After the rumble in the jungle and then Minilla, many fighters would have been finished after such great fights. Ali still had enough to defeat powerfull and Hungry fighters such as Norton and Shavers so it was obvious the speed and power would fizzle out towards the end of his career!
As an aside, if you have ESPN Classics in your cable package, starting in just about 20 minutes is 10 hours of Clay/Ali fights....
Such events that the Dunn fight didn't even sell half out until Ali personally bought a few thousand tickets himself and one of the fights in Asia (Bugner or Lubbers not sure which) had an attendance of 30,000 in a stadium that housed 100,000 (and yes that amount of tiockets were available), the other had disappointing sales too, Blue Lewis in Dublin had scores of empty seats, so the opponent did actually matter, not just Ali vs Thingy like most want to believe. Although saying that Yankee Stadium had loads of unsold tickets for Norton III also.
For all his trememndous gifts it is widely accepted in the sport that Ali wasnt the hardest trainer, Yes he is the greatest but hes no Bernard Hopkins in terms of the work he put in in the gym as is seen in his fights with Norton 1,Young and Spinks 1
...and Spinks trained really hard for the rematch. He actually even walked past the gym at one stage.
He trained hard. I remember a Swedish boxing writer who watched Spinks train, and he was very impressed by Spinks physical shape. One of the things that caught his attention was Leon skipping ropes in skiing boots. But you just have to watch the fight to see that Spinks was in good shape.
If you mean that Ali got away with a lot of holding, I completely agree. I think the rematch with Spinks was far, far worse in this respect than the rematch with Frazier.
In this respect, he was a terrific HW Champion, the most active since Louis and Charles. He got hung up by that hernia between Liston I & II, but then five defenses in 1966, would have had three in 1967 by May 24th if Bonavena in Tokyo had come off, then came back to generate four defenses in 1975 and 1976. (Four defenses the year after Manila, even with the Inoki farce thrown in, is insane.) Even the two 1977 defenses against Evangelista and Shavers compare favorably with any of the years Frazier and Foreman held the title. (Neither defended it more than twice in a year, including Smoke's 1968-1969 NYSAC reign.) Granted, there's been dispute over the decision in the rubber match with Norton, but the fact is that Muhammad did defend against Ken. Take away the hernia, exile and Inoki, and Muhammad easily becomes the first in any division to surpass 30 successful defenses. (Louis would have also done this without WW II in the way. Given both their ideal opportunities to do so, I think Ali would have set his sights on Joe's title defense record and passed it with room to spare.) Muhammad was 32 when he regained it in Kinshasa, yet still managed to produce ten successful defenses in the 1970s. Ten successful defenses of the undisputed HW Title should always be an automatic unanimous pass to Canastota.
After recently debating the worth of ali's career post thriller, I watched his fights against shavers and young again and I can't help but feel he didn't actually win either of them. After the thriller he basically received gift after gift. A gift decision is absolutely no improvement to a legacy by any definition. Paper defences of a paper championship mean nothing to me and whilst they might others, I can honestly say I think his legacy is the same as it would have been had he retired after frazier 3.