Muhammad Ali's Years of Decline

Ali defended his title four times in 1975. First he took an easy fight, meeting journeyman Chuck Wepner. Financially the fight was a disaster, putting promoter Don King in debt to the Cleveland mafia until 1982! However, the fight did inspire unemployed actor Sylvester Stallone to write the script for the film Rocky. Ali's next two bouts were more challenging, as he outpointed Joe Bugner in a rematch. In the first indication that Ali might have been in decline, the boxer was nearly outboxed by the hard-punching slugger Ron Lyle. Trailing on points, Ali pulled that bout out with an 11th Round stoppage.

"The Thrilla in Manilla"

Then came the fabled "Thrilla in Manila," another early Don King promotion. Joe Frazier was widely considered to be shopworn by October 1975. One has to wonder what people who were paid to know better were thinking, because Frazier had earned his way back into title contention. Still, Muhammad Ali's camp looked at him as a safe, lucrative payday for their man. In a repeat of the build-up to the Fight of the Century, Ali ran off at the mouth, slurring Frazier at every opportunity. He produced a rubber gorilla doll and dubbed Frazier a stupid, ugly gorilla, beating the doll while saying "Hey gorilla, we in Manilla!" Frazier heard every insult, nourished his anger on them, trained ever harder, and waited for his chance to make Ali pay for every word, consonant and vowel.

In Manila, Ali looked to end the fight early. He came out to center ring and unleashed a machinegun-like barrage of combination punching, hurting Frazier. Amazingly, the man who always came forward was made to back up! It didn't last long, though. When Ali's stamina faltered, he had to stop carpet bombing Frazier. "Smokin" Joe then shook off the damage, and started rumbling forward again. Between the early, fruitless effort to take Frazier out, and Frazier's relentless pressure tactics, Ali tired badly. Frazier turned up the pressure yet higher, dominating the middle stretch of the fight, slamming in his trademark left hooks and staggering the champion. At the start of the 7th Round, Ali whispered in Frazier's ear "Joe, they told me you was all washed up." Frazier growled back "They lied!"

However, to a certain extent Ali's camp and the pundits had been right: Frazier was no longer the man he had been in 1971. Although two years younger than Ali, Frazier had a boxing style that meant he every fight was a war (albeit perhaps a brief one), and the damage added up over the years. He simply could not sustain the effort that had carried him to victory in the Fight of the Century. By Round 10, Frazier's assault began to falter, and with the pressure turned down Ali had the room to rally. Ali used the breathing space to move his feet, firing off quick combinations on Frazier and busting him up. Between the swelling and a cataract, Frazier was nearly blind as the fight came to a close. By the end of 13^th Round, trainer Edde Futch wanted to stop the fight, but Frazier persuaded him to let him continue, since Ali was so clearly close to the end too. Futch let Frazier go out for the 14th, but the great warrior was nearly defenseless and did nothing but absorb punishment. Enough was enough, and Futch threw in the towel over Frazier's protests.

For his part, Ali was dead on his feet, exhausted and desperately hurting. He fainted onto the canvas shortly after Futch stopped the fight, and later described it as the closest to dying he had ever been. He also recognized Frazier as the greatest fighter in the world, after Ali himself of course. ESPN ranked the bout as the 5th greatest boxing match of all time, and The Ring's 1975 Fight of the Year.

The damage sustained in Manila accelerated the decline of Ali's body and skills, and he came to rely more and more on experience and guile. Nonetheless, he defended the title four times in 1976, defeating two tomato cans, the slick boxer Jimmy Young, and finally meeting Ken Norton in their classic rubber match at Yankee Stadium. The fight was the last great boxing match to be staged in there, and to top it all off the NYPD was on strike, which meant security was poor and Yankee Stadium hosted a pretty rough crowd. Norton won the first half of the fight; Ali won the second half. The fight was dead even going into the last round, but critically Norton's corner did not see it that way. Perhaps remembering Ali coming out to trade his way to a narrow victory in the last round of their second encounter, and thinking they were comfortably ahead on points, Norton's people told him to take it easy. Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee, told him to go out and give it everything. The result was Ali won a close-but-unanimous decision. It was Ali's last great championship effort.

