So maybe Ali did 'sort of' take Ferdie's advice because his next defense was against a recently bulked lightheavy with a little over a year of pro experience and a whopping 7 pro fights. Does anyone think the powers that be conspired to keep Ali in the game by loaning and taking back the title from Leon? In spite of the just said, at end of '77 Leon was nonetheless rated #9 (see Ring ratings). Not quite a Pete Rademacher fiasco, but just a click below it. Like Rademacher, Leon had the marketability vis a vis the Oly gold. But, look how in the lineage of Ali-Frazier-Foreman across 3 successive Olys, they all waited more or less four years before they got their shot (Joe's situation different per Ali's exile but it followed the timeline). Not looking to trigger a Liston fraud type backlash here (so please spare me), but, given all, it's worth putting on the table. Bobick was rated #5 and had about 40 fights and had just rebounded from the Norton annihilation with credible wins over LeDoux and Agosta, so in a sane world he would have gotten the shot, right?
No, they didn't loan the belt, this cherry pick,, and that's what it was , went sideways because Ali was more far gone than they thought.
The WBC should have stripped Ali for signing Spinks instead of Norton, but instead waited to pronto strip Leon for the same reason. Poor Ken then lost the phenomenal fight against Holmes and, at 35, left it in that ring, going on to get iced by Shavers 9 months later.
Very long term friend of mine is wrapping his career as a movement disorder neuro doc and early on trained at Johns Hopkins with Mahlon DeLong, who was Ali's primary neuro doc from the beginning of his problems. My guy told me DeLong told him that Ali did have idiopathic Parkinson's (largely b/c of the + response to levodopa) but otherwise of course had a more aggressive symptom picture because of the boxing trauma (the same brain stem to frontal lobe pathways). Pacheco said Ali didn't have Parkinson's he had Frazier, Norton, Shavers, Holmes disease. So Ferdie was half right.
