Chilling boxing warning

Press, 12 November 1981, Page 36

Chilling boxing warning

NZPA London Ingemar Johannsen, the last white man to hold the world heavyweight boxing title, has issued a chilling warning about the future. Johannson, who never scaled more than 92 kg (14'/a stone) when he was fighting, suggested during a rare trip to London, that the human race was growing so big and strong “that one day they will kill each other with one punch.” But he expressed no regrets about his own part in the business which included a world title win over Floyd Patterson and two painful defeats at the hands of the same fighter. That was during an era of boxing when champions were relative midgets compared

with today’s 102 kg monsters. Yet Johannson would still have picked the 85.8 kg Rocky Marciano, in his prime, to have beaten Muhammad Ali. A fight between Ali and himself, Johannson predicted, would have been dull. “As a fighter, he is not the sport I like to see, but I would not have let him fool me,” he said. Johannson disclosed that he had been made a serious offer to come back to boxing at the age of 40, ten years after he retired. “But it is easy to say ‘no’ if you don’t need the money,” he said. “If you do need it, there must be a temptation. You can get more money today fighting the champion than the champion used to get in my time.”