On Saturday, September 12, Chuvalo died on the day he was meant to celebrate his 89th birthday. The timing befits the storied heavyweight, as his passing halted celebration of Chuvalo as one of the last holdouts from a golden era of heavyweights and magical era of boxing.

Chuvalo dealt with those kinds of smokescreens his entire life, actually. Denting his chin was essentially impossible and he fought Muhammad Ali twice, and that’s what most anyone ever knew of him. Yet Chuvalo spoke of his toughness and his fights with Ali almost regrettably, as if they stole something else from both him and the public.

More than a decade ago, Chuvalo said: “When people think of me, they think of me fighting Muhammad [Ali]. It’s hard for them to think of anything else. But I had close to 100 fights. The perception of me is as a tough guy who could take a shot. I was supposed to have the best chin in boxing. It clouds my other abilities.”

Among the Canadian heavyweight brute’s other abilities was being well-spoken and articulate. As most of his contemporaries’ memories gave out, Chuvalo could still recall much of his career and retell his perspective wonderfully. All the way from the beginning.

Chuvalo was born Jure Čuvalo to Croatian parents in Toronto, where Irving Ungerman owned a poultry processing facility. Chuvalo’s parents worked at the facility and brought a toddler-aged George along to work, and Ungerman turned into the young man’s friend and mentor. Ungerman boxed as an amateur years earlier, so passing the time by showing young George how to fight made sense and it stuck.

The first time Chuvalo’s name appeared in The Ring would have been the first time anyone outside of Canada read his name. In just his fifth pro fight in June of 1956, Chuvalo handed South African heavyweight champion Johnny Arthur an eight-round decision loss. Arthur had been defeated by any meaningful heavyweight outside of South Africa, but he was bigger than Chuvalo by nearly 30 pounds and had almost 40 pro fights. The Ring simply called him “unknown George Chuvalo.”

Chuvalo found new management so Ungerman could tend to his poultry business, but over the next eight years he watched as other heavyweights, usually from the U.S., rose through the rankings with the help of well-connected trainers, financial backing and management teams. “[Chuvalo] is a great fighter and the next heavyweight champ of the world if he can get a break,” Ungerman reportedly said to his business partners.

After all, many paths to the heavyweight championship of the world are just a series of breaks. Chuvalo’s team matched him correctly and attempted to guide the fighter to stardom through a series of lower end contenders, and Chuvalo didn’t stay consistent and lost his luck multiple times. There were losses, eight of them, in fact, and Chuvalo gained and lost the Canadian heavyweight title multiple times, but that was a hard ceiling he couldn’t break through.

In mid-1964, Ungerman returned to Chuvalo’s corner with a horde of investors and a plan. Ungerman arranged for Chuvalo to leave his wife and four children at home as they trained on a farm outside of Toronto with Chuvalo’s old trainer Ted McWhorter, and they hired real sparring partners, like Curtis Crawford from heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson’s team. The result was Chuvalo upsetting contender Doug Jones by destructive late-rounds stoppage.

After the fight, Rocky Marciano’s former trainer Charley Goldman reportedly commented: “[Chuvalo] fights like my Rocky.”

If a dividing line were drawn in Chuvalo’s career, it would be placed firmly between when he was handled like any run-of-the-mill heavyweight-sized fighter casually nudged toward money, and when an experienced team treated him like a boxer with real potential. Chuvalo joined the likes of Ali, Joe Frazier and even Argentina’s Oscar Bonavena, heavyweight hopefuls backed by a veritable militia, and his trajectory altered drastically.

The first version of Chuvalo lost to middling fighters like Bob Baker, Pat McMurtry, Pete Rademacher and Bob Cleroux, while the second version gave iron-chinned hell to Ali, Frazier, George Foreman, Floyd Patterson, Bonavena and Jimmy Ellis in losses, a few very close.

Boxing is fickle, though, and especially given no benefit of hindsight. The new, improved Chuvalo made mistakes, reporters said, and he wasn’t skilled enough for a fast-moving, talented 1960s heavyweight division. He brawled too much, then not enough. Maybe they were right, because there was no world heavyweight championship in Chuvalo’s future despite fighting Ali on two weeks’ notice for the title in 1966. It was probably Chuvalo’s best chance at catching a champion off-guard, and he dropped a wide decision.

In 1968, The Ring named Chuvalo “Fighter of the Month” for December and returned to the top-10 heavyweight ratings after he fought thrice in September, winning all three fights and demolishing Mexican heavyweight Manuel Ramos. That relatively small acknowledgement from “The Bible of Boxing” highlighted what made Chuvalo unique: perseverance and a refusal to accept less than what he worked for.

A year later, Chuvalo scored likely the greatest win of his career when he upset long odds and forced “Irish” Jerry Quarry to take a full 10-count for a KO.

All other top heavyweights Chuvalo faced either out-maneuvered him or used his great chin against him, which took its toll. Chuvalo’s career endured eye injuries and cheekbone fractures, and they halted his momentum multiple times. In turn, the 1970s weren’t particularly kind to Chuvalo. They began with Foreman pummeling the Canadian big man ruthlessly in three rounds, landing enough frightening punches that Ungerman nearly stormed the ring to stop the fight personally.

Jimmy Ellis, Ali’s old gym mate, had enough in the tank to defeat Chuvalo in 1971, and the next year Chuvalo again took on Ali for the lightly-regarded NABF heavyweight title, losing again before slowly fizzling out over the next several years.

At the start of Chuvalo’s career, Canadian newspapers said he could be the next Tommy Burns, the great 1900s heavyweight champion from Canada who defended the title all over the world. By the end, Chuvalo settled for defeating the lesser Tommy Burns, an Irish southpaw journeyman who fought out of Canada and fell to granite old man George Chuvalo twice for the Canadian heavyweight title.

Chuvalo escaped to the movies as soon as his career ended in the late 1970s. He earned more than a dozen acting credits. Those old boxing writers said he fought like Rocky Marciano and looked like Gene Fullmer, a notably rugged fighter. The punches and mug didn’t square with Chuvalo’s ability to look someone in the eye and calmly find a way in.

Tragically, Chuvalo struggled to find peace in retirement as he lost two sons to heroin overdoses, and another son and his wife to suicide, all in about a 10-year span. The ex-fighter did what he knew and plowed forward, through severe depression and financial catastrophe, and ended up traveling as a motivational speaker and anti-drug advocate. He also remarried and gave some of his greatest interviews, like for his portion of “Facing Ali,” a 2009 documentary about some of Ali’s best-known opponents.

Alas, Boxing had not yet exacted its toll from Chuvalo, and the ex-fighter declined rapidly in the 2010s. He outlasted most of those unforgettable 1960s and 1970s heavyweights, but boxing always wins. The last several years featured court proceedings and judges ruling Chuvalo lacked the mental capacity to make life decisions, and the heavyweight they used to call “Boom Boom” lived most of his days in a nursing home before the end.

Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Patterson and Quarry are all gone. Ungerman and McWhorter too. Until yesterday, only Chuvalo remained, his endurance casting a shadow across two decades of heavyweight work and a record of 73-18-2 (64 KO).

Happy Birthday and farewell.