As crowd noise crescendos, Muhammad Ali pivots toward his corner, turns his palms skyward and bows his head. Two years earlier he made public his membership in the Nation of Islam, and now makes prayer part of his pre-fight ritual.

Ali’s black nationalist ties also explain how the 24-year-old heavyweight champ wound up at Maple Leaf Gardens on March 29, 1966, with Toronto’s George Chuvalo in the opposite corner, eager to rumble.

At the bell Chuvalo, a six-foot-tall concrete block of a man, marches forward, fists cocked. Ali keeps praying.

Few outside Chuvalo’s camp thought he’d trouble Ali. The 28-year-old had lost twice recently, and had signed for this fight just 17 days earlier.

Even fewer could foresee that, 50 years later, the bout would be seen as a critical moment in the city’s sports history. Like Babe Ruth homering at Hanlan’s Point in 1914, Ali-Chuvalo offered Torontonians an up-close look at an athlete set to transform both his sport and its place in society.

By 1990, Ali had the clout to help broker the release of 15 American hostages from Iraq. Sports Illustrated would name him its Sportsman of the Century. But in March 1966 he was still evolving personally and politically and facing the possibility of being drafted into the army.





“Ali is arriving in Toronto confused about his military future, but (he’s not) confused about his confidence in the ring,” says Johnny Smith, a Georgia Tech sports history professor and co-author of Blood Brothers, . “He goes into the ring that night thinking he’s going to handle George Chuvalo.”

But Chuvalo is about to challenge him in unprecedented ways.

“I know it’s going to be a long night,” recalls Chuvalo. “I entered the fight knowing most people wouldn’t give me much of a chance, but I gave myself a chance just by being there.”

Chuvalo advances. Ali turns to face him.

In February 1966, as Ali’s management group worked to secure a date against Ernie Terrell, Ali uttered the nine words that made him radioactive.

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he told reporters after learning he had become eligible for the military draft.

When promoter Bob Arum arranged for Ali to fight Terrell in Chicago, backlash against Ali’s anti-war stance prompted officials to refuse to sanction the bout. Montreal rejected it, too.

Then, Arum says, Leafs co-owner Harold Ballard offered Maple Leaf Gardens despite partner Conn Smythe’s vehement objection to hosting Ali.

Arum accepted, but by March most theatres refused carry the bout on closed-circuit TV, restricting a vital revenue stream. Sensing his payday shrinking, Terrell backed out.

Chuvalo stepped in.

The Toronto-raised heavyweight had just lost to Terrell, but was a relentless, reliable action fighter with a strong local following. He was also available, and signed his contract March 12.

“I was just extraordinarily happy that we got a fight on,” Arum said this month. “Otherwise I didn’t know what I would do. I was promoting everything on a credit card.”

The matchup incensed sportswriters, furious that the fighter Terrell defeated had replaced him in a title fight. Daily Mirror columnist Peter Wilson urged a worldwide media boycott, and more.

“I wish I could impose a ban from sport on the Canadian clowns and American assassins who have debased the coinage of the oldest title in sport . . . by deciding that Chuvalo and (Ali) should meet,” he wrote.

Ali lands a hook-cross-hook. Chuvalo keeps stalking. He bashes Ali’s nose with a heavy left jab. The 13,918 spectators cheer.

Joining the Nation of Islam damaged Ali’s marketability, but he remained a salesman. Before the bout he groaned he was overweight and injured. In a public sparring session, Ali suffered a knockdown. Ego aside, Ali recognized selling tickets meant peddling hope in Chuvalo.

“I’m not saying I’m going to lose for sure, but my chances of winning have never been so bad,” Ali told the Star.

On fight night Chuvalo wields his right fist like a cudgel, bludgeoning Ali’s kidneys during clinches. He hits whatever he can reach — hips, thighs, butt. Chuvalo connects six times to Ali’s crotch in Round 1. The blows don’t score, but they hurt.

“I was a lot stronger than him,” Chuvalo recalls. “Whether I’d be successful or not is another matter, but I knew how I was supposed to fight him: take away his strength, which is movement.”

Ali is fast and accurate, his speed masking real power. He’d scored 18 knockouts in 22 wins, and thinks he can topple Chuvalo.

Two powerful rights bash Chuvalo’s temple. Then a left hook. Then more rights. Ali puts his weight behind each blow, grunting from the effort. The punches don’t budge Chuvalo. He keeps trudging forward.

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Round 3 ends and Ali waves his hand dismissively, but realizes that for the first time ever he’ll have to fight 15 rounds.

After winning the world title, Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali and took the new identity seriously.

Three months before meeting Chuvalo, Ali battered Floyd Patterson over 12 rounds, prolonging the beating to punish Patterson for calling him Cassius Clay. Media outlets, including the Star, were similarly slow to adapt, and “Cassius Clay” appears often in pre-fight coverage.

By early 1965, Ali had joined the chorus of Nation of Islam voices calling for the killing of Malcolm X after his former mentor’s bitter split with Elijah Muhammad. After Malcolm’s assassination, Ali rejoiced publicly.

In March 1967, Ali would, at the Nation of Islam’s direction, refuse induction into the U.S. Army. It would sideline him for three years and set up his contemporary legacy: the star athlete standing for something bigger than sport.

Between those milestones he visited Toronto as a man in transition.

“He’s just beginning to realize that his boxing career is being threatened because of his relationship to the Nation of Islam,” Smith says. “That’s troubling for him, and he’s searching for how to deal with this because he’s being torn.”

On this night, Ali shows why he’s The Greatest, and Chuvalo proves he’s The Toughest.

Ali’s footwork leaves Chuvalo lurching and sets up his own offence: jabs, straight rights, hooks, uppercuts, fired solo or in salvos.

Chuvalo hammers Ali on the belt and below, but the champ never complains or reciprocates. He sticks to ripping Chuvalo with shots that would stop other challengers.

In 1967, Joe Frazier will shatter Chuvalo’s orbital bone but won’t drop him. Neither will Ali, or anyone else in Chuvalo’s 97 pro bouts

The fighters spend Round 15 trading punches mid-ring, and several shots rattle the champ’s jaw. At the final bell, the crowd erupts.

The fight wasn’t competitive — two judges had Ali winning 14 rounds — but it was Ali’s most demanding. The punishment he absorbed would send him to the hospital and cause him to urinate blood.

Those 15 rounds also revealed a layer of Ali’s greatness.

He had breezed into Toronto with an unblemished record and a flair for making pugilism pretty. But the win — from the challenger’s rule-bending to the internal bleeding it caused — exposed the sport’s ugly reality.

Ali didn’t flinch.

Later, he showed his toughness more often, but before Chuvalo, no fighter had tested Ali’s perseverance in that way.

When Ali arrived in Toronto, the world knew he could box.

But against Chuvalo at Maple Leaf Gardens, he proved he was a fighter.

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