There are probably quite a few fighters from over the years that pop up in your mind as far as guys who never seemed to get a break or, with them, rarely catching one. Too often, less connected, less experienced, or less exciting, get jobbed out of the decision in a fight. Case in point: the great and so vastly underrated Jimmy Young. Philadelphian Young never had things easy.
After a short amateur career – one that saw the raw talent that would go on to become recognized by those who knew what they were looking at as a slippery, defensively sound boxer of the highest order win the New Jersey Golden Gloves – Jimmy went pro. And, boy, was he matched tough. Unrelentingly tough. In just his sixth pro outing, Young, at age 22, was thrown in with the far more experienced Roy Williams. “Tiger” beat him over four rounds at The Blue Horizon.
Young, still to find his groove, to find his confidence and his self-belief, was beaten by Randy Neumann in March of 1972, and then, after almost a year out of the ring, Jimmy was slung in with the murderous punching Earnie Shavers. Young was taken out in three rounds at the fight held at the Spectrum. But Jimmy came back with a vengeance. Having sparred plenty with Joe Frazier at his gym in Philly, Young was about to put together a good run of fights to get noticed. Unfortunately, Jimmy’s bad luck of being robbed, sometimes quite blatantly, would come during this spell in his career.
It was 50 years ago today when Young, now 13-4-1, met Shavers in a rematch. This time, despite being floored heavily with a left hook in the fourth, Young fought well, he boxed well, and he dominated Shavers in the second half of the fight that was held in Landover, Maryland. After ten rounds, the drawn verdict fooled nobody. Young had suffered his first robbery.
More would follow.
Having caught the eye of heavyweight king Muhammad Ali as a potential easy night’s work as much as anything, Young had picked up solid wins over Ron Lyle and Joe Roman. Ali, overweight and under-motivated, gave Young a shot in April of 1976. To this day, historians point to this fight as one of the worst showings of “The Greatest.” Hefty and sluggish, Ali had a torrid time with Jimmy’s, shall we say, a unique bag of tricks. Unfortunately for Young, his habit of sticking his head out of the ropes when under pressure, a bewildering move the challenger made more than once during the fight, cost him in the eyes of the judges. Ali was awarded a 15-round UD.
Still, Young, who plenty of experts say had suffered his second robbery here, was now a name and a top contender. And, after a repeat decision win over Lyle, Jimmy would score the biggest win of his entire career. March, 1977, Puerto Rico. Young faced the man who, like previous two-time foe Shavers, is often referred to as one of the hardest heavyweight punchers ever. But George Foreman was to have a weird night, a bizarre, life-changing night.
Young survived a torrid round seven, to come on to befuddle, outbox, and even out-punch Foreman; Young punctuating his night’s work by scoring a knockdown in the 12th and final round. How much Young had improved as a fighter, as a boxer, since those losses to Williams and Shavers. This time, they couldn’t rob Young, the UD being his. Foreman collapsed into the arms of God in his dressing room and he didn’t fight again for a decade.
Young, now at his peak, went on to drop a closer-than-close decision in a fight with Ken Norton. If he had won this one if he had not suffered what could be called his third robbery, Jimmy would have gotten what Norton got, and that’s the vacant WBC heavyweight title handed to him, with a fight with Larry Holmes following. Who knows how different Jimmy’s life would have been had he been given the nod over Norton in November of 1977? Might Young have given Holmes the kind of hell he gave Foreman?
It was now a slow decline. Young would suffer as he showed up in less than great shape, and his love for the sport perhaps had been robbed of him. Decision losses to fellow slickster Ossie Ocasio came, and the first fight was very close (and arguably robber number four for Young), with a wide decision loss to Mike Dokes following. Then, against red-hot puncher Gerry Cooney, Young was stopped on simply horrific cuts in the fourth round. Only Shavers and Cooney ever managed to stop Jimmy.
Finally retiring in 1990, this after he had dropped decisions against three more men who at one time held a heavyweight title – Greg Page, Tony Tubbs, Tony Tucker – Young exited with a less than impressive-looking 35-18-3(11) record. Broke and on the streets during the last few months of his life before being hospitalized, Young’s final payday came unofficially, as current heavyweight king Mike Tyson recognized him in his gym and stuffed a handful of $100 bills into his hand.
Young ranks as one of the finest boxers never to have won even a version of the world heavyweight title. Young was indeed a guy who seemingly couldn’t get a break. Jimmy died in February of 2005, at age 56. It’s a cliché, and it’s bandied around today about far too many fighters, but if Jimmy Young was around today, he would toy with a number of the elite heavyweights.
How fascinating it would have been to see the prime Young in there with the likes of Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury, and Anthony Joshua.
