Boxer ‘Aussie Joe’ Bugner didn’t expect to be insulted when he met the man who called himself ‘The Greatest’ – Muhammed Ali.
‘Damn you’re the ugliest white boy I’ve ever seen’, Ali told his younger rival as they came face to face before a sparring session in New York. ‘Your mother must have cried when she saw you!’
How did he respond to Ali’s comment? ‘I told him hang about, you think I’m ugly? You haven’t met my sister. That stopped him in his tracks!’
It was an unlikely start to a friendship that lasted right until the three times World Heavyweight Champion’s death in Phoenix, Arizona on June 3, aged 74.
They fought each other on two occasions, in 1973 and 1975 and both times Hungarian-born Joe became one of the few people to last the distance against Ali.
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