Do you think Ali believed he could beat Holmes in 1980?

Whatever. I still have trouble believing that Larry Holmes after 10 fights was a world class championship level boxer.

 

100%

 

People love to ignore things about that fight. If someone can be demonized, then leave out the facts and let it happen.
It's the same thing with the ref.

 

I’m thinking he probably thought he was going to win. He knew he wasn’t going to get paid much for the fight and ultimately didn’t so that couldn’t have been a motivating factor

 

Absolutely. Although he took pills to aid in losing weight he trained hard for Holmes. Ali did say later that after the very first round he knew he did not have it that night.

 

I have a problem believing a boxer who was ten pro fights away from getting manhandled by Duane Bobick manhandled 1974 Muhammad Ali in sparring.

 

don king? more like don KING MIDAS IN REVERSE, ammiright???

 

The thing about Ali was he wasn't a bully who had to beat the crap out of often hapless sparring partners who were getting paid the equivalent of what would be eight hundred dollars or so a week in 2024 dollars. He used sparring to strengthen his ability to absorb punishment and not to deliver it. In retrospect it might have been unwise but that's what he did.

 

Not only did Ali think he could beat Holmes, Ali's entire team thought Ali could beat Holmes. And millions of boxing fans and gamblers thought Ali could beat Holmes.

By every account on the matter, it wasn't until the final week or two before the fight that the wheels starting to come off.

Ali was taking those pills/PEDs (Thyrolar, which was discontinued, or its generic replacement Liotrix, also discontinued) by the handful because he thought the more he took, the more weight he'd lose, and the better he'd be. But he was essentially overdosing on them. He was supposed to take one a day (or, better yet, not take them at all). Again, he'd pour some in his palm and regularly pop them in his mouth all day, like he was eating peanuts.

Days before the fight, he couldn't even jog a mile.

He was cheating, or was trying to, and it backfired on him.

 

Don King didn't train Ali. King wasn't Ali's doctor. And King wasn't helping Ali cheat against Holmes by shoveling PEDs in his mouth during camp.

King exclusively promoted Larry Holmes. King didn't promote Ali. King hadn't promoted an Ali fight since the Alfredo Evangelista fight three years earlier. And, before that, the Ali-Jimmy Young fight.

I'll never understand how Ali's trainers (including, if not entirely, his chief trainer Angelo Dundee) and Ali's manager walked away from all that neither accepting nor taking ANY blame for it.

Or how, 44 years later, people are still blaming Don King for Ali's bad performance. King had ZERO to do with Ali's performance.

 

Ali post Frazier 1 always practiced defending himself along the ropes which eventually led to the ropeadope. This was all Ali was doing here vs Holmes in 1974 pre Foreman. Holmes, as a ten bout pro, was not ready for 1974 Ali. Heck this was three years and 16 bouts away from Holmes National TV debut vs Ibar Arrington in 1977. Larry did not look like a world beater here.

 

To put it into perspective Holmes was not even that highly thought of as a pro until his coming out party against Shavers in their 1st fight. Howard Cosell even stated during the Shavers fight "This is by far the best version of Holmes i've ever seen nothing like the fighter who fought Tom Prater" or words to that effect.

 

There's not a man in the history of boxing , Ali , even a severely diminished version of
himself, didn't think he could beat.
That mentality is the reason for his greatness. And the reason
he stayed around far to long.

 

Absolutely Flash. The fact that he was thinking he could win a rematch with a couple more tune ups solidifies that, as silly as his notion was.