What Ali’s management did to him was criminal.

Muhammad Ali had the ubiquitous Drew Bundini Brown and manager Herbert Muhammad on his payroll and many more hangers on, lackeys and sychophants who all took a percentage of his earnings and fight purses. Also he had very high outgoings with various properties to pay for and also ongoing legal fees as a result of his persistent promiscuity. He likely needed to keep fighting and stay active to maintain that level of income.

 

Years later when Pacheco and Ali were together at a function Ali who was seriously deteriorated by that time leaned over to Ferdie and whispered,," you were right".

 

If he retired after Foreman his detractors would have nothing. That being said Ali was stubborn to a fault and his brother who didn't take nearly as much punishment has Parkinson's. Also, Mark Kram said if you include his amateur career and sparring he boxed 20,000 rounds.

 

Shady characters? Many of boxings past greats did associate themselves with shady characters, they are called Leeches or Yes Men only around to collect a quick buck. I have been a huge fan of Muhammad Ali since November 1965, saw his title defenses that were either televised live on television or on Closed Circuit Television. In reality the people who stood by him were his family, Angelo Dundee and Howard Cosell, who by the way stood up for Ali when he was stripped of his title, boxing license in 1967. I as well wished that Ali would have retired after the 1975 Thrilla In Manila, both Ali and Joe Frazier both left a lot of themselves in the ring that night. But in this world especially boxing, there are Greedy people in this world who are self centered. While it is true that older fighters have to be active to stay fit and sharp, they could have spaced his much tougher fights as he continued his career. But to be honest, Ali craved the attention, I always believed that he was making up for those three years of inactivity that he lost from April 1967 until he returned in Oct 1970. But no one can buy back lost time, but it was very admirable that he stood up for what he believed in, but he did pay a price for his valor.

 

He simply run out of money. Flunkies and yes-men and all that, but in between Spinks and Holmes he had six children, two ex.wives and a current one. Nobody forced him back, it was him needing the money.

 

Good post,Richard.

 

This. Nobody manipulated or controlled Ali. Ali was even going to make a full comeback in 1984-1985, but at that point none of the athletic commissions was willing to grant him a license anymore.

Dundee himself admitted he screwed up by asking Ali to retire, since all it did was make Ali more determined to prove he could still compete.

 

I’ve met people who saw Ali after Spinks 1 or Norton3? They said it was obvious he was different by then something was “off” about him.

 

Even after the debacle in the Bahamas John Travolta and his wife Veronica were gassing him up.

 

Ali did want to fight for a plethora of reasons despite mounting evidence that he shouldn't have (money troubles, pride, etc.), but he definitely had enablers in his corner that only cared about themselves. They were thinking about dollar signs, not Ali's future.

 

Ali was too stubborn to retire and loved the fame, if he had retired after the Foreman fight or the Thriller in Manila it would have been the perfect ending to his career or even the Jean-Pierre Coopman fight just to get 50 wins but he kept going. Ali was still sparring as late as 1983 to 1984 I believe.

 

After Manilla, Angelo was a wealthy man. He'd made over $2M training Ali and unlike Muhammad, lived modestly.
Dundee saw his role as looking after Ali. As long as Ali insisted on fighting, Dundee would take care of him.

 

After Manilla, Angelo was a wealthy man. He'd made over $2M training Ali and unlike Muhammad, lived modestly.
Dundee saw his role as looking after Ali. As long as Ali insisted on fighting, Dundee would take care of him.

 

I challenge someone to produce even one account or speculation that Ali had Parkinson’s at or before the end of his career. Certainly not

I challenge someone to produce even one account or speculation that Ali had Parkinson’s at or before the end of his career. Certainly not by the time of either fight with Spinks.

Yes, years later (was it after he died even?) someone did a ‘study’ looking back at earlier interviews of a man they by that time knew 100% had Parkinson’s and said ‘see, you can see it here.’ Yet that person nor anyone else said it at the time of those interviews.

It’s like knowing someone in your family has Alzheimer’s and you say, ‘now that I think about it, his memory was kinda fuzzy when we talked a year before we found that out.’ But at the time you didn’t say, ‘Oh dad, you can’t remember the name of the guy you played football with 50 years ago in high school, we need to take you straight to the hospital and get a battery of tests, you clearly have dementia.’

Go find the guy who was the author of that ‘study’ of Ali videotaped interviews and show him postfight interviews with 100 fighters today and see if he can tell us with any degree of accuracy which ones will later be diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Heck, he should be seeing patients every day since he can tell by watching someone talk if they have it — think of all the lives he could save.

If you are on this forum and think you can tell Ali had Parkinson’s while he was still active, tell us which currently active fighters also have it. If think you can see such things without a medical degree and medical tests, let’s put that to the test. See if you can tell when it’s someone you don’t already know has it.

As for Pacheco, don’t get me started. He stepped away because he believed Ali had kidney problems. Ali was checked out by the Mayo Clinic and by UCLA and not only did neither find any kidney problems (in fact to my knowledge he never had any until the day he died) but they also did NOT diagnose him with early-stage Parkinson’s that now so many internet ‘medical experts’ claim they can so clearly see (yet the top medical professionals in the world at that time who examined him didn’t, lol).

Also on Pacheco, go watch the Nigel Benn-Gerald McClellan fight that he called. Ferdie, the “Fight Doctor,” goes on and on about McClellan blinking repeatedly and actually questioning his courage, and repeated blinking is a SIGN OF BRAIN TRAUMA that is playing out right in front of him and not once does he suggest McClellan may be in distress or call for the fight to be stopped or raise any other red flags — and instead basically says McClellan has no heart and is dogging it. So forgive me if I don’t take Ferdie “the Fight Doctor” Pacheco as some heroic figure with great medical insight into boxing when all he saw wrong with Ali was possible kidney problems and couldn’t tell McClellan was in distress from brain trauma right in front of his eyes.

Did Ali fight too long? Definitely — especially his comebacks vs. Holmes and Berbick. Did anyone make him? No. He wasn’t hoodwinked. He knew better than anyone else how his brain and body were functioning and he chose to fight on. I don’t personally hold it agains Dundee for wanting to stand by the man til the end as he did from the start — he tried to talk Ali into retiring but he didn’t walk away.

Don’t try to make Ferdie — who cashed in on his longtime association with Ali to get a job at NBC not only doing fight commentary but as the network’s chief advisor in making and purchasing fights to air — into some kind of hero or martyr. If he had stuck with Ali maybe he could have gotten him to take medical tests that would have convinced Ali to quit rather than walking away so he could act like a moralist.

 

For his biography on Muhammad Ali Jonathan Eig commissioned a speech pathologist to evaluate Ali's speech through the years and the pathologist used words per minute as a metric. He discovered Ali 's speech had already slowed by 1971 and slowed some more every year since then. Something was going on.