The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing

Boxing's colorful history is filled with chapters of high drama, simmering controversy and humor.

In The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing: The Untold Stories, Ferdie Pacheco, the famed "Fight Doctor" who manned Muhammad Ali's corner for 15 years, offers the following criteria for picking an even dozen of boxing's greatest rounds: to be included, each must have exhibited some impact beyond boxing or had a significant effect on the sport's rules or a fighter's career, or life or death must have hung in the balance. Given the parameters, the fights, fighters, and rounds he opts for offer no surprises. They include round 1 of Dempsey-Willard, the 7th-round long count of Dempsey-Tunney, Joe Louis's opening-round KO of Max Schmeling, and four of Ali's greatest performances, including his 8th-round emergence against George Foreman and the titanic 14th round of the "Thrilla in Manila" with Joe Frazier.

If Pacheco leans toward the obvious, The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing is no rope-a-dope. There's action and insight from the start, with lots of background on fighters, pre-fight hoopla, the fights themselves, and what Pacheco calls "the untold stories," which are really his genial analyses and reflections on events--until he gets to the Ali fights he himself worked. Here, Pacheco brings us close enough to feel the pummeling, smell the sweat, and, through the filter of his recollections, hear the voices of the participants. Witness this exchange between Ali and Frazier at the end of the 7th round of their epic third encounter: "Ali, with his back to the corner," writes Pacheco, "grabbed Joe by the back of the head and pulled him into a clinch. He yelled in Frazier's ear, 'They told me you was washed up, champ.' Joe gritted his teeth, hammered his hardest punch to Ali's kidney and growled, 'They lied to you, champ. They lied!'" It's the kind of exchange--and there are many more like it--that helps The 12 Greatest Rounds easily go the distance. --Jeff Silverman