Were Ali's health problems a direct result of boxing?

Yes they were partly. His own friend and Fernando "Ferdie" Pacheco wanted him to retire due to health reasons.

Ali's main problem is his fundamentals on defense were not good, and once he aged he was tagged quite a bit. The other problem was he was durable enough to get tagged often. That takes it toll.

 

For all that his traditional fundamentals were not good, he still did not get hit as much as a losing journeyman taking Alis whole career into account.

I get that his defence was his reflexes. But Ali in his whole first career before the exile it was really only the left hook from Henry Cooper that could have been considered “punishment”.

From 1971 to 1980 he had a full nine years of more competitive fights against nothing but world class opponents. The first fight with Frazier made up for his entire first career. That was a seriously punishing fight. I don’t really think the Foreman fight made an impression on him. The Norton fights were tough but never punishing. The second Frazier fight not punishing at all. The third Frazier fight was punishing. Shavers was punishing. Holmes was a beating.

I think the most damage was done to his kidneys in the last Frazier fight, the clots on his legs from the wrestling fight, and what put his system right over the edge was most likely fighting on the thyroid medication and pain killers during the Holmes fight.

 

Traumatic Parkinson’s is generally caused by getting hit behind the head.

 

It is a good question.. I would say a combination of boxing and a predisposition to it but probably more a predisposition even had he never boxed. Because many guys who boxed do ok when they get older and other's do not, same as people who do not box. Parkinsons and Alzheimers or any diseases are going to happen since we are human, so it is hard to tell what causes anything. We just pray we don't get something bad and if we do we try to deal with it.

He probably had a predisposition for Parkinsons, and the boxing damaged some of the brain cells which would not have been damaged otherwise . So maybe the Parkinsonian symptoms showed up earlier than it would have normally because brain cells which would have been ok without boxing were not because of boxing and the ones left were being affected by the parkinsons-it might have come out when he was 15 or 20 years later had it not been for boxing.

 

No, George you got it all mixed up. My answer of Holyfield was in response to Janitors post that no other heavyweight champ with the sole exception of Louis,fought a similar number of world class opponents as Ali.

 

I wonder if the Thyrolar contributed.

 

Is that the type of Parks that Ali had?

I’m no doctor, but it seems to me that a lot of evidence lies on the fact he was getting hit in the head and training on pain killers and diet pills whilst his kidneys were not properly working.

 

Extremely plausible.

 

I think it was the two 15 rounders with the young energetic Leon Spinks that finally pushed him over the edge.

 

Traumatic Parkinson’s is caused by injuring the cerebellum.

 

Looks like less than one percent.

“A recent study in the journal Neurology found that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's disease (PD). ... A traumatic brain injury does not guarantee Parkinson's disease. (In fact, less than 1 percent of veterans in this study developed PD, regardless of whether they had TBI.)20 Apr 2018”

 

And? Ali had many TBI's and wasn't a veteran, which is the group studied.

 

Is anyone here a marine biologist?

 

So head trauma in veterans is not trauma?

It’s most likely there was some damage.

“Head injuries can cause inflammation in the brain, which may lead to changes in cells and brain structures that contribute to Parkinson's, Changizi said. ... But Changizi said, "Parkinson's disease would be enough to explain a lot of his symptoms."6 Jun 2016”

 

It's actually interesting that people are willing themselves to believe the likelihood of the very unlikely possibility that Ali's condition had nothing to do with boxing.

Boxing was almost certainly the direct cause.