George Foreman 39–0 (36 KO) vs. Ken Norton 30–2 (23 KO) was a professional boxing match contested on March 26, 1974, for the undisputed heavyweight championship.

Undefeated heavyweight champion George Foreman had little trouble in his two fights the previous year. First he captured the WBA and WBC heavyweight titles after dominating Joe Frazier, scoring six knockdowns in less than two rounds in an easy technical knockout victory in January 1973. Foreman would follow this by making his first defense against José Roman in Tokyo in September of that year, easily winning the bout by first-round knockout. For his second defense, Foreman was matched up against Ken Norton for a March 1974 bout held in Caracas, the capital and largest city in Venezuela. Ken Norton was coming off two successive fights against Muhammad Ali in 1973, winning the first fight in March by split decision (famously breaking Ali’s jaw in the process), and then narrowly losing the second by another split decision in September. Norton’s impressive performances against Ali made him one of the top heavyweight contenders for Foreman’s titles, but the future hall-of-famer was installed as a 3–1 underdog against the hard-hitting champion and given little chance of obtaining a victory. A week before the fight had happened, promoter Don King, banking on a victory by Foreman, had already signed a deal that would see Foreman make his next defense against Ali in the “Rumble in the Jungle.”

A 3 to 1 underdog, Norton was back in a familiar position, promised less money than Foreman ($200,000 to the $500,000 George was guaranteed), and deemed a solid underdog to the hard-slugging Texan. If Caracas seems like a strange destination to hold a heavyweight boxing event, there was a practical reason it was sought out as the host: an agreement had been reached stipulating all taxes would be waived.

Don King produced the initial guarantee, a $10million letter of credit from Carl Lombardo, a 34‐year‐old Cleveland construction millionaire. King earlier had persuaded Lombardo to put up $400,000 for the Foreman‐Norton bout here.

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