IT’S onwards and upwards for Moses Itauma, now 13-0 with 11 KOs. Heavyweight title, here we come? It certainly looks like it.
But what of past heavyweight champions at that same stage of their careers as Itauma? I thought it would be interesting to look at some comparisons with big-name heavyweights when they were at the 13-0 stage.
Muhammad Ali
Ali, of course, was still known as Cassius Clay when he was at the 13-bout stage of his career. Ali’s first real test had come against Alex Miteff, a rugged New York-based veteran from Argentina with a record of 24-10-1. Miteff was 26 when he met Ali. His best win, a 10-round decision over high-ranking contender Nino Valdes, had occurred some three and a half years previously.
But Miteff had knocked down British champion Henry Cooper in the last round of their fight in London eight months before meeting Ali, and while he’d lost three of his past four fights, one of those losses was by split decision to Canadian ironman George Chuvalo in Toronto.
However, TKO defeats against top-10-calibre fighters, Cleveland Williams and Bob Cleroux, suggested Miteff’s best days were behind him. Ali, just 19 at the time and boxing in his hometown of Louisville, stopped Miteff in the sixth round.
Miteff tried to slow the younger man with body punches, but Ali was too fast and too sharp. Miteff’s left eye was swollen and closing by the sixth and Ali dropped him with a right hand behind a double jab. Miteff got up but he was out on his feet and the fight was stopped.
“Clay was a much better fighter than most people had figured for a young fellow of only eight fights,” commentator Don Dunphy opined on the TV broadcast.
Two fights later, in his 11th contest, Ali had to overcome adversity when Sonny Banks, a hard hitter from Detroit (nine KO wins in his 10-2 record), floored him with a left hook in the first round of their Madison Square Garden main event.
But Ali was up quickly, stayed cool and composed after the eight-count and dropped Banks with a left hook of his own in the second round before winning on a TKO in the fourth.
Ali’s speed was again in evidence and apart from his brief moment of success in the opening round, Banks had no answer for Ali’s sharpshooting skills.
“That’s a long, sharp jab that Clay has,” Don Dunphy noted in the commentary.
The Ali team rolled the dice somewhat in this bout, matching the rising star with a young (Banks was 21), ambitious puncher, but Ali showed glimpses of the greatness that followed.
Joe Louis
When the Brown Bomber turned pro in the 1930s, he was like an express train roaring out of Detroit, winning his first 13 bouts, 11 by knockout, in just six months. He was boxing in 10-rounders after only five bouts.
I think the fight that really showed Louis’ potential was when he stopped clever veteran Lee Ramage (40-8-5 at the time) in the eighth round in Chicago. A crowd of 14,988 was in attendance.
This was Louis’ 12th fight. Ramage was unbeaten in his previous four bouts, which included a draw and two wins in a three-fight series against Maxie Rosenbloom, the former light-heavyweight champion.
According to the United Press report, Ramage outboxed Louis in the early rounds, piling up points with the left jab. But Louis hurt Ramage when he could back up the veteran against the ropes.
Louis “whipped over a vicious right cross” in the eighth round, dropping Ramage for a count of nine. Two more knockdowns followed and the referee waved the finish. Ramage had been stopped only once previously.
Mike Tyson
Like Louis before him, Tyson got his pro career off to a blazing start. Tyson blasted his way to 13 wins (all by KO) in eight months. None of his opponents got past the fourth round. The monthly publication Sport (forerunner of Sports Illustrated) ran a profile on the then-19-year-old Tyson, headed “THE NEXT GREAT HEAVYWEIGHT”. Tyson was only 8-0 as a pro but already getting the star treatment.
“At this stage of his career, considering the number of fights he has had and his age, he is probably the most advanced heavyweight ever in terms of talent, ability and potential,” Alex Wallau, boxing consultant for the ABC TV network, told writer Michael Marley.
“He’s the next champion,” veteran matchmaker Teddy Brenner told the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner after Tyson had scored his ninth win in a row.
In truth, none of Tyson’s early opponents posed much of a threat but it was the way he was beating them that was impressive. The most notable of Tyson’s first 13 wins probably came in his 13th appearance, when he banged out Conroy Nelson, a tall, lanky Jamaican-born heavyweight living in Ontario, Canada, in the second round.
