THE LAST ROUND: CHUVALO VS ALI (NFB, 2003)

By Rick Jackson

Using archival black and white footage, director Joseph Blasioli captures the one fight George Chuvalo is best remembered and this is his 15 rounds with Muhammed Ali at Maple Leaf Gardens on March 29, 1966. It is an incisive inside look at the politics of the sport and how Chuvalo made a difference.

Written by Stephen Brunt and narrated by musician Colin Linden, it opens and clses with this historic match. In between there is the story of Chuvalo, who wanted to become a boxer after he bought a copy of The Ring, "The Bible of Boxing," in a cigar store on Dundas Street in Toronto. When his mother bought him a pair of boxing gloves as a teenager, his dream was one step further from coming true. The rise to the top of the boxing game was not an easy one for him. At 15 he weighed more than any other kid around - 198 lbs - and for the next three years his excessive workouts made him a key player in the amateur heavyweight division.

On April 23, 1956 he beat Jack Dempsey. In September 1958 he defeated Canadian rival James J. Packer for the heavyweight crown.

As Chuvalo says in this documentary, "I was self confident, and proud of myself in an innocent kind of way."

That same year, he went to Madison Square Gardens in New York where he suffered his first major devastating loss because he didn't listen to his manager's advice. He let not only himself down but his family, and it had a damaging effect on his career as a boxer.

Back in Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens, there were more bouts with Yvon Durelle in November 1959 and Pete Rademacher in 1960, which were losses attributed more to his inadequate training. Chuvalo decided to go to Detroit and look for a new trainer.

On his 26th birthday (September 12, 1963) he fought his biggest and most vicious fight against Cassius Clay, who later told the press, "He fights like a washerwoman."

At this point, it is 1964 and the focus of the film switches to Clay who changes his name to Muhammad Ali.

From interviews at that time, you see him tell how African Americans have been ignored by the whites. Boxing suddenly becomes fodder in the political arena, while Ali's behaviour begins to strike fear among the boxing officials: the Black Muslims might take control of boxing.

Meanwhile, Chuvalo is seen defeating Doug Jones in October 1964, and losing to Floyd Patterson at Madison Square Gardens in February 1965 in a decison that was a close fight but hailed as a moral victory.

When the subject changes again to Ali, you learn that he used a phantom punch to knock out Sonny Liston in Lewiston in 1965. Chuvalo goes on national TV in Canada to tell the world how strange Liston could go down with such a light blow. He is credited for cleaning up the heavyweight division, and Ali is stripped of his WBA title.

Under the wings of Irving Ungerman, you see Chuvalo triumph as a good boxer. He loses to Ernie Terrell in November 1965 after 15 rounds, but Chuvalo is hailed as a better boxer.

On January 25, 1966 Chuvalo loses to an unheralded fighter named Eduardo Corletti in London, England.

Three months later, after much controversy about Ali coming up to Canada to fight, first with Terrell until he drops out and then with Chuvalo. The boxing officials are allowed by Queen's Park to let the fight between Chuvalo and Ali to go ahead.

A key point about boxing's bad reputation is raised before it happens, including the mounting anger against Ali and the politics behind closed doors by those who wanted to get even with him. They did in 1967 when he refused the draft.

Chuvalo admits that he lost his match with Ali because of unsound judgment. As you will see, it is a fight that he neither won nor lost because he stood his ground; his tenacity and unwillingness to stay the course right up to the last round.

February 7, 2004

Copyright 2004 Rick Jackson