Nico Ali Walsh fighting in same place grandfather Muhammad Ali had his jaw broken by Ken Norton in 12 punishing rounds

When on Saturday Nico Ali Walsh enters the ring at San Diego’s Pechanga Arena for his rematch with Reyes Sanchez, he will be fighting to exorcise the ghosts that evoke a defeat suffered by his grandfather Muhammad Ali.

Ali Walsh has previously spoken of the spiritual significance of fighting and winning at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, as he did when stopping Alejandro Ibarra in April and where he recalls spending time with Ali while in his youth, and at the iconic Madison Square Garden, where Ali relished some of his finest nights.

The Pechanga Arena, however – when it was known, more simply, as the Sports Arena – was where in 1973 his grandfather suffered a broken jaw in the process of 12 damaging rounds with Ken Norton, who was awarded a split-decision victory and after Joe Frazier became only the second to beat Ali as a professional.

Top Rank’s Bob Arum, who promotes Saturday’s fight, has so far guided the middleweight Ali Walsh’s career, having overseen 27 fights during Ali’s career – including the first against Norton. It was also Arum who promoted the first fight between Ali Walsh and Sanchez in December 2021, when in the process of dropping a majority decision the American became the only one of five opponents Ali Walsh struggled to stop.

The 22-year-old Ali Walsh will be fighting for the first time under his new trainer Kay Koroma, whose leading fighter Shakur Stevenson so impressively unified the WBC and WBO super featherweight titles on the same promotion he beat Ibarra.

“I’m going there to break the curse of my grandfather getting his jaw broke and going there to do way better than the first time I fought this guy,” said Ali Walsh, who has previously been trained by SugarHill Steward and Richard T Slone, a protege of Frazier, Ali’s greatest rival.

“The timing is perfect because my grandfather fought in the same arena I’m fighting in. He got his jaw broke. I’m coming into the rematch against the guy who gave me my hardest fight.”

Norton was best known for being one of Frazier’s sparring partners when he was matched with Ali, who had won the 10 fights that had followed his first defeat, by “Smokin’ Joe”. In the great Eddie Futch, he also shared a trainer with Frazier – and the one who had previously masterminded Ali’s downfall.

Ali made the mistake of unwisely weighing in in Norton’s hometown at a heavy 221lbs against his naturally bigger and more muscular opponent, and one who more relevantly proved unexpectedly difficult, stylistically. Throwing a jab that often matched Ali’s, and using a cross-armed defence that as commonly frustrated the favourite, Norton even broke Ali’s jaw.

“With that lurching, herky-jerky, splay-footed movement of his, you just couldn’t time him,” Ali’s storied trainer Angelo Dundee later reflected.

'The Greatest’s' remarkably high pain threshold and capacity to absorb significant punishment not only contributed to so much of his success, against Norton – according to his team – it meant him lasting until the 12th round despite his jaw being broken in the second. Those around Norton maintain that the damage was instead done in the 12th; footage of their punishing fight regardless suggests that it was earlier; Ali himself said: “The jaw didn’t hurt so much in the fight.

“Under all the heat and the excitement, you don’t feel it. Like a man in a street fight. He gets cut in the stomach, fights on with his guts hanging out and don’t feel nothing until he gets to the hospital.”

It was when Ali used his movement that he proved most effective. When he sought to trade with the disciplined Norton, as against Frazier, he was unnecessarily risking defeat.

In the years that followed, and indeed in his two subsequent fights with Ali – six months later in September 1973 and again in 1976 – Norton demonstrated the extent to which he was such a worthy contender, but the extent of the surprise his performance was generating could be heard at the start of the sixth round in the words of the respected ringside commentator Howard Cosell.

“Either Kenny Norton is a much smarter, much better fighter than anybody thought, or Muhammad Ali has gone back a lot more than one could have reasonably believed.”

Entering the final round there was little question Ali – who the punch stats show was out-landed by Norton by 233 punches to 171 – was on course for defeat, and yet even then Norton, then 29 and therefore two years younger than Ali, remained the aggressor, almost bullying Ali when targeting his body and remaining in control at the time of the final bell.

One ringside judge, Fred Hayes, made Ali a narrow winner; the other two, Hal Rickard and Frank Rustich, scored in favour of Norton, Rustich doing so convincingly.

“Kenny, you made me look silly,” Cosell said afterwards. “That’s okay, Howard,” replied Norton, a former Marine whose fight preparations included the use of a hypnotist and self-help book. “You always look silly.”

Norton was a single father, one struggling financially and previously called “tailor-made” by Cosell and “Ken Somebody” by Sports Illustrated. Even if by then George Foreman, who had recently ruthlessly stopped Frazier to win the WBA and WBC titles, was established as the world’s leading heavyweight, Ali had walked to the ring wearing a robe gifted to him by Elvis Presley and remained the division’s biggest and most popular name.

“The first Ali fight gave me a chance to give my son more food, better clothes,” said Norton, for whom victory proved transformative. He had been paid $50,000 – $42,000 more than his previous career-high purse. “A fight with Ali gave me a chance at life, period.”

“Ken Norton is the best man I’ve ever fought,” said Ali six months later, in the moments after narrowly avenging his defeat, this time at The Forum in Inglewood. “He is better than Joe Frazier, Jerry Quarry, Sonny Liston – any of them.”