Along with me you're the third person who's said this, COUPLED with the people close to him saying they believed that's the reason for his unbelievably sharp decline. A certain ******* here thinks it's an impossible notion. :rofl
Ezzard Charles had one damn busy career though, and one that began at middleweight. He fought numerous ranked opponents and engaged in some terribly tough fights. His late losing streak began in 1955, when he was around 34 or 35 years old, and had been fighting for nearly 15 years. Frankly, I don't think that his career ended abruptly.
Yeah, he had almost twice as many fights as Marciano would have in his entire career by the first Marciano fight. 90, if not more, I believe. Serious mileage.
And why is that laughable? ALS usually sets in between the age of mid 40's - mid 60's. The onset is anything between 2 and 7 years. Charles dead at 53. So in the maximum case, a 7 years time untill demise, he would've started getting symptons at age 46. Even if you want to stretch it, say, 10 years onset, then he would've started deteriorating at age 43. But he retired when he was 38 years old. No ALS patient has ever lived for 20 years after the first symptoms, yet that is what you are implying. Given the large amount of hard fights that Charles has had since he was 16, it is not strange at all that he declined badly when he was 33. In fact, in the 50's, most boxers were washed up at that age. ALS had nothing to do with it.
Pontius, It was Ray Arcel who implied it. He claimed he noticed the early Symptoms in charles all the way starting in 1952.
Not saying he was dying of it in the ring. I feel small facets of it were affecting him BEFORE his carere ended, late into it.
Naseem Hamed has to be mentioned here. There's an arguement for calling him great but he undoubtedly high profile. After one fight, it was all over for the Prince.
Who says it was full blown clinical ALS that a doctor could sit him down and diagnose? You don't think he could of been deterioration before that? That facets of what was going to and did kill him were there? The catalysts for it?
