Did Ali get Parkinson’s from Boxing?

Being hit in the head does make you more susceptible to Parkinson's. They didn't know about CTE back then. Ali took a lot of blows to the head and you can see particularly after the Shavers fight that his speech was slurred

 

ali never got the parkinson disease.
he suffered another ailment, called parkinson´s syndrome.
https://www.uclahealth.org/neurosurgery/parkinsons-syndrome
different disease, similar symptons.

two of the most important biographers (thomas hauser and jonathan eig) point this out in their books about ali and go into lengthy detail about it, leaving not much doubt, that they think this was (very) probably caused by repeated heavy blows to the head over many years.

ali himself said, in his earlier/80s interviews, that he suffered the syndrome, not parkinson´s; but also uses the undue and vague abbreviation "parkinson" in some later interviews.

if you´re still not convinced, read his doctor´s (ferdie pacheco´s) book.
he predicted ali´s looming brain damage when is patient was still boxing, years before it was diagnosed in 1984.
dr. pacheco warned muhammad and the people around him, again and again, urging him to quit. after he was ignored again and again, he quit working for ali right after the shaver´s fight in 1977.
ali´s condition in the 80s came as no surprise for pacheco.
according to his book, when he met muhammad again a few years after, his friend turned to him and whispered: "you were right, doc".

 

When Muhammad Ali came back from his enforced exile in 1970, he lost a lot of his gifts he enjoyed from 1964-1967, befuddling challenger after challenger, on his way to 9 successful title defenses. But on his comeback he was more vulnerable to punches from his opponents than before. Taking blows to the head from Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and Earnie Shavers did not help at all. If Ali had listened to his corner man, Dr. Ferdie Pacheco instead of Don King, Ali may have been in better shape later in life. The Rope A Dope though clever against George Foreman, it won him back the title but scrambled his brains later, because he kept using it, as he could not dance as in 1964 anymore. If Ali had not been forced into his exile in 1967, he could have retired as champion before King and other blood thirsty promoters arrived on the scene to tempt him with large purses.

 

Yes. It’s called traumatic Parkinson’s. It is not CTE.

 

absolutely.
the famed "rope-a-dope" was succesfull short-termed, but turned out disastrous in the long run (or even intermediate-term).

i´d like to expand on his tactics.
as the 70s progressed, ali defined his performance more and more by what he was able to take, instead of to give.
it was evident, that he boasted at every opportunity about his skill of enduring pain and absorbing heavy blows to head and body "like a sponge" (as written in his - so called - autobiography "the greatest: my own story" from 1975), staying clear during the anticipated bombing.
muhammad sincerely believed, he could train his brain and body to absorb and withstand heavy blows during sparring and in real fights, without getting ko´d.
in a way, he was right and succesful with it, in reaching his goal: winning fights.
but he didn´t consider and/or ignored the long-time fatal dangers and effects of this "inurement".
these consequences became visible, slowly but surely, from 1975 on (after the "thrilla"), getting bigger and bigger "like a rolling snowball", with every passing year.

like pacheco said in one of those many documentaries, when it came to ali pissing blood:
"the kidneys are a delicate, delicate organ. and you can´t toughen up kidneys".

the same is true of the human brain.

 

Great Post.

 

Great post.

 

Like anything else with diseases I think there are contributory factors which when they all call come together the disease comes out. He might have gotten Parkinsons anyway, but later on in his life. The boxing helped bring it out sooner. I saw interviews where even in mid 1970's he looked much slower in his movements and speaking. He had the normal and parkinsonian cells obviously, but the trauma to his brain from boxing probably affected the totality of cells in his brain (normal and parkinsonian) by diminishing the amount of both cells, which then created earlier parkinson symptoms than he would have had he never boxed. My answer. Boxing was contributory to his Parkinsons but not necessarily the reason.

 

As you say yourself, when calling "The Greatest" a "so called" autobiography, I just wish to add on to it as there are others who may not be aware, and you didn't happen to go much into detail (while I am not going to either, letting Wikipedia* do any of that work for me) there has long been a strongly held belief that Ali's involvement in the book was nil, if not none. So as to saying he was priding his ability for punishment, which I think i have seen myself in some video interviews, any of it said in that book though may not be actuality. Also, I am linking a deadspin article** I thought to be interesting on the creation, or what the author believes to be a mandatory, or maybe an unavoidable reality, given the physical condition Ali was in when the rope a dope made it's initial appearances. I haven't read it in a long while, but I believe the author is saying that because Ali could no longer do the things in a boxing ring which he was capable of earlier in his career, mainly move for extended rounds in a row, rope-a-dope was just an unavoidable, necessary evil. I remember reading it thinking how it seems to jibe with what I had seen in those fights of that era in his career, and then I remembered, after rewatching the Spinks rematch, how Ali was able to move/dance (albeit lot's of clinching earlier on in the fight) for the near complete 15 rds. Like a total anomaly and I just don't know what to think anymore

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest:_My_Own_Story
** https://deadspin.com/how-muhammad-alis-rope-a-dope-myth-suckered-america-1652932623

 

They're the same thing.
Basically, Parkinsonism is an umbrella term that describes the kind of symptoms you find in Parkinson's Disease but also other diseases such as Huntington's Disease and Dementia with Lewy Bodies. Basically, without knowing Ali's specific medical history all observers could say is that he has Parkinson's symptoms but couldn't say if he has them because of specific Parkinson's disease or because of CTE sustained due to repeated blows to the head.

 

This is what I was going to say, Pacheco's take on it was right. You can call it Parkinson's , syndromes whatever, the fact is the fighter who entered the ring against Holmes and Berbick had brain damage from the beatings he took. Frazier teed him up in Manilla , and Shavers blasted him down the fairway to ruin.

 

Fantastic Post.

 

Good Post, Very True.

 

Good Post, Good Diagnosis.