Jimmy Young, 56, Dies; Beat Foreman but Lost to Ali
NY Times
Jimmy Young, a former heavyweight boxer who beat George Foreman and fought Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton in the 1970’s, died on Sunday. He was 56.
A spokeswoman for Hahnemann University Hospital announced his death. The Philadelphia Daily News reported that he died of heart disease after six days in the hospital.
The 6-foot-1, 210-pound Young compiled a 35-18-3 record with 12 knockouts, fighting from 1969 to 1990.
He was a quick, stylish fighter, but he lacked a knockout punch.
“He was brilliant,” Bert Randolph Sugar, the boxing historian, said. “The problem is that he was in one of the best classes of heavyweights ever, and all the other stars had bigger punches.”
Young lost a unanimous 15-round decision to Ali on April 30, 1976, in Landover, Md., in a bid to capture Ali’s heavyweight championship, a verdict that was booed by most of the crowd.
“To beat Ali in those days,” Young once said, “you really had to beat him bad, you know what I mean?”
Jimmy Young memorabilia at eBay.com
