{"id":112647,"date":"2025-09-02T07:29:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T07:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/112647\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T07:29:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T07:29:32","slug":"joe-bugner-death-heavyweight-boxing-great-dies-aged-75","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/112647\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Bugner death: Heavyweight boxing great dies aged 75"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Heavyweight boxing<\/a> legend Joe Bugner has died at the age of 75.<\/p>\n

In a remarkable 32-year professional career, the Hungarian-born British-Australian fought the likes of Muhammad Ali<\/a>, Joe Frazier<\/a>, Earnie Shavers, Henry Cooper, Ron Lyle and Frank Bruno.<\/p>\n

Bugner\u2019s second fight with Ali, in Kuala Lumpur in 1975, marked an unsuccessful challenge for the unified heavyweight titles, with Ali beating him via decision \u2013 just as he had done in Las Vegas in 1973. <\/p>\n

However, Bugner was a two-time British and British Commonwealth Champion, who also held the European title on three occasions.<\/p>\n

Bugner, who made his pro debut in 1967, first retired from boxing<\/a> in 1976 but ended up competing sporadically until 1999. His second retirement followed a TKO defeat by Bruno in 1987, while his final retirement occurred in 1999 \u2013 after a victory over Levi Billups in Australia \u2013\u00a0when he was 49 years old.<\/p>\n

His pro record officially stands at 69-13-1,\u00a0including 41 knockout wins.<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Joe Bugner (right) during his world-title challenge against Muhammad Ali in 1975 (Getty Images)\"Bugner<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Bugner and Ali on Tottenham Court Road in 1974 (Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cRIP Joe Bugner just heard sad news of the passing of Joe,\u201d tweeted Bruno. \u201cWe spent quite a bit of time together around the time of my fight with him he was a character and played Mr bad guy when we did the promotion for the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, British promoter Frank Warren tweeted: \u201cSad news to hear of the passing of Joe Bugner, former British, European and Commonwealth Champion, and a man who went the distance with both Muhammad Ali<\/a> and Joe Frazier<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe also participated in the first fight I did on ITV – a great man who will be missed. I’m sending my regards to his family. May he rest in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bugner is also known for appearing in the 1994 action film Street Fighter, in which he starred alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme.<\/p>\n

He was an expert adviser on 2005\u2019s The Cinderella Man, a movie about heavyweight legend James J Braddock, but upon being dropped from the project, he called star Russell Crowe \u201ca gutless worm and a f*****g girl\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-112647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}