PART 2
of a 5-part
Series
By Zachary
Levin
ZL: You worked with
George Foreman for about six fights after his fight
with Ali, until he retired in 1977. I understand he
sought you out when he was contemplating getting
back in the ring 10 years later?
GC: He called
me up and told me he was going to come back, and I
had been hearing stories about him—300 pounds and
all this stuff. So I told him, ‘George, I’ll tell
you what I’ll do. I’ll go down to
Texas and look at you, and if I
think you should come back, I’ll say, ‘Yes, you
should.’ If I tell you, ‘No,’ I expect you to stay
retired.’ He says, ‘Okay, I’ll call you back
tomorrow.’ He never called me back. He knew I
would’ve probably told him not to come back. Which
would have been one of the biggest errors I ever
made, because he made millions of dollars.
ZL: In an interview you had done many years ago,
long before Foreman’s second act, you spoke of how
Big George wouldn’t accept challenges, how he was
only interested in fights where he was positive of
the outcome. So, you must have been shocked by his
comeback, in which he faced a young big-hearted
Evander Holyfield? And certainly no one thought he
could beat Michael Moorer?
GC: He
surprised the hell out of me, to tell you the
truth. You have no idea how much trouble it was to
get him to fight anybody when I was with him
(laughing).
 Again,
he was handled right the second time. He didn’t
fight that many challenging guys. With Michael
Moorer, in that fight I think that was a miracle
punch he threw.
ZL: Foreman claims that punch was months in the
making, that it was always part of the blueprint.
GC: Yeah,
well. (shakes his head dismissively)
ZL: I guess that’s just George being George. You
also called that fight for HBO. Was that punch one
of the biggest shocks you ever witnessed since
you’ve been in boxing?
GC: It was.
Yup.
ZL: In his first
fight back after the Ali loss, Foreman faced Ron
Lyle. It turned out to be as exciting as any five
rounds you’re likely to see among heavyweights. But
in light of what you’ve said about Foreman’s
tentativeness about being challenged, did you expect
Lyle would be so tough?
GC: I
expected George to have an easy time with him. I
picked George up off his face in that fight!
ZL: You’ve said that in Foreman’s second boxing
career, he revealed just how smart he is. We all
know what a brilliant huckster he is, but in what
other ways did you find him clever?
GC: What I’ve
said about him is that he’s smarter than Bob Arum,
Don King or anybody else. Even that second time
around, Arum was trying to get him to fight some
ordinary guy. I forget who it was? I was on my way
to the airport out of Vegas. Arum asked me to stop
by his office so I could talk with George. I told
him the guy he’d be fighting would be no problem.
He wouldn’t fight the guy. The guy was a nothing
fighter.
ZL: Do you think Foreman saw something in this guy
that maybe the rest of you weren’t picking up on?
Or was it something else?
 GC:
He’s a strange guy, George. Very hard to figure
out.
ZL: But I guess your point is, he took the path of
least resistance and still got his title and his
money. When you had Foreman as a young man, did you
realize how smart he was at that time?
GC: No, no.
I did know that he was always good on his feet, even
when he just got out of the amateurs. He could get
up and give and speech and talk and really sound
well.
 ZL:
You also handled Gerry Cooney when he was trying to
make his comeback. You’ve said that had you gotten
him from the start, you could have turned him into a
great heavyweight.
GC: I thought
they were overly cautious with him. And I think
they convinced him that he couldn’t fight. That’s
what really happened to him, that led him into the
mental state that he was in.
ZL: I’ve talked about Cooney with Johnny Bos, who
did his matchmaking. Bos contradicts what you’re
saying in that he feels Cooney actually fought some
credible opposition early in his career, guys like
S.T. Gordon and Eddie Lopez.
GC: He fought
a couple good fighters early on, sure. I was the
matchmaker for Madison
Square Garden when Gerry was
coming up and I matched him against some pretty good
guys that he took care of in 3 or 4 rounds.
ZL: You had Joe Frazier in his first fight against
Ali (March 8, 1971). It was the only fight he won
in the trilogy.
 Did
you have him do something different in that fight?
Or did Ali’s ring-rust play a factor?
GC:
No, Joe just fought exactly how Joe always fights.
If he was boxing you for an exhibition, he’d fight
the same way…bobs his head back and forth, bangs
hard to the body, and that’s just what he did. And
Ali was having a lot of trouble with him.
ZL: You didn’t work Frazier’s corner in his two
subsequent matches with Ali. Had you been in his
corner, would you have done anything different from
what his handlers did?
GC:
Number one, strange as this is gonna sound, I would
not have stopped the fight after the 14th
round. (In their third and final bout, “The Thrilla
In Manila,” Frazier’s chief second Eddie Futch
retired him before the 15th round.) I
would not have stopped the fight. The condition of
both fighters going into the 15th
round…if Joe would have hit Ali with another good
solid shot the way he did early so many times, he
would have knocked Ali out, because Ali was
completely shot.
 ZL:
When they stopped the fight, Ali just collapsed.
GC:
I know. I’m telling you, he was so ready to go…But
Eddie said Joe couldn’t see, so he stopped the
fight.
ZL: For younger fight fans who weren’t around to
witness the Ali-Frazier trilogy, how would you
describe the electricity those fights generated in
and out of the ring? I mean, their first meeting is
recognized as “The Fight of The Century.”
