NY Times article after the Ali vs Evangelista fight

Yeah Holmes was one of the few fighters who managed his estate like an actual business and kept his finances growing even after boxing. He kept a low profile. Stayed married to the same women. Only had two kids ( I believe ). And made careful investments here and there. I wish more fighters had his brains

EDIT: I just read that Hilmed had three kids from two previous relationships before he married his wife with whom he had two more kids. All these years I never knew that

 

People should’ve listened to Frazier more.

He delivered some pearlers that should’ve been better circulated.

Ali was just more bombastic and smooth talking, the scribes hanging on his every word.

For example - “Ali just called Joe UGLY again, haha - that’ll make great copy”.

 

So true, if only all fighters had that savvy. It’s bad enough when they come away with permanent, physical damage...but to also be destitute, it doesn’t get any worse.

 

I wonder if it was precisely the reason Holmes wasn’t making great money (relative to his predecessors) that led him to be so shrewd? Because he certainly has a monstrous ego in his own right & if he’d been able to draw to him an entourage & women like Ali, would he have fared any better? I guess there’s no real way to be sure.

 

Ali was still a big draw and I think the boxing powers were extremely reluctant to let go of him for that reason. That may explain in part why he kept winning by questionable judges' and referees' votes.

 

Holmes is by nature a conservative businessman with old-fashioned conservative values. He gauges success by what he owns and has in the bank. His choice of accumulating property in his hometown of Easton, PA. says a lot about who he is. I can't imagine his ego being wrapped up in women and sycophants. All they do is cost money.

 

I never liked Ali's trash talking. He popularized it. Good sportsmanship was the prevailing ethic before he came along. He made it OK to embarrass and humiliate an opponent unnecessarily. Sonny Liston, the culture's epitome of a "bad guy", never did that crap. He wasn't a racist, either.

 

Excellent point. You know, it might’ve been during the third Norton fight that one of the commentators was preemptively lamenting what the sport of boxing would do when it came time for Ali to leave/retire from the sport.

I could guess the see the decline and Ali’s precarious hold on the title during that fight itself.

Certainly, during the fight, they were talking up less practical features such as Ali’s dancing, shimmying and clowning in a very adoring, nostalgic manner. I think I’ve got the right fight but I could be wrong.

 

You mention another aspect of Clay/Ali I disliked: Clowning. Call me a fuddy-duddy but I admire someone who has and allows others to have dignity. Ali didn't use curse words on TV like, say, Tyson, but he contributed to the coarsening of the culture in other ways. When I see Joe Louis witnessing one of Ali's more disgraceful acts of behavior in the ring I feel embarrassed for him.

 

How about Floyd Patterson? I could imagine him watching Ali's public outbursts when promoting fights and thinking "what's wrong with this guy?"

Another notable polite guy I always liked for it was Evander Holyfield. He could be sitting there with an opponent saying all sorts of ridiculous **** in a press conference, and he'd just say "Well, I look forward to the fight."

 

Holmes was a relatively high earner. Had huge purses against Cooney, Ali, and Holyfield, had a ton of other 7 figure purses as well. He was smart with money because he was just like that. Grew up poor and hated it, focused on saving his earnings even when an up and coming contender. He turned pro with a goal of saving up $100k, enough to buy a decent house and have a nest egg saved.

You get a good sense of who he is on this stuff from his book. How many other pro athletes write an autobiography that discusses the merits of having the federal government as a tenant in commercial real estate compared to private businesses? Or why municipal bonds are a good investment?

 

Floyd was in on the joke. He understood that Ali was drumming up closed circuit sales, of which both fighters I'm sure pocketed a nice little piece. But then Ali lost his sense of humor over Floyd, a Catholic, refusing to call him Muhammad. That's when we saw for maybe the first time Ali's vicious side. That's how I remember it.

 

Thanks for the article. It’s nice reading sports writers that can actually write unlike the Current writers who all they wanna do is talk about Prop bets tell you how to bet on a game without getting into the X’s and O’s

I never before heard anybody say that Alfredo Had beaten Muhammad Ali. But at that time, he wasn’t a lot of lackluster fights where he didn’t do much I guess then he could score that against him.

as far as Holmes and money when I met him in Easton at his bar, we asked him what he missed most about being champ, and he said the money without hesitation

 

In the 1970's he "won" those fights not because of whet he did in the ring...he "won" those fights because of who he was!

 

Sadly, Ali's post-1975 fights cannot be unremembered.