Canadian boxing icon George Chuvalo dies at 89

George Chuvalo, a hard-nosed heavyweight who never hit the canvas despite taking on the world's best boxers, has died. He was born Sept. 12, 1937.

Chuvalo was a Canadian amateur champion at 17, held the national title as a pro for almost 20 years and was ranked as high as No. 2 in the world.

He was 73-18-2 as a pro with 64 knockouts in a pro career that stretched from 1956 to 1978.

His career was defined by two mega-bouts with Muhammad Ali, in 1966 at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens and 1972 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, in which Chuvalo drew kudos for standing toe-to-toe with the most gifted and charismatic boxer of the era.

"When people think of me, they think of me fighting Muhammad," Chuvalo said. "It's hard for them to think of anything else.

"But I had close to 100 fights. The perception of me is as a tough guy who could take a shot. I was supposed to have the best chin in boxing. It clouds my other abilities."

Chuvalo would point out that it took more than an ability to absorb punches to record 73 wins and be ranked in the top 10 in the world in an age of heavyweight greats like Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman.

Chuvalo took pride in noting he had more knockouts than Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey — and that they exceeded the total number of fights that Ali, Frazier, Rocky Marciano and Mike Tyson had.

"I'll be remembered as a guy who fought the best of his time, beat a lot of them and lost to some others," Chuvalo wrote in his 2013 autobiography "Chuvalo: A Fighter's Life: The Story of Boxing's Last Gladiator."

"I guess I was lucky, because I never had to deal with getting back on my feet," he wrote. "Not in the ring, anyway. Outside the ropes has been a different story."

Chuvalo lost three sons and his first wife Lynne to drugs and suicide.

"If you added up every punch I ever took and then multiplied the total by 10,000, it wouldn't begin to equal the pain of losing three sons and a wife to drugs and suicide," he wrote.

Ali made most opponents look slow and predictable, especially a stocky fighter who liked to get in close and work the body. But he could not finish Chuvalo, who had just 17 days notice to prepare for Ali the first time around after the champion's fight with Ernie Terrell fell through.

"They had a contest between a bull and a bumblebee at Maple Leaf Gardens last night — with the usual result. The bull came out of it with his face looking like a bucket of balls at a golf driving range," Toronto Star columnist Milt Dunnell wrote at the time.