When ( in real time) did you want Ali to quit ?

For me it was the morning after the Holmes fight, when the morning news showed clips of the post-fight press conference and Ali said he wanted Mike Weaver, the WBA champ, next.

I attended a closed circuit telecast of the Ali-Holmes fight with my dad. I thought Ali had a real chance of pulling the upset as the fight approached. And I sat there during the fight waiting for him to start fighting. When he got up on his toes to start the fifth round (I believe), I remember thinking "this is it."

But it was a bad loss. And any idea of him fighting Weaver for the WBA belt next just seemed ludicrous at that point. (All the bad thyroid stuff didn't come out until later.)

I started following boxing in 1975, so I missed when Ali was dominant in the 1960s. And Ali had a lot of close fights in the late 70s, but nobody could dominate him. You may have thought Foreman or Lyle or Frazier were awesome, but Ali stopped them all. You may have thought Jimmy Young or Ken Norton or even Shavers deserved the nod over him, but they weren't head and shoulders better. They were pick-em fights and Ali had his moments in them just like they had theirs.

For all the goofiness and the clowning and the laying on the ropes ... Ali in the 1970s was as big as the biggest heavyweights, he was as fast as the fastest heavyweights and he was strong enough to knock out the strongest heavyweights.

Even when Spinks beat him in fight one, and it was a great night and shocking, too ... when Ali got the rematch, it seemed like everyone kind of assumed he was going to win the rematch. (And he did easily.)

So no matter how "bad" some people who had watched him for years thought he looked, he was still basically better than everyone else - or there wasn't anyone clearly better than him ... and I don't recall anyone at the time really saying he should quit except for Cosell (who was there during Ali's best years in the 1960s).

Even Pacheco, his doctor, didn't start making noise about Ali needing to quit until after the Shavers fight at the end of 1977, which, again, Ali won and had Shavers all but out at the end.

In the years after, Pacheco kept pushing back the moment when he claimed he thought Ali should quit ... to the point that he started saying he thought Ali should've retired after Frazier III ... even though in reality he didn't voice that belief and kept collecting checks for two years and traveling the world.)

So, for me, it was after the Holmes loss.

Before that, no other heavyweight had dominated him or proved he was head and shoulders better.

 

Foreman fight.

 

I rooted against Ali in his every bout.....,.except when he fought Holmes. He should have retired after he beat Frazier in 75. My gut feeling is his health was severely damaged post this bout. He took KO blows again and again from Shavers, beating vs Spinks and then Holmes.

 

I was a young fan but I didn't want him to fight Holmes. He speech started to slow and it was actually evident in those Roach commercials.

 

Anytime after Manilla I suppose but that is hindsight. The Jimmy Young fight that he actually lost was terrible and he took horrific punishment against Shavers. How in the world his people let him in the ring with Holmes as his damage was already very noticeable, then he fought Berbick and there's no way he passed a physical that fight