Decline

Slowing the busy schedule he had maintained since his return to the ring several years before, Ali only fought twice in 1977, once with a journeyman and once with Earnie Shavers, widely considered to be the hardest puncher of all time. Despite being a mighty banger, Shavers was a limited boxer with questionable stamina. He rocked Ali early in their bout, but Ali was able to use his guile to fool Shavers into thinking he was playing possum. Shavers didn't try to finish Ali, who recovered and boxed his way back into the fight. He won a unanimous points victory over Shavers, who was the last serious contender Ali defeated in his career. Ali's longtime doctor Ferdie Pacheco quit shortly thereafter, washing his hands of Ali when his medical advice and warnings of the dangers of continuing to box went unheeded.

Next on Ali's dance card was Leon Spinks. Despite being a 1976 Olympic gold medal winner, Spinks was a neophyte with a mere 6-0-1 record going into the bout. It was widely dismissed as a farce, and no one in Ali's camp took the bout with Spinks seriously. In truth, the only thing Spinks brought to the contest was youth and hunger, but at this stage that was enough to defeat an ill-prepared Ali. Even considering the favors judges had done him in terms of favorable scoring over the last several years, Spinks pounded out a lop-sided decision victory over Ali in what became the 1978 Fight of the Year. Refusing to retire on a loss to a kid like Spinks, Ali got back in the gym and trained hard for a last-ditch effort at recapturing the title and going out on top. Meanwhile, Spinks had crumbled under the pressure of sudden fame and began his long, infamous personal meltdown. Ali came into the ring in September 1978 with very little of his former prowess, but Spinks came with nothing at all. Before a mammoth crowd of 63,000 at the New Orleans Superdome, Ali won the WBA title back, becoming the first three-time heavyweight champion in history. At the age of 37, he announced his retirement.

In the meantime, Ali's former sparring partner Larry Holmes had beaten Ken Norton for the WBC title. Ali could not resist the lure of a comeback, and announced his comeback and that Holmes would be "mine in nine." Ali had nothing left, and despite holding back Holmes still delivered a beating to Ali in their 1980 title fight. Longtime trainer Angelo Dundee threw the in the towel in the 11th, the only time lost by anything other than a decision. However, even that loss was still not enough to deter Ali and his pride. He made one final effort at a comeback, and was humiliated by Trevor Berbick in December 1981. At long last, Ali announced his final retirement from boxing, with a record of 56-5 (37 KOs).

The Greatest of All Time

Ali is the greatest heavyweight champion of all-time, surpassing even the great Joe Louis. It is hard to imagine why anyone would fail to rank Ali as history's top heavyweight except for bias, and the only boxer in history with a richer legacy is "Sugar" Ray Robinson.

Consider his quality of opposition, which is the hit list of two separate eras of the heavyweight division: the Patterson-Liston period, and then the late 1960s to mid-1970s, the division's golden age. In his prime, he fought Norton and Frazier three times; Liston, Patterson, Quarry, Bugner, Cooper, and Chuvalo all twice; and met Young, Lyle, Shavers, Terrell, Bonavena, and Ellis once each. There simply isn't a single fighter that rose to contention during his career that Ali did not fight. He was defeated only twice in his prime, and he avenged both defeats twice. He stands as the first man to win the heavyweight title thee times, and defended the title successfully 20 times in 2 separate reigns. Ali participated in six Fights of the Year, and was proclaimed Fighter of the Year five times. On the basis of his career accomplishments and the men he had to defeat to achieve them, he stands head and shoulders above every other big man in sports, and Muhammad Ali wouldn't have it any other way.