Thursday, September 19, 2013

RIP - Ken Norton Sr. (August 9, 1943 - September 18, 2013)

Some sad sports news to report today, as Ken Norton Sr., the former Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the world, died yesterday.

He fought, and won, a very hard earned victory over Muhammad Ali in 1973, although Ali would later avenge this loss in the rematch. During his victory over Ali, Norton actually managed to break Ali's jaw. But he not only won the respect and admiration of "The Greatest" with these performances, he did so with many boxing fans, and these propelled him to boxing prominence, catapulting him into elite territory.

Norton had a style of fighting that was a bit unorthodox, throwing jabs from the wrist, which proved to give Ali and many others problems.

During the course of his illustrious boxing career, Norton fought some top notch heavyweights, including Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, and Ernie Shavers, among others. He had compiled an overall record of 42-7-1, with 33 knockouts to his credit. He was 70 years old.

Other than the Ali victory, some of the most famous fights were actually losses. He was beaten badly by the Heavyweight Champion George Foreman, who at that point in his career looked unbeatable. Norton was knocked out in the second round of that decision. He fought ALi three times, losing the latter two matches. He fought Larry Holmes in a very memorable championship bout. losing to him in a unanimous decision, which was perhaps his finest hour, fighting a very strong fight against Holmes in a very even fight, before losing the decision. He was also knocked out in the first round the next year against Ernie Shavers, who many consider the hardest hitter in heavyweight boxing history.

Norton retired after suffering a brutal first round knockout defeat to Gerry Cooney in 1981. But he is mentioned, deservedly, in the same company as many of the great heavyweights of the era, like Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Holmes, and Shavers.

He was voted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame and the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

In 1986, Norton was in a very serious car crash that almost killed him, and left him slow and with slurred speech. Up to that point, he had been doing color commentary for boxing matches.

Norton had a son who was also a prominent professional athlete. Ken Norton, Jr., was a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys in the early nineties, as that team was on the rise. He played for them during their back-to-back Super Bowl titles in 1992 and 1993, before being traded to the San Francisco 49ers, where he would spend the remainder of his career until 2000. The 49ers would win the Super Bowl in 1994, making Norton the only man to have won three consecutive Super Bowl titles to date. During the postgame interview by NBC anchor Bob Costas, Norton had been asked about relations with his famous boxing champion father, because relations had been strained to that point. Norton did not want to talk about it. One thing Norton did in honor of his father's boxing career was to throw boxing punches after scoring a defensive touchdown.

Ken Norton, Sr. had two sons, and being a father was what he was most proud of. He was rewarded "Father of the Year" distinction in 1977 by both the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times. Norton wrote an autobiography, "Believe: Journey From Jacksonville".

I got most of the information for this blog entry from the following two sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Norton


"Hall of Famer Ken Norton dead at 70" by Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/boxing/hall-famer-ken-norton-heavyweight-champion-once-broke-011452730--box.html

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