who would you say was to blame for Ali's condition?

Holmes and Berbick damaged what little neurons he had left in his head sadly.

 

The medical board that passed him as being fit for both of those fights should have been shot !!

 

Perhaps nature was to blame. Studies have shown that Parkinson's syndrome isn't directly related to head trauma.

 

Millions of people develop parkinson's who have never received a single blow to the head in their lives.. The punishment he took over the years probably did damage in other ways, but wasn't a source for his Parkinson's. Over the course of boxing there have been lots of fighters who fought in literally hundreds of bouts and took numerous beatings but who weren't in anywhere near the bad condition in old age that Ali was.

 

The best thing would have been to retire after Manila. Ali took a lot of clean shots from Norton, Shavers, & Spinks. The Norton fight was the first fight where there were rounds where he just took a beating. His reflexes were so deteriorated. Shavers constantly lands right hands & he wasn't the fastest fighter in the world. Ali just couldn't react to anything.

The next best time to get out would've been after the Spinks rematch. That would've spared him two beatings.

It was always going to be tough because like Roy Jones, Ali relied heavily on amazing physical talent rather than solid technique. The decline is more steep than for a Holmes or Hopkins. Their technique allowed them to be competitive longer.

 

Many years in training allowing sparring partners to hit him did the most damage. Day after day year after year.

 

He developed a bad habit of taking punches to the back of the head. That causes damage to the cerebellum and substancia negra. And that type of damage will cause Parkinson's.

Had he just taken punches to the face, he might've escaped (relatively) unphased. He arguably owes it to his unorthodox style of fighting.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

It's not true. Traumatic Parkinson's is a real thing and can affect anyone the back of the brain takes enough damage.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yeah this is all correct

 

I can't say that i agree with the last line of your statement. Ali, while certainly being much more elusive in his prime, was never a punching bag in the 2nd half of his career. It is true that he became more hittable but he still had above average defensive abilities when he entered the ring in shape (check out the 2nd spinks fight. He wasn't much offensively but defensively he was pretty sharp, especially when you consider the fact that spinks had fast hands).

I also believe that it was the quality of punches but not the quantity. Joe Frazier didn't fight as long as Ali but he certainly took a lot more clean head shots.

I will also say that Ali himself is to blame for his condition because he didn't know when to quit. When a boxer takes hard punches at an advanced age the effects are more damaging and permanent because the brain does not heal like it does at a younger age.

In spite of this, however, he was still "The Greatest of all Times" and will be sorely missed.

 

[url]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11470964[/url]

quite possibly

 

With all due respect Nighttrain, you don't 'toughen' up by taking punches. I think the ability to take a shot is inbred, you got it or you don't. And Ali had it!
Sidebar: I remember a Hurricane Carter quote many years ago (I still think he was guilty but that's another thread)
He said two things he looked at when he and his opponent came to the center of the ring for instructions.
1) those muscles at the top of the shoulders and below the neck. If they were huge, he knew he was in with a banger and had to be careful.
2) His opponent's face. If it was clean and, basically unmarked, he knew he was in with a guy that wasn't getting tagged that much.