Exhibitions: Common on TV Back in the Day

[HomicideHenry]

[HomicideHenry]

[HomicideHenry]

[HomicideHenry]

[HomicideHenry]

[HomicideHenry]

[HomicideHenry]

[sweetviolenturge]

Back in the day men like Ali, Frazier & Foreman frequently fought "hard" exhibitions. Without the benefit of headgear or over-sized gloves & they were, for the most part, like actual fights. One such that I can't find any footage of but that I remember there being quite a bit of coverage of in the boxing magazines of the day was a five-round affair between Ali & Scott Ledoux in Chicago back in 1976. I think it was used as a warm-up for Ali before the Norton rubber match.
Also, around that time, there was an exhibition between George Foreman & Jodie Ballard in which "Big" George did anything but take it easy on Ballard. As seen below:

[sweetviolenturge]

Back in 1990, I was scheduled to fight on a card in Binghamton, NY in which the headliner was Larry Holmes who fought an exhibition match vs Art Bayliss in preparation for his post-Tyson fight comeback ( my fight was cancelled when my opponent failed to show up ). It was a lot of fun to watch, but it was fought with headgear & sparring gloves. Still, Holmes put it to Bayliss pretty good.

[Caractacus]

during the "Golden Age of Televsion during the 1950's.
Live Boxing shows were on every channel.
Joe Louis did a exhibition with Rex Layne that was shown on TV.
Louis did like maybe a 100 exhibitions during 1949-1951.
I wonder how many were televised but not kinescoped like the one with Rex Layne ?

[HomicideHenry]

during the "Golden Age of Televsion during the 1950's.
Live Boxing shows were on every channel.
Joe Louis did a exhibition with Rex Layne that was shown on TV.
Louis did like maybe a 100 exhibitions during 1949-1951.
I wonder how many were televised but not kinescoped like the one with Rex Layne ?

I am not sure if it was televised but Louis vs Valentino was a damn good exhibition bout.

[HomicideHenry]

Back in the day men like Ali, Frazier & Foreman frequently fought "hard" exhibitions. Without the benefit of headgear or over-sized gloves & they were, for the most part, like actual fights. One such that I can't find any footage of but that I remember there being quite a bit of coverage of in the boxing magazines of the day was a five-round affair between Ali & Scott Ledoux in Chicago back in 1976. I think it was used as a warm-up for Ali before the Norton rubber match.
Also, around that time, there was an exhibition between George Foreman & Jodie Ballard in which "Big" George did anything but take it easy on Ballard. As seen below:

I'd love to find Ali vs Gardner exhibition bout in 1978-1979...

[Caractacus]

That was no "Exhibition" that was a Massacre.
I think Jody Ballard came into the ring thinking maybe Big George was going to take it easy on him compared to others because they were both Houstonions.

[sweetviolenturge]

Back in the day men like Ali, Frazier & Foreman frequently fought "hard" exhibitions. Without the benefit of headgear or over-sized gloves & they were, for the most part, like actual fights. One such that I can't find any footage of but that I remember there being quite a bit of coverage of in the boxing magazines of the day was a five-round affair between Ali & Scott Ledoux in Chicago back in 1976. I think it was used as a warm-up for Ali before the Norton rubber match.
Also, around that time, there was an exhibition between George Foreman & Jodie Ballard in which "Big" George did anything but take it easy on Ballard. As seen below:

I'd love to find Ali vs Gardner exhibition bout in 1978-1979...

Was that an exhibition between Ali & the UK's John L. Gardner or was it an exhibition between Ali & midwest journeyman, Chuck Gardner?
The interesting thing about John L. Gardner is that Ali was very close to signing to fight him in 1981. I remember reading about Ali anxious awaiting the result of Gardner's bout with Lorenzo Zanon for the EBU title because if John L. won he was going to be Ali's comeback opponent. Well, Gardner won via KO5, but the Ali fight never came to fruition. Instead, Ali wound up fighting & losing to Trevor Berbick that December.

[oogiebe]

I had to do it...I'm sorry. (no I'm not.)

[HomicideHenry]

I had to do it...I'm sorry. (no I'm not.)

Ali's most high profile exhibition, yes, but was on closed circuit and not television.

[HomicideHenry]

Back in the day men like Ali, Frazier & Foreman frequently fought "hard" exhibitions. Without the benefit of headgear or over-sized gloves & they were, for the most part, like actual fights. One such that I can't find any footage of but that I remember there being quite a bit of coverage of in the boxing magazines of the day was a five-round affair between Ali & Scott Ledoux in Chicago back in 1976. I think it was used as a warm-up for Ali before the Norton rubber match.
Also, around that time, there was an exhibition between George Foreman & Jodie Ballard in which "Big" George did anything but take it easy on Ballard. As seen below:

I'd love to find Ali vs Gardner exhibition bout in 1978-1979...

