Story Of Nortons' Rift: Like Father, Like Son

LOS ANGELES - The father and the son don't talk. They are different in so many ways, but most alike in this one regard:

Stubborn.

"I raised him to think for himself and to depend on nobody except himself," said Ken Norton, the boxer. "Maybe I did too good a job."

"Will there be a reconciliation?" said Ken Norton Jr., the Dallas Cowboys linebacker. "I really can't say."

Neither will talk about why the rift developed, but both agree on when. Over his father's objections, Ken Norton Jr. married about a year ago. That union loosened a bond forged during lean times two decades ago and hardened by adversity since.

And as the son seeks to claim on a football field the kind of heavyweight title his father owned 15 years ago, they may be further apart than ever.

"I don't know where he'll be Sunday," the younger Norton, 26, said.

"I'll be watching the Super Bowl on TV," the elder Norton, 47, said from his home in nearby Laguna Niguel. "I have enough friends to get me tickets. I didn't want those.

"Believe me, I want the best for him - in football, in his marriage, in everything he does. But if he wanted me there, he could have gotten hold of me plenty of times," Norton added.

You can see so much of one reflected in the other - high forehead, fierce eyes, prominent jaw - and throughout the past week, they shared memories. But always from a distance.

Ken Norton Jr. tells a tale on himself in an interview one day and Ken Norton amplifies it the very same night. The stories framing their relationship usually begin with how the father taught his son self-reliance while chasing a boxing career. And they end with that lesson being repaid when the son nursed the father back to health after a near-fatal 1986 auto accident. In between are the stories that reveal a struggle for independence.

"I never saw him fight - at least not inside an arena. He didn't want me to see him get hit," Ken Jr. said.

Ken Jr. said he never thought about becoming a fighter.

"It never was an issue with me, maybe because during most of his career, I was a very young man. You don't second-guess your dad a lot when you're only 10 years old - especially not when he's the heavyweight champion."

"He's absolutely right," Ken Norton said. "And I was the same way with football until his junior year in high school.

"Nobody had to tell me how those things can grow on you and I didn't want him starting young. I didn't want to see him get hurt. But mostly," he said, "I wanted him to have an education to fall back on."

Ken Jr. became an All-American in high school and went to UCLA. His father saw all of those games and many of the ones Ken Jr. played for the Cowboys while they struggled from 1-15 three seasons ago to a Super Bowl.

The son is quick to point out that the qualities that enabled him to weather that period in the team's development were the same ones he sees in his father.

"We both have high standards, both have strong inner drives, and in a lot of ways, we're both very stubborn.

"But right now," Ken Jr. said, breaking into a wry grin, "I can't give you any examples of that."