Instant Champion

It had been billed as the "Sunshine Showdown." But the heavyweight title bout between Champion Joe Frazier, 29, and Challenger George Foreman, 24, in Jamaica last week was more like a midnight mugging. In front of 36,000 fans at a stadium in Kingston, Foreman managed one of the swiftest and most savage upsets in heavyweight history.

Although oddsmakers had installed Frazier as a 3-1 favorite, there were more than the usual number of prefight imponderables. The line on Foreman was that he was untested. True, he had won 37 straight fights, 34 by knockouts, but his opponents were the most graceless gang of pugs this side of a waterfront brawl. He was undeniably a heavy hitter, but his attack seemed so lacking in finesse that he was sometimes booed in victory. He outweighed Frazier 217 1/2 to 214 Ibs., had an advantage of 3 1/2 in. in height and 5 in. in reach. But the champion had met and manhandled fighters of more imposing dimensions. Could Foreman take a real punch? Had he been brought along too far too fast?

As for Frazier, his prolonged stay in a hospital after his tough 15-round victory over Muhammad AH two years ago left some lingering doubts about his physical condition. There was talk about a debilitating "blood condition." Moreover, since defeating Ali, the champion had defended his title only twice, dispatching a pair of unknowns with less than his usual ferociousness. Was Frazier his old devastating self? Did he deserve to be the favorite? Frazier thought so. "I'm gonna come out smokin'," he snarled during the weigh-in. "Smokin'," countered Foreman, "is hazardous to your health."

In the first round the challenger looked and acted like a playground bully, fending off the champion's dipping, weaving attack by simply shoving him backward with the heels of his gloves. Frazier got off a few of his highly touted left hooks, but Foreman either blocked them or moved inside with jolting uppercuts. Then, in one such exchange, the challenger caught the champion with a crunching right and sent him sprawling to the canvas. Up at the count of two, a dazed Frazier gallantly tried to press an attack; Foreman dropped him again and then again with a flurry of looping rights and lefts. At the bell, Frazier was barely able to make it to his stool.

Right On. The second round was pure massacre. Foreman rushed in for the kill, connected with a hard chopping right and Frazier caved in. After taking the mandatory eight count, the champion tried to cover up; the challenger clubbed him down again. Foreman gestured to Frazier's seconds to toss in the towel, but the champion somehow pulled himself up on the ropes and Referee Arthur Mercante signaled the fighters to continue. Foreman obliged by hitting the nearly helpless Frazier with a head-snapping right cross that put him down for the sixth and final time. Mercante stopped the slaughter at 1 min. 35 sec. of the second round. In the ensuing bedlam, Foreman shoved his way to Frazier's corner and told the fallen champion that "I respect you more than any man in modern boxing. You were a great champion." Frazier, glassy-eyed and bleeding from a split lower lip, muttered, "Right on."

Carried from the ring by jubilant fans, Foreman later stood on a bench in his dressing room and shouted "I want to go out and talk to all the folks in Houston and all the rest of the world and tell them that if you work hard enough, like me, you've got to get ahead." It was a proud declaration for a new champion who took up boxing only six years ago. In the ring, that is. A high-school dropout and a street-corner brawler in Houston, Foreman learned the Marquess of Queensberry rules only after joining the Job Corps in 1965. Three years later he was good enough to win the Olympic heavyweight title. He also became something of an instant patriot when, in the aftermath of the Black Power salutes at the 1968 Games, he paraded around the ring proudly waving a tiny American flag.

Now he is an instant world heavyweight champion who says, "The title is borrowed from the people and must be given back. I plan to take advantage of it while I can, treat everybody good, and when it's time to give it up, I'll do so, smiling." Meanwhile, he is not smiling about the inevitable buildup for a match with Muhammad Ali, the self-styled "people's champion." "If he wants to challenge me," says Foreman, "let him come to me. I'm the champ." Ali, in training for a fight this month against Britain's Joe Bugner in Las Vegas, was quick with a counterpunch: "I'm really not thinking about fighting Foreman. He's not ready. He's just out of the Olympics." It would be difficult to convince Joe Frazier of that. Last week, vowing "I'll be back," Joe offered perhaps the most succinct description of the extraordinary happening in Jamaica: "George clobbered me."

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