The greatest game

It was the weekend Mike Weaver fractured two knuckles and the thumb of his right hand but still knocked out Gerrie Coetzee in the 13th round at Sun City to retain his world heavyweight crown.

In 1980, as Apartheid’s stranglehold on the country was iron-fisted, a Black man bashing an Afrikaaner in his backyard brought people out onto the streets of the townships to celebrate.

But if it was punches you were looking for, there were as many thrown and successfully delivered at the Orlando Stadium as Kaizer Chiefs and Moroka Swallows went head-to-head in cup action in late October 1980 on the same day as the Sun City spectacle.

“It was a measure of Soweto’s interest in the weekend’s Mainstay Cup semifinals that the world heavyweight boxing fight at Sun City is relegated to the muted role of second fiddle,” wrote journalist Sy Lerman in a jab at his own sports editors, who filled the back pages with rugby and boxing on a weekend of heightened football interest for the country’s majority population.

It is now more than 40 years ago and times are much changed.