Cleveland Williams

Cleveland Williams
Data
Birth Name	Cleveland T. Williams
Fight name	Big cat
Weight class	Heavyweight
nationality	US-american
birthday	June 6, 1933
place of birth	Griffin
Date of death	September 3, 1999
style	Normal display
size	1.91 m
Range	2.03 cm
Combat Statistics
Struggles	92
Victories	78
Knockout victories	58
Defeats	13
draw	1
Profile in the BoxRec database

Cleveland "Big Cat" Williams (born June 6, 1933 in Griffin , † September 3, 1999 ) was an American heavyweight boxer .

Career

Williams had enormous punching power, 46 of his 78 wins were classic knockouts and twelve of them were technical. He turned professional in 1951 and won his first 32 fights, mostly by knockout. Against Omrelio Agramonte , the opponent with the best record (42 wins out of 19 losses), Williams won on points. In 1953 Williams lost to Sylvester Jones on points, where he was counted several times.

He had hardly defeated Jones in a rematch when he was defeated by the light heavyweight Bob Satterfield (33-16-2) in 1954 with a short knockout.

In 1959 he went after a tough fight in the third round against Sonny Liston knockout, but in the same year he beat Curley Lee Chapman for the first time an opponent with a good record (18-1); In 1960 he was knocked out a second time by Liston, this time in the second round. In the same year he defeated George Moore (record 13-0) by classic knockout and inflicted his only defeat on him.

In 1962, in his adopted home of Texas, he knocked out Ernie Terrell in what was by far the biggest win of his career and fought against world-class man Eddie Make a draw.

In 1963, however, he lost the rematch against Terrell and subsequently did not beat a major opponent. Sonny Banks was known from his knockdown against Muhammad Ali , but was not world-class.

In 1964 he was shot down by the police, one bullet remained in his body.

In 1966 he received a (linear) title fight against Ali, which attracted attention because of his puncher image; he was 5: 1 underdog. The fight took place in the new Houston Astrodome in front of 35,460 spectators, the entrance fees reached a high $ 461,290 for the time. Both Ali and Williams weighed around 96 kg in the fight. After only 3 rounds, Ali won by knocking out. Some sport historians refer to this victory as Ali's boxing climax.

After this fight, Williams was only a build-up opponent , for example from Mac Foster , who knocked him out twice in 1969.

Williams ended his career in 1972.

Cleveland Williams was included in the list of the 100 best puncher of all time by the ring magazine and rated as one of the best boxers who could never win a world title.

Web links

• Cleveland Williams in the BoxRec database