{"id":25088,"date":"2021-02-07T14:46:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T18:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=25088"},"modified":"2021-05-22T09:49:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T13:49:53","slug":"rip-leon-spinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=25088","title":{"rendered":"RIP: Leon Spinks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Leon Spinks, Olympic Gold medal boxer and former Heavyweight Boxing Champ of the World, died yesterday at age 67 from prostrate cancer.<\/p>\n

Leon Spinks won three consecutive national AAU light heavyweight boxing championships.\u00a0 He was a light heavyweight bronze medalist in the 1974 World Championships, a light heavyweight silver medalist in the 1975 Pan Am games, and a light heavyweight gold medalist in the 1976 Olympics.<\/p>\n

Spinks was best known for his upset victory of Mohammad Ali which catapulted him in the national spotlight.\u00a0 Spinks got the opportunity to face Ali after just 8 professional fights.\u00a0 Ali was looking at Spinks as a tune-up for a tougher rematch against Ken Norton.\u00a0 Spinks was a relatively inexperienced pro who had fought most of his career as a light-heavyweight.\u00a0 Surprisingly, Spinks out-boxed Ali over the course of 15 rounds and won a split-decision victory!<\/p>\n

The boxing commission wanted Spinks to next face Ken Norton who was the number 1 contender for the title.\u00a0 Spinks refused, instead opting to give Ali a rematch.\u00a0 Spinks was striped of the title.\u00a0 Ali came to the rematch in shape (no longer under-estimating Spinks) and easily won.\u00a0 Spinks continued fighting in both the heavyweight and cruiserweight divisions,\u00a0 In 1981, Spinks fought Larry Holmes for the Heavyweight Championship, losing by TKO in the 3rd.<\/p>\n

I remember watching the first Spinks\/Ali fight and being surprised at Leon’s performance.\u00a0 As the fight wore on it became clear that history was being made.\u00a0 I also was impressed that Spinks was willing to give up the title to give Ali a chance to avenge the loss.\u00a0 He said he wanted to return the opportunity that Ali had given him.<\/p>\n

Leon Spinks won three consecutive national AAU light heavyweight championships.\u00a0 He was a light heavyweight bronze medalist in the 1974 World Championships, a light heavyweight silver medalist in the 1975 Pan Am games, and a light heavyweight gold medalist in the 1976 Olympics.<\/p>\n

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Leon Spinks’ family, friends and fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leon Spinks, Olympic Gold medal boxer and former Heavyweight Boxing Champ of the World, died yesterday at age 67 from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,57,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-rip","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25092,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25088\/revisions\/25092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}