 1962 and won the European flyweight title in 1972 with his victory over Fernando Atzori. The following year, he lost to Thai boxer Chartchai Chionoi in a fight for the vacant world title at the National Stadium Gymnasium in Bangkok. In 1974, he challenged Chionoi again at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, losing on points. He ended his professional boxing career in 1976 and became an assistant usher and wardrobe attendant at the Federal Parliament Building.
Let's get some photos of Fritz Chervet in here, I like giving some recognition for these Gladiators that don't get much mention. This is my favorite image of Chervet, taken during his fight with Chartchai Chionoi in 1974, it's just a beast of a photo, Chervet looks like he's ready to go, the hand holding the cigarette, awesome photo.
Fritz Chervet against Mariano Garcia in 1972 and 1974.