GC:
The first fight was probably the number one sport
event of all time. World Series, Super Bowl,
nothing even compared to it. People that were lucky
enough to get into the fights…if they dropped a bomb
on Madison Square Garden, the United States wouldn’t
have been able to run. I mean, so many important,
distinguished people in that audience. And the
electricity in the crowd was just unbelievable.
ZL: What was it like being at the center of it
all? You had to have major butterflies?
GC:
No. …I never ever got that way. I don’t know why?
(laughing)
ZL: Does it take a certain kind of fighter to handle
that kind of pressure?
GC:
Oh, definitely. Some guys just can’t take
anything. Like Gerry (Cooney) when he got stopped
by Foreman, he was like hypnotized going into the
ring. No business being in there.
 ZL:
And Cooney didn’t take your advice to keep boxing
and moving—
GC:
(cutting in) Yeah, just wanted him to keep moving
around. And he didn’t do it. We had been working
for a month, getting him to use his right hand,
because he was twice as effective when he did it.
The whole God darn first round, he didn’t throw a
right hand. But he did hurt George with a left hook
in that fight. He had something wrong with him…I
can’t even think of the word now? It’s a common
thing. I just can’t think of the name now. You
know what I’m talking about? In an earlier fight,
when I didn’t have him—you know, he used to kill his
sparring partners—so like a week before the fight he
went out to Vegas, and I happened to be there:
sparring partners were killing him. Guys that he
was banging around everyday were banging him
around. What the hell is it? ANXIETY ATTACKS!
ZL: Oh, he did?
GC:
That’s what he used to get, anxiety attacks. Even
when I trained him. When I trained him, about one
out of every six or seven days, he’d go into the
ring…and a complete different person. Anxiety
attack. And that’s what happened to him, I think,
with Foreman. Cause after the first round, he come
out in the second round, George couldn’t miss him!
ZL: And had he been taken along the right way, maybe
these anxiety attacks wouldn’t have happened?
GC:
Oh, if he had had other opponents at first, a few
more fights under his belt, I don’t think Larry
Holmes or anybody would have been a problem for
him.
ZL: A lot of pressure on a good white heavyweight,
don’t you think?
GC:
Oh, absolutely. No question.
ZL: And do people go after them even harder, do you
think?
GC: I don’t think fighters go after them harder, no.
ZL: Some of the best fights you ever worked…I want
to get some quick impressions of them, things you
recall. Monzon-Griffith? (Clancy trained Emile
Griffith from his first amateur contest through his
last—109th—pro fight.)
GC: Well, the second time they fought, I thought we had a
perfect fight for him that night. And I thought
Griffith won the fight, just by outworking Monzon.
 (Monzon was awarded a UD for the 15-rounder. Monzon also
won their first encounter—TKO14.) As a matter of
fact, Nino Benvenuti, who was a newspaperman for the
fight…for a week, he wrote everyday how it was a
disgrace, how
Griffith really won the fight, and this and that.
Again, Monzon pulled it out and won the fight.
ZL: I’m curious, where do you rate Monzon among the
great middleweights?
GC: I never thought he was that great a fighter. I had
(Rodrigo) Valdes fight him twice, too. Valdes had
him on the deck, and that was also another decision
that should have gone the other way. (Monzon by UD15
both times.)
ZL: You were with Jerry Quarry when he fought Ron
Lyle.
GC: I don’t even know if you realize this, but Jerry could
really fight. He really knew how to fight. And on
that fight, he just put everything together. He was
almost playing with Lyle. At the end of he 9th
round, I said, ‘Jerry, just go out there and have a
good time.’ Because he had the fight already won.
That’s what he did.
ZL: Would Quarry have been an effective heavyweight
now, in spite of his size?
GC: Yeah, he wasn’t that big, but he was okay. He was 200
pounds. Believe me, he could fight.
ZL: Talk to me about the Griffith-Rodriguez fights?
GC: They fought four times. The one fight they gave to (Luis
Manuel) Rodriguez, Bob Myers, a writer for the AP at
that time, out in
California, he wrote us a real long letter… How bad
he felt that
Griffith
really won the fight, you know. It made us feel
good, but…Luis (Rodriguez) got the decision. In
that fight (their second, at Dodger Stadium, on
March 21, 1963), Emile’s legs cramped up about the 8th
round, because they had a wrestling mat down instead
of a regular boxing mat, and he told me he couldn’t
go on—his legs were cramping up. I said all you can
do is, go out, lean against the ropes, and just stay
against the ropes and counter punch every time he
punches. But then, after another round or two, the
legs were okay again.
ZL: A wrestling mat? That saps your spring, huh?
GC: Yeah. He
couldn’t move.
ZL: Why would that affect Griffith more than
Rodriguez, who liked to move so much?
GC: It
probably could’ve affected Luis the same way.
 ZL:
Was that an example of two styles that matched
perfectly?
GC: Every
fight was tough. Luis was a very hard guy to
fight. Didn’t look like a great fighter, but a very
good, very hard guy to fight. You see the guys that
he beat. Who the hell beat him, just Emile?
ZL: Rodriguez was always moving, and lots of
flurries, right?
GC: He
flurried at the end of a round, a close round, and
did enough to win the round.
Back to
Part I
Continue to Part III
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