Almost 49 years ago, heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali fought a guy from Philadelphia.
It wasn’t Joe Frazier. Ali and Frazier had concluded their brutal trilogy the year before.
Ali was 34 and looking it. His opponent was 28 and hungry. Ali was hardly hungry, weighing more than he ever had in his career. His training for the fight, if you call it that, appeared to have been at an ice cream parlor. Still, the champ wasn’t expected to get much resistance from the other heavyweight from “The City of Brotherly Love.”
Jimmy Young had fought in the shadows most of his career. He picked up some extra scratch and experience working as a sparring partner for Frazier, Ken Norton, and Jerry Quarry.
Young had eleven fights between 1969 and 73.’ He won only seven of them, getting stopped by killer puncher Earnie Shavers. The loss was devastating, but Young learned from it. Don’t trade with a killer. Work on your defense. Young did, and for the next three years, he didn’t lose a fight.
He knocked out future European heavyweight champion Richard Dunn and gave dangerous Jose Luis Garcia a boxing lesson. In 1974, Young earned a rematch with Shavers at the Capital Center in Landover, MD.
Young boxed well, but a vicious left hook in round four collapsed him. Most figured the fight was over. They were wrong. Young got up and fought back. He started beating up Shavers in round five. After 10 rounds, the decision appeared to be his. Instead the fight was judged a draw. Sadly, this foreshadowed some future fights.
Undaunted, Young won his next four bouts in succession – the most impressive being a unanimous decision over contender Ron Lyle. The outcome would earn Young a date with the heavyweight champion of the world.
Jimmy Young had arrived, but who was he exactly? He was a little over six feet tall and weighted between 209 and 220 pounds- hardly the biggest guy in the room. He didn’t punch terrifically hard, more BB gun than magnum, though his right hand could surprise. The key was he knew his strengths and weaknesses. He had fast hands. His jab was solid and his defense top-notch. More importantly, his boxing brain was calculating and educated.
Young and Ali fought on April 30, 1976 in Landover. Ali hardly applied himself in the early rounds. For one of the few times in his career, Ali was forced to be the aggressor. Young stayed away and tagged Ali with jabs and occasional rights. The fight appeared close. Young lost fans by ducking between the ropes whenever Ali appeared to have an advantage, doing this on six different occasions. The strategy was debated for weeks after the bout. What wasn’t debated was it hurt Young in the eyes of the judges. When Young slipped between the ropes in round 12, the referee called it a knockdown.
Ali pursued but missed more punches than he landed. Young busted Ali’s ear drum in the middle rounds. Ali did well in round nine by utilizing his jab, but Young clubbed him with shots down the stretch.
The Associated Press scored the fight 69-66 for Young.
The referee and two ringside judges saw the fight differently. Larry Barrett had Ali winning by only two points. His counterpart, and referee, Tom Kelly judged Ali the winner by wide margins. This despite reports indicating that Young had landed more than 100 punches than Ali. The reported crowd of 12,000 plus wasn’t happy about the verdict.
Six months after dropping the disputed decision to Ali, Young whipped Lyle for the second time. He thought he’d get a rematch with Ali. Instead, Lyle got the fight. Young soldiered on, facing former heavyweight champion George Foreman in 1977 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The fight was billed a title eliminator. Foreman was favored, though his vulnerabilities were apparent.
For six rounds, Foreman chased while Young picked his spots. Foreman almost knocked out Young in round seven. Young took it to him the rest of the way, cementing his victory by flooring Foreman in round 12. Foreman announced his retirement after the fight, while Young was hopeful a rematch with Ali would finally materialize.
It didn’t. Young fought Norton at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV. The bout didn’t excite but was competitive and hard to judge. Norton went to the body while Young countered. Young’s lack of aggressiveness ended up hurting him in the eyes of judges, though he appeared to land the cleaner blows. Norton won the fight by split decision. Many felt Young had won. Didn’t matter.
Young was reportedly down for months after the fight – feeling he had been wronged. His desire for boxing waned. He fell from contender to trial horse, losing decisions to Ossie Ocasio and Michael Dokes. He flashed some of his old style against rising Gerry Cooney before a cut eye forced the fight to be stopped. Young started another winning streak, until the much younger Greg Page ended it.
In the early 1980s, Young dropped five bouts in a row. Many wanted him to stop fighting, but he wouldn’t. He hung around until 1990, finally walking away after stopping one Carl Porter, who was making his professional debut.
His life after boxing was riddled with drug, legal, and financial problems. It was reported that he suffered from pugilistic dementia. Young was barely 50. His life ended in 2005.
Because of his less-than-exciting boxing style, Jimmy Young has never received the respect he so rightfully earned. He fought in an era of titans, giving them all hell and beating a number of them.
Respect earned and given.