Was that an exhibition between Ali & the UK's John L. Gardner or was it an exhibition between Ali & midwest journeyman, Chuck Gardner?
The interesting thing about John L. Gardner is that Ali was very close to signing to fight him in 1981. I remember reading about Ali anxious awaiting the result of Gardner's bout with Lorenzo Zanon for the EBU title because if John L. won he was going to be Ali's comeback opponent. Well, Gardner won via KO5, but the Ali fight never came to fruition. Instead, Ali wound up fighting & losing to Trevor Berbick that December.

John L Gardner.

[Kalan]

Back in the day men like Ali, Frazier & Foreman frequently fought "hard" exhibitions. Without the benefit of headgear or over-sized gloves & they were, for the most part, like actual fights. One such that I can't find any footage of but that I remember there being quite a bit of coverage of in the boxing magazines of the day was a five-round affair between Ali & Scott Ledoux in Chicago back in 1976. I think it was used as a warm-up for Ali before the Norton rubber match.
Also, around that time, there was an exhibition between George Foreman & Jodie Ballard in which "Big" George did anything but take it easy on Ballard. As seen below:

From what I was told at the time, Foreman vs Ballard was a FIGHT...NOT an exhibition... In fact I read something like "George Foreman, on the comeback trail will fight Jody Ballard and later read that he won the fight... In fact, I remember Ballard saying "I'm not going fight any of these big guys like Leroy Jones and George Foreman anymore because I just get knocked out." .... Well, Leroy Jones sure knocked him out in a real fight and I thought Foreman did as well.

For me, if it's an exhibition, I don't try to knock anyone out - unless they're trying to knock me out... An exhibition for me is a sparring session with smaller gloves and no headgear -- but if you want to you can wear headgear.. You're not supposed to hurt the other guy... It happens by accident of course; you're sparring with somebody and get into an exchange; a light punch on the button knocks them out when the last thing you wanted was to knock them out.. You don't use a referee for sparring sessions or exhibitions generally.. But they had a big time referee in there

And Foreman was going for it... He tore Ballard's head off like he sure THOUGHT it was a fight... Was there some kind of miscommunication about what kind of event it was???

[sweetviolenturge]

Back in the day men like Ali, Frazier & Foreman frequently fought "hard" exhibitions. Without the benefit of headgear or over-sized gloves & they were, for the most part, like actual fights. One such that I can't find any footage of but that I remember there being quite a bit of coverage of in the boxing magazines of the day was a five-round affair between Ali & Scott Ledoux in Chicago back in 1976. I think it was used as a warm-up for Ali before the Norton rubber match.
Also, around that time, there was an exhibition between George Foreman & Jodie Ballard in which "Big" George did anything but take it easy on Ballard. As seen below:

From what I was told at the time, Foreman vs Ballard was a FIGHT...NOT an exhibition... In fact I read something like "George Foreman, on the comeback trail will fight Jody Ballard and later read that he won the fight... In fact, I remember Ballard saying "I'm not going fight any of these big guys like Leroy Jones and George Foreman anymore because I just get knocked out." .... Well, Leroy Jones sure knocked him out in a real fight and I thought Foreman did as well.

For me, if it's an exhibition, I don't try to knock anyone out - unless they're trying to knock me out... An exhibition for me is a sparring session with smaller gloves and no headgear -- but if you want to you can wear headgear.. You're not supposed to hurt the other guy... It happens by accident of course; you're sparring with somebody and get into an exchange; a light punch on the button knocks them out when the last thing you wanted was to knock them out.. You don't use a referee for sparring sessions or exhibitions generally.. But they had a big time referee in there

And Foreman was going for it... He tore Ballard's head off like he sure THOUGHT it was a fight... Was there some kind of miscommunication about what kind of event it was???

I'm not sure what the exact circumstances were behind the fight. I'd love to know myself.
All I know is that the fight doesn't appear on Foreman's official record. But, then again, neither do any of the bouts from the "Toronto Five" promotion, so I'm assuming that the Ballard bout was more of the same. They didn't count as actual fights, but they were certainly exhibitions in name only. Foreman went out to hurt those men.
At the time of the bout, Ballard was a very respectable 23-3, so there's no reason that the NYSAC wouldn't have sanctioned the fight. But, it wasn't a "real" fight for some reason nor was it a part of a boxing card as there were no other fights in New York on that date. So, the bout was a stand-alone event.

