“As goes the heavyweight division, so goes boxing.”
Those words were said to m, e by legendary trainer/cornerman Angelo Dundee. He said them to me at breakfast a few days before the rematch between Heavyweight Champion Leon Spinks and Dundee’s fighter—Muhammad Ali—in September 1978.
Seven months earlier, Spinks had pulled off one of the greatest upsets in boxing history, when he took his 6-0-1 record into the ring in the Superdome in New Orleans and won a 15-round split decision against the 36-year-old Ali to capture the heavyweight crown.
That morning of the rematch, at breakfast, Dundee was pointing out just how much the heavyweight crown meant to boxing.