“George Chuvalo was a heavyweight boxing legend, a family friend and a Canadian icon,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford wrote on social media. <\/p>\n
“My thoughts are with all of George’s family and loved ones as we mourn his passing.”<\/p>\n
After retiring from professional boxing in 1978, Chuvalo travelled the country as a public speaker advocating for anti-drug education and mental health awareness. <\/p>\n
Chuvalo lost three sons and his wife to drug overdoses and suicide, he has said. <\/p>\n
“I’d like to think if you’re ever tempted with the idea of doing drugs, or you ever flirt with doing drugs, I hope you think of me, George Chuvalo, and what drugs did to my family,” he once said, according to a CBC Radio report in 1998.<\/p>\n
In retirement, Chuvalo also dipped his toes in acting, appearing in the 1998 comedy film Dirty Work and alongside Jeff Goldblum in the 1986 horror film The Fly.<\/p>\n
He also served as a guest commentator for major boxing matches and co-hosted a TV boxing program called Greatest Knockouts with his friend and fellow fighter Charles “Spider” Jones. <\/p>\n
Chuvalo is survived by his eldest son Mitch, daughter Vanessa, grandchildren, and second wife Joanne. <\/p>\n
He died on Saturday, his birthday, said Sully’s Boxing Gym. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“George Chuvalo was a heavyweight boxing legend, a family friend and a Canadian icon,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-769509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}