Matthew Saad Muhammad (born
16 June, 1954. In his first title defense, Saad Muhammad met former
world champion John Conteh in Atlantic City. He retained the world
title with a 15 round decision. The decision, however, was voided
and a rematch ordered because Muhammad’s cornermen used an illegal
substance to stop the bleeding from a cut. Muhammad retained the crown
with a knockout in round four in the second bout. After defeating
Louis Pergaud, he and Lopez met again, this time, with the world title
on the line. Their rematch has also been shown by ESPN’s classic network
several times, it was the fight of the year for 1980, according to
Ring Magazine, and is still written about by boxing aficionados. Saad
Muhammad was hit with 20 unanswered blows in round eight, but he recovered
and dropped Lopez five times en route to a 14th round knockout win.
“This was my toughest fight,” said Saad Muhammad of the fight, which
some consider the closest Lopez ever came to a world title.
He
then went on to defeat Lottie Mwale, Vonzell Johnson, future world
Super-Middleweight champion Murray Sutherland and Jerry Martin, all
in defense of his world title, before losing to Dwight Muhammad Qawi
in December 1981. In yet another fight that would later be shown on
ESPN’s classic network, Saad Muhammad lost his title when Qawi knocked
him out in 10 rounds.
Saad Muhammad entered 1982 with a rematch
against Qawi within his sights, and he defeated Pete McIntyre by a
knockout in round two. The rematch between Saad Muhammad and Qawi
came off in August, at Saad Muhammad’s hometown of Philadelphia. The
second time around, Qawi won by a knockout in round six.
From
there on until 1992, Saad Muhammad fought sporadically and with limited
success. He had been confronting vision problems, and in 1986, he
declared himself in bankruptcy. He did, however, fight in many countries
around the world between the moment he lost the rematch to Qawi and
the moment he retired for good. Among those countries were Australia,
Spain, The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago.
MMA career
Saad Muhammad
also took a turn in the forerunner of mixed martial arts in Japan,
participating in the first UWF International (UWFi) event in 1991.
Matched against Kiyoshi Tamura, Saad Muhammad talked a great deal
at a lead-in press conference. He declined to say in which round he
would knock Tamura out, but guaranteed a victory. Tamura submitted
Saad Muhammad 34 seconds into the first round.
Retirement from
boxing
Saad Muhammad retired from professional boxing with a record
of 49 wins, 16 losses and 3 draws, with 35 wins by knockout.
In
1998, he became a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Boxing
trainer
Muhammad trained up and coming fighters out of Atlantic City,
New Jersey and worked closely with former Indian Olympic boxing team
heavyweight Gurcharan “The Guru” Singh. Singh was scheduled to fight
in Slough’s Montem Lesiure Centre, England in October 2006 and was
accompanied by Saad Muhammad, however due to injury to Singh’s knee
he was unable to fight.