SIMMONS: The legend of George Chuvalo will live on forever

Boxing great flawed and funny, sharp and emotional, street-wise and cash poor; more than anything, he was ours

Published Sep 13, 2026  •  7 minute read

Former Canadian heavyweight boxer George Chuvalo mugs for a photo inside Peanuts Pub in the Carriage House Inn in Calgary, Alta., on Monday, April 18, 2016. Chuvalo died on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026, at the age of 89. Photo by Lyle Aspinall /Postmedia Network

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They tell me George Chuvalo is dead and I know for certain that has to be wrong.

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Even if he has barely spoken a word in years, I can still hear his staccato voice in my head. I can see him. I can laugh with him. I can watch him eat with those big meaty fingers, enjoying every bite of his Thai food or Chinese food or whatever it was we were eating that day.

And I will still wait for him, knowing he’s going to be late, he was always late, but he was always worth waiting for. The lunch. The talk. The tears. The comfort. The bravado.

We talked about almost everything over the years. From the greatest days of boxing to the horrible tragedies that so damaged his life. We talked a lot about the power of addiction and how it changed families. He would lose three of his five children to drug addiction. He would lose his wife, Lynne, to suicide. How much could a mother take? I lost my only brother to heroin. We talked about that and how drug addiction alters lives.

Chuvalo was in Albuquerque, N.M., in 1996, working the corner of a recovering addict on a Saturday night, when he flew home after the fight. At the airport, he was greeted by his second wife Joanne.

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“I didn’t expect her to be there,” he told me at the time. “And she looked at me, this crazy, crazy look. Then she held my hand tight. I knew she wanted to say something, but I said it first.

“Steven’s dead, isn’t he?”

George Chuvalo boxes against Muhammad Ali. Supplied photo

A fighter to the end

Steven Chuvalo was the third of Chuvalo’s children to lose their lives to suicide by drug addiction. Jesse died in 1985. George Lee died in 1993. Lynne took her life after the loss of a second son, just a month after George Lee’s passing. Steven was gone three years later.

All the punches Chuvalo took in the ring, the beatings Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman put on him, felt nothing like his family being taken from him piece by piece. It meant he had to do something. It meant he had to fight back, which as a boxer of his calibre was the only thing he knew.

He had to speak out about drugs and his family and loss. He had to do it publicly. He didn’t know what else to do.

He did all that as he was going broke. There wasn’t a lot of easy in Chuvalo’s life. He made it big in boxing, but not big enough to be set up financially. He did a little of this and a little of that to get by. He had a very small group around him of close friends, family and associates. This was no boxing posse. It was usually him with his friend Tom Doyle or his son Mitch or his personal driver, Marvin “The Weasel” Elkind. That was about it.

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The boxing world loved Chuvalo for taking all the shots and still fighting back. And his fighting became a symbol of Canadianism of some kind. He wasn’t just a tough guy, he was our tough guy. And at this time with Canada under siege, with our country being tested, Chuvalo remained that symbol of toughness, the boxer who never left his feet, the man who took more punches than almost anyone who ever lived.

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‘I just love the guy’

I went with Chuvalo to Rochester, N.Y. in 1994 for a fundraiser of sorts put on by boxing people to raise money for the Canadian heavyweight. The legendary Ali, who was normally paid $50,000 to do those kind of events, waived his fee for that night. So, too, did Frazier, who almost cost Chuvalo his eye from their one-sided slugfest in July 1967.

It wasn’t often Ali and Frazier would get together for anything. They didn’t care much for each other. There was still bitterness on Frazier’s part for what Ali did to him. But they came together that night because of Chuvalo, who earlier had been just a notch on their career belts.

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At the time, Chuvalo was in good health, just not financially. “You look at George’s life and Muhammad’s life and it’s hard to understand,” Frazier told me that night. “Both men have had so much pain. George took all those punches, but they didn’t seem to hurt him. Muhammad didn’t get hit that much and I look at him and think, ‘How did this happen?’ Did boxing do this to him.”

“I can’t say this for all the guys I fought, but I love George Chuvalo,” said Frazier. “I don’t know why, I just love the guy.”

By this time, Ali wasn’t saying much of anything. His hands were shaking rather noticeably from his Parkinson’s disease. His smile and laughter were seemingly gone.

“Fighting Ali was like having a date with a beautiful woman,” said Chuvalo. “You don’t want to get ready too fast. You want to prepare yourself, get dressed, showered, wear the right things,. You want to savour it.”

At the dinner, Ali spoke in hushed tones, the only way he could. “Thank you all for coming,” he said to the crowd. “My health is not what it was. That’s all I’ll say. Thank you.”

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At that moment, Ali hugged Chuvalo and the two men, who had last been in the ring together 22 years earlier, 27 rounds over two fights, stood arm in arm for several seconds, both men in tears. The last time that would ever happen.

George Chuvalo. Photo by Postmedia Network files

Chuvalo died on his 89th birthday

George Chuvalo died on his birthday, which was a very Chuvalo kind of thing to do. He turned 89 on Saturday morning and was gone by the afternoon. Ali died at the age of 74. Frazier was 67 when he passed. Again, Chuvalo took the punches, went the distance and then some, 12 rounds and more, for almost 90 years, most of it in good health and with a sound mind. He fought everybody at a time when boxing mattered. With better judging, he might have beaten Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight title. He was the Canadian champion when being a Canadian champion meant something. The thing about Chuvalo: His name mattered, his name always mattered.

I sat with him at a west end bar for his 80th birthday. Just about everybody who was anybody was there. He was still of semi-sound mind. We talked about getting together that night, bringing the “Beezer,” Steve Buffery, along for something involving food. We talked about it, but it rarely happened.

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That was part of the relationship. You made plans with George and he cancelled. You set up lunch dates and he often didn’t show. But you kept on trying because we had this relationship of common difficulty and we found each other when both of us needed someone who would listen and maybe understand.

CTV led its national newscast on Saturday night with the passing of Chuvalo and typical of what CTV News has become, they got it wrong. They called him the greatest boxer in Canadian history. He was never that. Lennox Lewis can take the prize. But Chuvalo was the greatest story, the collective we latched on to. He was unusual that way. The longer he lived, the more popular he became.

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More than just a great fighter

He got the Order of Canada, got a footprint on Canada’s Walk of Fame, got recognized by Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, Ontario’s Sports Hall of Fame, by the World Boxing Hall. There is a community centre in Etobicoke that bears his name and several awards across the country are given for toughness in his name.

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Chuvalo was always flawed and funny, sharp and emotional, street-wise and cash poor. But more than anything he was ours. Our guy. Our symbol. The immigrant kid-turned-championship contender.

Most of us never saw him fight, except maybe on film, but it didn’t mean we didn’t care or appreciate all that he had done. When later he began speaking to school kids, talking about the destructive power of drugs, reaching out because he needed to reach out, that was Chuvalo was at his finest. Honest, emotional, carrying with him the deepest of scars.

Soon, there will be funeral for Chuvalo and that will be proof he is gone. But he won’t leave us, not at this time, not now when we need him most. Chuvalo will live forever in our books and our hearts and in our minds. He is Canada and flawed as we are, we are him.

— Simmons is Canada’s longest-serving sports columnist.

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