LOOK SHARPE: BY GEORGE, TRULY ‘THE GREATEST’!

Sports betting PR legend GRAHAM SHARPE brings you his latest ‘LOOK SHARPE’ column…

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I MUST ADMIT I was a little shocked to see this headline on the American-based Thoroughbred Daily News site recently – ‘POPE BUYS ADOPTABLE FOR $600K’ – however, not having seen any reputable information to confirm that the Pontiff is about to become owner of this racehorse, Adoptable, I can only assume an element of misreporting had gone on.

Oh, now I get it – apparently the trainer is called Pope. Easy mistake to make! Anyway, what were you doing half a century ago? I ask because I was recently able to recall precisely what I was doing back then a little over fifty years back, in late October, 1974.

Perhaps my favourite and most (er, only) consistently successful form of betting has, over recent years, been on boxing. In fact, some years ago, when I was writing a weekly weekend tipping column for the Daily Express, I actually managed to find a 50/1 winner for readers – advising them to back the draw in a specific title fight.

My interest in the art of fisticuffs originally came about largely because of my Uncle George, a former Royal Guardsman, who, when I wasn’t even yet a teenager, handed me a photo of himself, with all the trophies he had won for punching people. I was greatly impressed, and itt took pride of place in my bedroom – and that, I am quite sure, was the beginning of my obsession with a charismatic man who not only came to the public notice by winning an Olympic medal, but subsequently ‘shook up the world’ as he would so often accurately put it.

I recall staking a good proportion of the Sharpe family fortunes on this character at odds of 7/1 when he took on the man to whom he referred as ‘the big, ugly bear’, one Sonny Liston, in his day a genuinely terrifying-looking pugilist, in February 1964. Someone clearly took advantage of my naivety at the age of just 13, as it later became obvious there was plenty of 10/1 around – but my ‘one and six’ (18 of your old pennies, seven and a half of the new ones, I believe) investment returned a huge 12 bob, (60p) including return of stake money.

I played up those winnings the next year when Cassius Clay as he then was, beat the same opponent – this time with what was later termed a ‘phantom punch’ – to some folk it was non-existent, but to we believers it was so fast as to exceed the time in which the human eye could react to seeing it.

Fast forward some ten years and I was still backing Clay – now known as Muhammad Ali – this time to upset the apparently invincible ‘Smokin’ Joe’ Frazier in early 1974. By now it had become possible to watch World Heavyweight fights as a result of a company called, I think, Viewsport, which broadcast them into a number of mainly London cinema venues.

I was fortunate enough to be working for a boss who had access to such tickets and, even better, he was happy to supply me with several for no money whatsoever, so I and a couple of like-minded Ali supporting friends were able to attend the Odeon Theatre in Leicester Square along with a good few hundred others to watch the contest – provided we could stay awake until the early hours. By now, Ali had served a three year ban for refusing to join the military and as a result was no longer blessed with the lightning-speed footwork which had so dazzled opponents before.

However, I remained loyal, got a shade of odds against, and collected as this second contest between the pair went the way I’d hoped. But the next major heavyweight showdown for Ali – held in the Congo, and which became known as ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ – was against a man who appeared to all intents and purposes to be unbeatable – George Foreman had thus far devastated everyone he had fought with brutal knockout treatment.

Once again, Ali was offered at virtually any price you wanted – and , still a believer, I wanted!

The showdown took place as mentioned, almost exactly half a century ago, at 4.30 in the morning in late October 1974 – the thirtieth, virtually Halloween – and my mate Bill Nicholls, with me again, was fast asleep in his seat in the cinema from which we were again watching, as the two climbed into the ring.I did wake him up, though.I have to admit that despite my overwhelming belief that Clay-Ali was indeed ‘The Greatest’, I was pessimistically (realistically?) already preparing excuses for his imminent defeat against the awesome Foreman.

And for seven and a half rounds a defeat was what Ai was definitely heading for, thanks mainly to his baffling, but ultimately dangerously daring tactic of allowing Foreman to punch him at will as he covered up his face and body as much as possible while leaning back on the ropes.