Nelson (15-7-2 going into the fight) had been the full 10 rounds with a then up-and-coming Razor Ruddock, and Frank Warren had featured him on a London promotion (DQ win over Noel Quarless), but Tyson blew him away.
George Foreman
Big George scored 11 stoppages in his first 13 fights. I think it’s accurate to say he wasn’t particularly impressive in the early part of his career, even though he kept winning. The New York Times reported that the Madison Square Garden crowd booed Foreman after he overpowered the smaller Don Waldhelm in three rounds in his pro debut.
Whereas fighters such as Ali, Louis, Tyson and now Itauma all received favourable reviews early in their careers, this wasn’t the case with Foreman.
“At present he’d be a tough man to meet in an alley, but he’s about three years away from being a tutored, knowledgeable fighter,” New York Times writer Deane McGowen observed.
Foreman’s highest-profile win at the 13-fight stage of his career was probably his third-round TKO over Chuck Wepner, who had a 19-4-2 record. This win came in Foreman’s fourth bout and Wepner, of course, went on to last into the 15th round against Muhammad Ali.
For the most part, Foreman, who was 19 when he turned pro, was matched carefully despite his 1968 Olympic gold medal triumph. Peruvian Roberto Davila, durable but limited, had lost 14 of his 25 bouts, while Levi Forte had a 20-21-2 record (12 KO defeats). Both went the distance with Big George, although soundly beaten.
Joe Frazier
Frazier, like Ali and Foreman, an Olympic gold medallist, was matched tough in his 12th fight, surviving two knockdowns in the second round to win a split 10-round decision over Oscar Bonavena at Madison Square Garden.
One more trip to the canvas in that round would have cost Frazier the fight under the three-knockdown rule in effect in New York at the time, but he stayed close, smothered and survived the round.
“Nothing fancy went down on this night,” Frazier related in his autobiography, Smokin’ Joe. “Neither of us was built for slick boxing.”
And just two months later, Frazier was in another significant fight, this time in Los Angeles against slick-boxing former contender Eddie Machen, who had handed rising star Jerry Quarry his first defeat just four months earlier.
“I was determined to fight fighters I could learn from,” Frazier said in his autobiography. He stopped Machen in the 10th and final round to take his record to 13-0.
Lennox Lewis
There was nothing dramatic about Lewis’ first 13 fights. All were comfortable wins, 11 by KO, against opponents he was hugely favoured to defeat. And he didn’t have his first scheduled 10-rounder until his 13th appearance. It was a slow-build start to the career of an Olympic gold medallist.
Riddick Bowe
Bowe, stopped by Lewis in the 1992 Olympic gold-medal bout, had, like his conqueror, a no-risk start as a pro. The opponent he faced in his 13th bout was a 31-year-old from Oklahoma named Charles Woolard who, surely tongue in cheek, called himself ‘White Lightning’.
He had been KO’d in one and two rounds, respectively, in his last two bouts prior to facing Bowe, who got him out of there in the second round.
Wladimir Klitschko
Here again, we had a “taking it slowly” approach. Klitschko’s first 13 fights were as low-risk as it gets. His 13th bout was against a Mexican-born trial horse named Marcos Gonzalez who had been KO’d in five of his last six appearances. Klitschko finished him in two rounds.
All Klitschko’s bouts up to and including the one with Gonzalez had been scheduled for six or eight rounds. Not the sort of matchmaking you’d expect when an Olympic gold medallist is involved.
Vitali Klitschko
Vitali had the same carefully matched start to his pro career as brother Wladimir. He won by KO in each of his first 13 bouts, all scheduled for six or eight rounds. His 13th opponent, Anthony Willis, started out as a light-heavy and had been stopped in two of his last three bouts. Klitschko stopped him in the fifth.
Deontay Wilder
Olympic bronze medallist Wilder went 13-0, 13 KOs, to start his career, boxing in four-rounders and six-rounders. The opposition was weak and he even suffered a knockdown in his 13th bout, against one Harold Sconiers, although the Bronze Bomber got up to win the fourth round.
