MUHAMMAD Ali’s final British opponent has hailed the man who gave him his greatest night in boxing.
Southpaw Richard Dunn beat West Germany’s Bernd August to earn a clash with the world heavyweight champion at Munich’s Olympiahalle and the pair fought out a gripping five-round battle May 24, 1976. Ali knocked down the Yorkshireman twice in the fifth and was windmilling his right arm in forewarning of another mighty punch when referee Herbert Tomser stopped the fight.
It was to prove Ali’s last bout in Europe, with NBC’s commentators on the night hailing an “old-fashioned club kind of a fight”, saying the American “came out for a war and he got a war from the Englishman”.
Following Ali’s death at the age of 74 on Friday night in Arizona, Dunn said: “It goes on forever, that night. I think it was the best sporting moment of my life. Even getting there and walking down to the ring and waiting for him to come in was phenomenal. The fight went pretty well, I thought. Obviously it was a wrong decision to stop it. It was just a good fight. He was the best man on the night and that was it. I had no arguments with it.”
The respect between the pair had been obvious even before they went glove to glove. Weeks earlier, Dunn had been the star turn on ITV’s This Is Your Life and Ali taunted his opponent in a video message.
Ali had done his homework, demanding his opponent bring some Yorkshire pudding to Germany, and he knew Dunn had served as a Territorial Army paratrooper.
“So you’ve taken 67 parachute drops,” Ali said on the programme. “Well, I want you to mark this down now: you have one more big drop to come, a big hard drop, it’s going to be the longest sharp drop you’ve ever had.”
As it turned out, Dunn’s legs were like jelly after he was floored for the second time in round five, and while he wanted to go on, Ali would surely have inflicted only more punishment. Ali told NBC that night: “I predict he’s going to be a top-notch contender. He gave me more trouble than I expected.”
But Dunn would never win another fight, retiring after two more defeats. Now 71, and president for the last five years of the Scarborough branch of Parkinson’s UK, a role he took in honour of his famous conqueror, Dunn knows why Ali transcended sport to have such a wide appeal. “He had charisma, style, panache. He had everything and he knew how to work a crowd, he knew exactly what to do,” Dunn said. “I think he treated me with a lot of respect before that fight.
“He didn’t do half the silly things he did with the other fighters. Why, I didn’t know. It might be because I’d met him ages ago, long before the fight, and we got on well together.”
Their showdown came just seven months after Ali’s great victory over Joe Frazier in the Thrilla In Manila, but the Louisville Lip was showing signs of being in decline.
“He’d been struggling a bit, he’d been through 15 rounds in his previous fight against Jimmy Young,” Dunn said. “I definitely thought
I had a chance and I wouldn’t have been there otherwise, if I hadn’t thought I could be successful.”
Dunn met Ali out of the ring in July 1977, when north-east England came to a near standstill for a four-day visit by the man who was still ruling boxing’s blue-riband division. “My wife and I went over to Newcastle,” Dunn said. “He walked over to us and he sat down for 20 or 30 minutes and explained how tired he was. There were people who were dragging him around the world.
“But the people who saw him that day, they’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget him. I considered him a friend.
“I’ve got the original tape of our fight. It’s locked away in the bank. I’ve had copies made and given those out. I’ve got the happy memories. There’s no-one with a bad word to say about Ali. I’ve been asked if I’m going over to the funeral but I’m not. I’ll say goodbye in my own way.”
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