By this time I had acknowledged that my stake money was long gone – until, unbelievably and thrillingly, Ali showed that there had indeed been method in his seeming madness – and he suddenly came off the ropes as Foreman, clearly now, at last, running out of gas as a result of all the unsuccessful punchwork he had expended, was continuing to sling slow-motion punches towards the Ali torso.As he turned his man, Ali unleashed a stream of punches, as a result of which Foreman – who would later say ‘I thought he was just one more knockout victim until, about the 7th, I hit him hard on the jaw and he held me and whispered in my ear, ‘that all you got, George?’ – slumped to the canvas, kayoed and beaten.

Driving home that night we had wound the windows down, and were beeping the horn all the way back and shouting out of the window to passing pedestrians – ‘He’s done, he’s done it, he’s the champ again!’

Ali genuinely was ‘The Greatest’ not only because of his puglistic brilliance which did, of course, dim to some extent as he aged, but also for his ability to charm and dazzle virtually everyone he ever met. He did get mixed up with many undesirable people along the way, but that has always been inevitable with boxing. My first boss in the betting world, Sam Burns, once said to me: ‘For me, it’s betting during the day, boxing at night.’ He was the manager of a number of notable British boxers, but none of them had the Ali mystique and magnetism.

Not wanting to risk being disappointed, and also respecting the belief that ‘you should never meet your hero(es) as you can only ever be disappointed’, I turned down the chance to meet the great man in person when, on a visit to London, he came to the unique bookshop, ‘Sports Pages’ which my friend John Gaustad had established as the only place in the land to find books on every aspect of every sport. John later told me of the Ali visit – ‘it was a madhouse’, but he did acquire a great memento, of a lifesize facsimile of Ali – which I did condescend to visit and meet!

I still own a heap of Ali-related books and other memorabilia, but no longer pay as much attention to present-day boxing, on the basis that no one with such charisma is ever likely to be foolish enough these days to choose boxing as his or her sport in which to shine. There’s no doubt whatsoever that Ali was what he claimed himself to be -‘The Greatest’ – no matter how you want to interpret that description, (yes, even marginally more so than my Uncle George) and I know I will never witness anyone to rival his charismatic presence in any sport.

And boxing – particularly of the heavyweight variety – is currently floating in a sea of mediocrity. Don’t tell me that either Tyson Fury or Anthony Joshua would be even qualified to tie up the great man’s bootlaces – yet those two are listed 2nd and 4th respectively in a list of the Top 10 Greatest British Heavyweights of all time that I saw online this week.

I wouldn’t argue too much with their number one – Lennox Lewis – EXCEPT that I was never fully convinced that he even thinks he’s British, rather than Canadian, let alone the rest of us doing so! Third in this online ‘Givemesport’ list was Bob Fitzsimmons (1885-1914), who no one alive today ever saw box! David Haye, a pumped up light-heavy is rated 5th; Frank Bruno – the NICEST BLOKE in Heavyweight boxing but never one of the greatest fighters, was 8th, with his nemesis, Joe Bugner coming 9th. Not that inspiring a list, to be honest.

Another book about boxing I own is the characteristically bizarrely titled ‘This Bloody Mary Is The Last Thing I Own’ by one Jonathan Rendall, who once organised a sponsorship deal with me to support his pugilistic pal, Colin ‘Sweet C’ McMillan, who would go on to become a world champion. Colin was then – and, I’m sure, still is – a great bloke and top-level boxer, as was Rendall, who, sadly, is no longer with us.

This book, published in 1997, is absolutely fascinating on several levels and to anyone remotely interested in the sport is well worth seeking out. There are currently a few copies available on Amazon. How can one fail to be intrigued by a book whose blurb begins; ‘In Las Vegas, boxing’s capital, in a faded casino with only a hooker for company, that Jonathan Rendall reflects on his own exit from the scene.’?
He also wrote another splendid book, entitled ‘Twelve Grand’ – and I’ll tell you about that one in a future column.

Rendall led the life some of us might, in their dreams, have loved to live – but who were too risk-averse to do so – on our behalf. He was one of the most extraordinary people I ever met and I (re)commend him and his writings to you.

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Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

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