The Croatian Candidate

"He could have been champion today," Lynne said. "He was held back so long."

Chuvalo has a new trainer, Theodore McWhorter, who has altered his style, and an even newer manager, Irving Ungerman, who generously supports him and extols the new Chuvalo in a mimeographed flyer entitled The George Chuvalo Newsletter. "Theodore McWhorter made George what he is, but he always had the potential," Lynne said. "All the guy ever did before was run and skip rope. They can't punch back. Even then, he did his best. But he's the same guy."

"I'm still a miserable son of a gun—the old Chuvalo," Chuvalo said.

"George is the optimist," Lynne said. "I'm the pessimist. But he's a poor loser. We play Scrabble all the time."

"Up at camp, you can't even begin to play," Chuvalo said. "Once I tried to play Password with one of the sparring partners.... " He shrugged.

"We've never had a vacation together," Lynne said. "The first thing we'll do when you're champion, George, is we'll travel."

"I'll take you to Buffalo—" Chuvalo said.

"Thanks, George," Lynne said.

"—if you're a nice girl," Chuvalo said. "The first thing I'll do when I'm champion is I'll have a big smile on my face."

George Chuvalo has a snapshot of himself taken when he was 9 and learning how to box from a series of lessons that were appearing on cards enclosed in cereal boxes. It shows him in a pair of trunks, wearing boxing gloves. He has his hands up and looks fairly desperate; he was, having just told his father to hurry up and take the picture-because he could not hold his belly out any longer. Indeed, the extraordinary thing about the photograph is that Chuvalo, who was otherwise quite skinny, had this enormous belly. "I used to stick my belly out all the time," he explains. "I thought it made me look big. I always felt I was destined for the world's heavyweight championship."