Was the lyle-Ali fight stopped early?

yup. and lyle is just saying that he was fine for the sake of his legacy.

 

I have, it gave some good insight to Lyle's life, but the book was heavily biased towards Lyle. The book was giving out the vibe that Lyle could do no wrong.

 

Ali stunned Lyle with that right hand near the outset of round 11. Ron then foundered from neutral corner, to Ali's corner, to the other neutral corner, while Muhammad unloaded 46 unanswered punches. Lyle was literally being battered from pillar to post with never a sign of even attempting to punch back. There were nearly two minutes still left in the round when Hernandez finally stepped in. Anybody who thinks Ali might have punched himself out hasn't viewed his previous outing with Wepner. (Chuvalo actually did punch back at Foreman after being stunned, maintained a slow and controlled retreat rather than foundering blindly, and was clearly riding out the storm on the tiring upstart. Chuvalo has a far, far stronger case for objecting to that stoppage, but Irving Ungerman in his own corner betrayed him there, even though Foreman was missing a lot of shots. I'd imagine Big George had Ungerman on his Christmas card list after that one.)

Even if Ollie Pecord had been the referee, and Ron stayed on his feet, he was done at that point, Muhammad now owned him completely, and Lyle had no more moments in his favor ahead of him. (Remarkably, Ali managed to have the first two defenses of his second reign against older challengers than himself, so youth as well as experience was on his side.)

Lyle boxed a brilliantly conservative match for ten rounds, but his timing for challenging Ali couldn't have been worse, coming as it did after Muhammad's extraordinary championship round exertions with Wepner less than two months earlier. Ali couldn't have been more battle ready.