How to Guide: Beating the Greatest of All-Time

I’d like to give you a glimpse inside the mind of an immortal effort against all odds. I’m talking about one of the most incredible human efforts of all time. You see, Muhammad Ali lost five fights in his career. Yet, only two of those loses came in his prime. The last three losses came in the last four fights of his career. The ones that really stands out, as a result, are his losses in the middle of his reign as “the greatest” from Joe Frazier and Ken Norton respectively.

These heavy weight immortals all deserve their recognition of greatness, but there’s only one Ali. Ali was one of those once-in-a-generation characters who was known as the greatest of all time while he was competing. He left no doubt about that. 

As a layman to boxing, I can’t imagine getting in the ring for twelve rounds against another heavyweight. I can’t even approach thinking about stepping into the ring against a living legend and the undisputed greatest contender in history. On March 31, 1973, Ken Norton did just that and he won, breaking Ali’s jaw in the process.

The audacity of this effort still haunts me to this day. In a previous life, I was fairly close to Norton. When I started my professional baseball career, the late Boxing Hall of Fame Inductee offered me some personal advice and insight into how he did what he did to Ali. Oddly, it’s the last communication I had with him before he passed away years later. So, how’d he do it?

Norton said, “Logan, sooner or later, it’s the man who believes he can that will win. Mind over matter.”

Not only did Norton step into the ring against the greatest boxer of all time and beat him, he stepped into that ring believing he would. That, my friends, is the most important, most courageous act of heavyweight champion on the world, Ken Norton’s, career.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach