What do the old timers here remember about Ron Lyle vs. Wendell Newton?

I am also curious, it’s the little things like this that keep me up at times.

 

I've seen a snippet of the fight, since my trainer was one of Lyle's chief sparring partners at the time and has footage of most of Lyle’s fights from when he worked under him from 1973-1976. Lyle's management and Lyle himself heavily underestimated Newton much like he did Quarry. Newton was most well known as a very tough sparring parnter and for a short time was a contender.

My trainer knew first hand how tough Newton was since a few years earlier they both worked as sparring partners for Henry Clark for his fight against Leotis Martin.

Newton was big at 6’4.5”, was very slippery if you couldn’t trap him, and good at landing countershots. Not to mention Newton was very experienced, since he sparred with many of the best fighters such as Liston, Patterson, Zara Foley, etc.. and future champions such as Larry Holmes and gave them all a hard time. Lyle was expected to run through Newton, but Newton put up a tough fight.

People started questioning Lyle’s power because he couldn’t stop Newton or Lou Bailey, who also like Newton was also very experienced and was used to sparring with the best.

 

The only thing I know about Wendell Newton is he got a lot of work as a sparring partner with title challengers in the mid-60s because he could do a pretty fair impression of Muhammad Ali. There was a rumour he was kept out of Liston's final sparring sessions in '65 because they knew he could make Liston look bad.

 

It was a great fight. Great fight indeed