Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
Boxing doesn’t get the love it once did in this country, but it’s still a very entertaining sport. Most casual fans just watch for the knockouts, and boy was there a knockout in a recent fight between Deontay Wilder and Siarhei Liakhovich. The two heavyweights went at, but it only took 103 seconds for Wilder to score a knockout victory over Liakhovich. While this knockout seems normal (if you want to call it that), Liakhovich’s body has quite the reaction to being unconscious:
Wilder’s victory keeps him undefeated in his professional career at 29-0, all by knockout. To this point he’s never fought past the third round, which is pretty common for heavyweights with a lot of knockout power.
The most famous example of a boxer not ready to fight into the later rounds is George Foreman. Foreman fought Muhammad Ali back in 1974 in the famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ bout from Zaire. Coming into the fight, Foreman was undefeated and had never come close to going the distance. Ali used a famous strategy now known as the rope-a-dope to tire the younger, stronger Foreman out. After Foreman had pounded away on Ali for eight rounds, Ali landed a combo to knockout the challenger and retain his world title.
No one was picking the 32-year old Ali to beat the 24-year old Foreman, but he outsmarted him on that October night in Africa. The famous moment from that fight came after Foreman had landed a thunderous blow to Ali’s body in the fifth round, and Ali leaned in and said, “Is that all you got, George?” Foreman later revealed that he thought to himself, “Yep…that’s about it.”
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