A Boxing Memory: Joe Bugner
In an interview for The Chronicle Joe Bugner said of his fight with Henry Cooper:
"I wish I'd never ruddy fought Henry Cooper," he told me, his eyes clouding over. "I won but I lost everything. I was hated for it, never allowed to forget it, and was hounded out of a country I loved. I was just a 21-year-old kid who had come to fight, but Cooper was a demigod and I wasn't supposed to defeat a demigod."
Bugner beat Cooper by way of a still debated highly-controversial points decision after 15 hard and extremely tight rounds in 1971. Bugner claimed the British, Commonwealth, and European heavyweight titles, but Bugner claims he lost more than he won on an infamous night that has gone down in British boxing folklore.
Only Bugner really knows the true extent of the hostility he faced for beating the much-loved national treasure. But make no mistake, Bugner was harshly treated by many in the sport. Much of the venom was formed out of what many called an injustice, a travesty. A crime even. A win he didn't deserve. But in truth, it was a desperately close fight. Cooper wasn't robbed. It was close. Nothing more. A great boxing myth.
But there were many times, Bugner just didn't do enough to convince. Or win over, the hard-to-please and ever-so-fickle boxing press or fanbase. The Hungarian-born heavyweight was very much the marmite character of his time. And he had many of them.
There were seemingly never-ending comebacks. The heavyweight hopeful who just wouldn't go away. Bugner was still fighting one year shy of his 50th birthday. A wafer-thin claim to be a heavyweight champion of the world saw him into retirement. Beating James 'Bonecrusher' Smith in 1998 won him the WBF heavyweight bauble. In truth, it mattered very little. A year later when he was 49, Levi Billups was the last dance for Bugner. A strange comeback, the final one, had ended with six wins. Bugner always did it his way.
Bugner will be remembered by many for the perceived daylight robbery of a win over Cooper. But he was much more than that. Two losing efforts to Muhammad Ali and more so Joe Frazier in 1973 are a testament to his ability. The defeat to Frazier at the Earls Court in London was perhaps his finest ever performance. Bugner proved many things that night. A forgotten gem of a fight.
We rarely saw anger from Bugner, the night he bludgeoned Richard Dunn to a one-round defeat, we had it in abundance. Bugner was 26 in 1976 when he regained the European, British, and Commonwealth heavyweight boxing titles just a year after a widely criticised listless rematch with Ali in the searing heat in Kuala Lumpur.
"Well gents, we tried," Bugner said after his one-sided defeat to Ali. Too many thought he didn't try. The win over Dunn was a little slice of redemption.
The career could never get any real momentum after the impressive win over Dunn. Bugner suffered a defeat in a brutal fight with Ron Lyle in 1977 that he described as:
"Easily the biggest beating of my career came from Ron Lyle in Vegas 1977. He nearly killed me. I am not kidding, he nearly killed me."
After another hiatus from the sport, Bugner returned in 1980 with a win over one Gilbert Acuna, before Earnie Shavers stopped him on cuts in 1982. But Bugner found career life when he helped Frank Warren to find a foothold in British boxing, there were four wins but talk of a big domestic showdown with the new kid on the block, Frank Bruno came to nothing. But disappointing defeats to Marvis Frazier and Stefan Tangstad ended that part of his career.
Bugner emigrated to Australia and returned to the ring once again in 1986 and had decent wins over fringe contenders James Tillis, David Bey, and Greg Page before the fight with Bruno finally happened. It wasn't what it could have been. Bruno won easily and Bugner at 37, walked away. This time it looked for good.
But after yet another relaunch Bugner returned but in 1996, Scott Welch showed him boxing waits for nobody. After one final comeback, the Bugner boxing story finally ended in 1999 with the win over Billups.
Retirement was eventful, he dabbled in acting, and a stint on I'm a Celebrity brought him back into the public eye. But retirement hasn't always been kind, a bad investment in a vineyard cost Bugner much of his fortune, and his health has more than suffered with problems with diabetes, skin cancer and a heart attack followed in 2014. But Bugner survived, forever the fighter.
He did at times promise more than he delivered but Bugner deserves to be remembered. A genuinely world-class heavyweight at a time when the world heavyweight scene was perhaps at its strongest. And when British heavyweights had a more than horizontal reputation. Bugner offered hope at a time when there wasn't any. History might not be kind to Joe Bugner. But it should be.
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