Oct. 2, 1964 - George Chuvalo (left), a hulking Canadian heavyweight, vaulted into the small group of contenders for the championship tonight. He did it by scoring an 11th round TKO over Doug Jones at Madison Square Garden. He did it, Chuvalo insists, “with a right, a left, and another right.” Jones said Chuvalo did it by stepping on his toe.
From the bell, Jones, 184 pounds, and Chuvalo, 211 pounds, mostly stood toe-to-toe and exchanged hard punches. It seems they hardly ever missed a punch. Both men were hurt several times in the first 10 rounds, but each time, the man who was hurt would fight back harder.
In the 11th, after Jones had gone a full minute of popping Chuvalo’s face with hard lefts, Chuvalo swung a short right and a left to Jones’ jaw. Jones straightened, then stumbled backwards toward the ropes on the far side of the ring. It took Chuvalo a second to realize the man was hurt. When he did, he tore after Jones and finally cornered the New Yorker. Another flurry by Chuvalo and referee Arthur Mercante stopped the fight.
It was the first time Jones had been stopped in 31 professional fights. He had only been floored once before — by Zora Folley.
Mercante, who had scored the fight 6-3-1 for Chuvalo before the end came, said he stopped the fight “because the man was taking a lot of punishment. And he was in a corner — you know about corners.”
It was during a fistic bombardment in a corner at the Garden that Benny Paret suffered fatal injuries in 1962.
“Now I want to fight Clay,” Chuvalo said. “I want that guy. He run out on me before; he’s afraid of me. I want him now.”
About a year ago, Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, had signed to meet the winner of the Mike DeJohn-Chuvalo fight in Louisville. Chuvalo charged, “He saw me murder DeJohn. He was afraid of me.”
Regarding tonight’s knockdown, Chuvalo said, “I caught him with a beautiful right and a good hook. And when he started to go down, I hit him with another right. I’m glad the referee stopped it — for his sake. But it was a pleasant surprise.”
Jones was saying it was a surprise, too. He said he hadn’t been hurt bad. “It wasn’t really a knockdown,” Doug said. “His foot was on mine. When I got hit, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I couldn’t go back.”
What about the referee stopping the fight? “I hear he said he thought I was hurt. What does he mean, ‘think’? He’s supposed to know. I wasn’t hurt,” Jones said.
“I tell you what’s wrong,” Alex Koskowitz, Jones’ manager said. “Something’s phony some place, that’s what’s wrong. Believe me, Mercante will never referee another fight Doug is in. We didn’t want him in the Clay-Jones fight, and this time he got even with us.”
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