KAs soon as the gong sounded for the second round, things went haywire in the ring. The outsider from Germany attacked Vogelwild and attacked the towering favorite from the USA. Without a break, Jürgen Blin stormed forward and visibly got Muhammad Ali in trouble. With two-handed hooks, he attacked his opponent, who raised his forearms protectively, seemed to be on the run for moments and seemed almost stunned. Ali’s facial expression seemed to ask, “What does this wretch want from me?”
The attacker from Hamburg, however, continued with lion’s courage. Though most of his punches missed or ricocheted off Ali’s cover, a few hit his head or body. Finally, Blin pulled out a mighty swing, which Ali, however, smoothly dodged. Such was the force of the left-hand lead hand that Blin stumbled through the air hole himself. Applause from the astonished Swiss audience rewarded the fearless German at the end of this round.
Muhammad Ali is attacked by Jürgen Blin, but his punches fizzle out
Quelle: picture alliance/KEYSTONE
It was an unequal duel that took place 50 years ago, on Boxing Day 1971, in the Hallenstadion in Zurich. In one corner, megastar Muhammad Ali, who had just returned to the ring after a compulsory break of several years and was not yet in top form. In March he suffered his first professional defeat against Joe Frazier.
Opposite him was a Germanic pugilist, who had only come to honor this duel because two other opponents who had been considered had failed. The matter seemed hopeless from the start, Ali’s victory programmed. Nevertheless, the Hanseatic underdog was still in the lead after the fourth round. But after that, the battle gradually changed. Ali pulled himself together, shifted up a gear, took command.
“I wasn’t really gone,” Blin recalls
In round seven, the American hit Blin’s head with a not-too-powerful right hand over Blin’s hanging guard. The German staggered back a few steps, crashed into the ropes, and finally fell to the ground. “If I’m honest, I have to say that I didn’t really need to be counted out at that moment,” says Blin in retrospect. “I felt the hit, but I didn’t really go away and I could have continued when the referee got to three.” Intuitively, however, he decided against getting up to resume the fight.
Ali won the fight by KO in the seventh round
Those: pa / KEYSTONE / STR
Jürgen Blin let himself be counted and suffered a very honorable defeat in the fight against the most popular professional boxer of all time. “I was going really fast and had pretty much lost my powder by then,” is his view of what happened today. It was clear to him from the start that he would never be able to knock Ali out, “but if I had boxed defensively, I probably would have ended earlier.”
Painless defeats are rare in sports. This even tasted sweet, turned out to be pure luck. As someone who had crossed his fists with boxing genius Ali, Blin was an interesting protagonist for event organizers in Germany and Europe who was happy to be hired.
The shine worked beyond the end of the sporting career. When he later ran bars in Billstedt, at the Berliner Tor and in the main station, curious people came to watch the former ring hero tapping beer. “I made about a million from boxing, but not bad from the pubs either,” says Blin.
A young man fights his way up – to the European title
It was the financial result of a textbook career that mirrored the core narrative for this martial art: the chance to literally punch your way up as the underprivileged. This is exactly what Jürgen Blin did, who grew up in truly poor circumstances. The father: milker, drunkard, tyrant. The family had to change location several times within Schleswig-Holstein because “the old man” had once again been laid off somewhere.
At 15, Blin fled to Hamburg to go to sea – the main thing was to get away from the misery at home: “I just wanted to get out of the dirt.” The first trip went to Monrovia. His job: assistant in the galley, cleaning vegetables, cooking, serving, washing up. Soon after, when he got into raging seas on the Atlantic with his “boat”, he thought the end had come, they were going to drown.
At least he was spared that. But experience was enough for Blin. He resigned, began an apprenticeship as a butcher and came into contact with HBC Heros, Hamburg’s famous boxing club. He quickly caught fire and realized: “Man, you have a talent for something.” With the first successes in the amateur camp, his self-confidence grew, Blin felt boxing is his thing, maybe the way to change his life positively. That should come true.
Anyone who visits Jürgen Blin today in his family home in the Boberg dunes will first be directed to the basement. There, the 78-year-old has put together a museum collection with photos, newspaper clippings and utensils from his time as a professional boxer from 1964 to 1973. A very valuable memento has of course been lost: the EM belt from 1972. The Hamburger had conquered it against the Spaniard José Manuel Urtain, a Basque lumberjack who no longer found any challengers in his special discipline “stone chiseling” and had switched to fistfighting out of necessity.
The German won on points in the Sports Palace in Madrid. “The victory was deserved, but not nearly as clear as the first time,” judges Blin today. Almost two years earlier, he had clearly dominated Urtain in the 15 rounds that were still common in title fights at the time and had knocked him down several times. “My point loss was a mess to the power of three,” Blin still outraged today. It was the era in boxing when it was said that in professional fights in the country of a defending champion you had to win by knockout or you were lost. The judges were considered corrupt.
But Jürgen Blin lacked the steam in his fists, he didn’t have a destructive punch in his repertoire. He hit a lot, hit often, but rarely sustained. The “Box-Beatle” Norbert Grupe was counted six times after hitting Blin and still only lost on points. Blin has only won nine of his 48 professional fights prematurely. Not a particularly scary record for a heavyweight.
Actually, Blin boxed in the wrong class
“My opponents were almost always taller, had more reach and often weighed 25 kilos more than I did at 85.” Today he would be in the best of hands in the cruiserweight division, which at that time didn’t exist as a class between light and heavyweight. The ring tactics resulted from his physical dimensions: “I couldn’t do anything other than constantly give fire.” Blin does not even attest to any particular talent: “Basically, I was a pure machine of will.” He didn’t care what strengths and weaknesses his opponents brought with them: “I always attacked from the first gong. There was only one thing for me: victory.”
Back then, in Zurich, he couldn’t be reached with the best will in the world, although Blin says today: “Ali wasn’t even the toughest opponent in my career – I felt Joe Bugner and Gerhard Zech were stronger.” the Hamburger within three years four legendary ring battles, of which he ended two victorious, twice the verdict was a draw. He lost the European title he had just conquered to the tall Briton Bugner.
He met Muhammad Ali twice more in later life. 2002 at an obscure product presentation in the Saxon town of Riesa. The boxing god was already marked by Parkinson’s disease. Five years later, Blin sat next to Ali in Berlin when his daughter Laila became super middleweight world champion. There is a photo showing the two exchampions, heads close together, in conversation. For many years it hung in Jürgen Blin’s bar in the main train station, today it adorns the said basement room. Because one thing is clear to Jürgen Blin, despite all the North German understatement: “The duel with Ali was the fight of my life.”
On May 8, 2022, Jürgen Blin died in Hamburg after a short illness at the age of 79. Blin leaves behind two sons and his partner. This portrait was first published on December 25, 2021.