[klompton]

The bout was billed as a 10 round no decision bout. The NYSAC refused to sanction it and considered it nothing more than a warm up for Foremans return. They allowed because there was no paid admission meaning the fans wouldnt be fleeced by the mismatch and because it was a benefit. It was a benefit bout to aid the Olympic Committee. In reality it was an exhibition bout whose abnormally long duration (for an exhibition) was designed to test Foremans stamina in the unlikely event that Ballard survived an early onslaught. Its clear from the event that, as in the Toronto episode, Foremans psyche and confidence had been damaged by the Ali affair and kow risk sideshows such as this and the Toronto 5 were needed to rebuild his confidence without any mishaps affecting his record.

[sweetviolenturge]

The bout was billed as a 10 round no decision bout. The NYSAC refused to sanction it and considered it nothing more than a warm up for Foremans return. They allowed because there was no paid admission meaning the fans wouldnt be fleeced by the mismatch and because it was a benefit. It was a benefit bout to aid the Olympic Committee. In reality it was an exhibition bout whose abnormally long duration (for an exhibition) was designed to test Foremans stamina in the unlikely event that Ballard survived an early onslaught. Its clear from the event that, as in the Toronto episode, Foremans psyche and confidence had been damaged by the Ali affair and kow risk sideshows such as this and the Toronto 5 were needed to rebuild his confidence without any mishaps affecting his record.

Thank you, klompton for setting us straight on the mystery about this bout.
I have to wonder though why the NYSAC wouldn't OK the match-up as a sanctioned fight as, as I pointed out a post or two back, Ballard was a decent 23-3 at the time. Making him about as good as later opponents in Foreman's comeback like Scott Ledoux & "Dino" Dennis & certainly better than Pedro Agosto ( or even Foreman's originally scheduled opponent for that date, Larry Middleton ).
BTW, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you where you gained your knowledge about the event in discussion. It's terrific that you know so much about it. That era of boxing is my favorite because it's the time in which I personally became a fan at 14 years old, so in-depth knowledge like your's is like gold to me. It's rare that I get to learn something new about it. Especially when it concerns the heavyweights. Peace.

[klompton]

It was seen as a mismatch because while Ballard was 23-3 he had been in with only two very fringe contenders, Clark, who he lost a wide decision to, and Bobick who he barely eaked out a win over with a one round swing on all cards. Pretty thin resume to be facing a man who was the undisputed HW champion one fight ago. BUT, lets be clear here, had Foreman and his people wanted this "fight" sanctioned they could have lobbied for it (Clancy, who was now handling Foreman, had a ton of pull in New York), switched venues, or switched opponents. This strongly suggests that they were all too pleased to keep this affair very informal for the sake of easing Big George back into competition.

[sweetviolenturge]

It was seen as a mismatch because while Ballard was 23-3 he had been in with only two very fringe contenders, Clark, who he lost a wide decision to, and Bobick who he barely eaked out a win over with a one round swing on all cards. Pretty thin resume to be facing a man who was the undisputed HW champion one fight ago. BUT, lets be clear here, had Foreman and his people wanted this "fight" sanctioned they could have lobbied for it (Clancy, who was now handling Foreman, had a ton of pull in New York), switched venues, or switched opponents. This strongly suggests that they were all too pleased to keep this affair very informal for the sake of easing Big George back into competition.

Well, I'm sure that the bout with Ballard served its purpose toward getting Foreman prepared for more dangerous competition down the line. Though one would have thought that he'd have carried his opponent for a few rounds just to shake out the cobwebs, I suppose after how mediocre he looked during the "Toronto Five" affair though, he wasn't about to allow Ballard to extend him at all though.
Do you know of any other such exhibitions that Foreman may have had & with whom?
For instance, I owned a poster that listed an exhibition that was scheduled to take place between Foreman & Terry Hinke, Lonnie Bennett & three other heavyweights in Buffalo, but I have no idea whether it ever took place.

[gilgamesh]

With the inactivity of guys these days little exhibitions every now and again might not be a bad idea to keep your name out there.

Also it could be something you could use almost tactically if you think about it. You could come out in one of these exhibition bouts, and purposely fight in such a way that's not the way you'd approach a dangerous opponent thereby giving a little misdirection to your next opponent.

Could be a bit of a mind games type thing.

I don't know. Just rambling. Carry on

[HomicideHenry]

With the inactivity of guys these days little exhibitions every now and again might not be a bad idea to keep your name out there.

Also it could be something you could use almost tactically if you think about it. You could come out in one of these exhibition bouts, and purposely fight in such a way that's not the way you'd approach a dangerous opponent thereby giving a little misdirection to your next opponent.

Could be a bit of a mind games type thing.

I don't know. Just rambling. Carry on :lol:

Brilliant!