Which fight damaged Ali's health the most?

Muhammad Ali suffers from Parkinson's syndrome because of injuries to the brain he sustained during his 22-year boxing career, his doctor said Wednesday.

During his 61-bout career, the three-time heavyweight champion often boasted that his face was still pretty and unmarred by the head blows landed by Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Leon Spinks, Larry Holmes and others.

Nevertheless, damage was occurring inside, where it was not apparent, according to Dr. Dennis Cope, Ali's physician and director of the training program in general internal medicine at the UCLA Medical Center.

"Our feeling is that Muhammad Ali's condition is 'pugilistic brain syndrome,' caused by injuries to the brain from fighting," Cope said in a telephone interview.



Cope has served as the former heavyweight champion's doctor since 1980. Ali, 45, was diagnosed in 1984 as having a form of Parkinson's syndrome.

Parkinson's syndrome has some of the same characteristics as Parkinson's disease though not as severe and is caused by gradual deterioration of certain nerve centers inside the brain that control movements.

Characteristic symptoms involve an involuntary, rhythmic shaking of the hands, the head or both, the loss of very fine coordination, and some muscular rigidity that reduces the ease of speech and movement.

The cause of the common form of Parkinson's is unknown, but Cope said severe blows to the head can be one cause.

"The damage occurs because of the rupture of small blood vessels in the substance of the brain," Cope said.

The minute bleeding forms contusions, the equivalent of bruises in the brain. As these heal, Cope said it can lead to scarring and cause certain neurons in the brain to "drop out."

In April 1983, Sports Illustrated reported that an abnormal condition--an atrophy more characteristic of older people--had been found in a CAT scan of Ali's brain.

A radiologist retained by the magazine said the condition, a widened third ventricle that appeared on the scan, shows up on 50% of boxers with more than 20 bouts.

The magazine said the condition was found four times as frequently in boxers than in non-boxers.

Cope distinguished Ali's diagnosis from what he called "dementia pugilistica," the medical term for punch drunk, which can affect a fighter's ability to think and remember.

"As most people are aware, he has some difficulty with his speech and he does have fine tremors," Cope said. "However, he is able to function quite normally in all other respects and his memory is fine."

Cope says Ali's condition has responded to L-Dopa, a drug treatment.

Tuesday, Ali said he was looking into a suggestion by a Mexican doctor that he undergo an experimental medical procedure for Parkinson's victims, in which surgeons implant adrenal gland tissues in the brain.



The deterioration of the brain's nerve centers disrupts the balance between body chemicals necessary for transmitting nerve impulses, causing a deficiency of dopamine, a brain hormone. The adrenal glands produce dopamine and a number of other hormones.

But Cope said: "At this point, his symptoms are not severe enough to warrant this operation, which is still very experimental and has major risks associated with it."

 

Ali's performance against Frazier in their third fight was a level below his performance in their rematch a year earlier.

I know head shots damaged Ali. Everyone agrees with that. Taking repeated blows to the head over the years did incredible damage.

But he became susceptible to the head shots he absorbed late in his career because he was suffering from organ damage. His doctor throughout most of the 1970s (Ferdie Pacheco) said as early as 1975 that Ali's organs were damaged.

Ali also didn't lay back and take beatings in the gym until after the Foreman fight. You can watch films of Ali sparring in the gym in the 60s and early 70s, and he doesn't do that.

In fact, Ali and Roy "Tiger" Williams went to war during sparring before the Foreman fight because Williams felt Ali "somehow" owed him money (because Williams was supposed to fight on the Ali-Foreman undercard and the fight was postponed a month due to Foreman's cut).

There was nothing soft about Ali's training leading up to the Foreman fight.

After that Foreman fight, Ali's sparring partners were well paid and didn't have to worry about getting beaten up, because Ali slacked off in sparring so much, as he worked on just blocking punches.

That Foreman bout - and the damage he did to Ali's body and his organs - was a turning point. After that, he couldn't train like he did before. So he didn't.

 

Not often but sometimes a thread i pure BS, this is one. Despite the great medical knowledge displayed here, maybe we should leave the keyboards alone.

 

Foreman was well the one. Ali's talent and skills kept him going after that. IMO he was "The Greatest". I just feel I have to look at his 2nd career, decades later, and look at what really was.
Zaire? Ali held the stacked deck, his venue, his terms, and he wasn't even champ. By the time the fight came down, Ali's rhetoric had George as a 'shufflin' Uncle Tom. Zaire? (again). The fight should have been in the Astrodome; Foreman WAS the World Champion. But not to be. And, regardless of the 'rebuttals' here, those loose ropes in Zaire are a matter of record. He wanted no part of a rematch with Foreman despite the fact that Ali (with all the particulars mentioned) had fried George's brain after that one.
I love Ali, I think he was the best HW AT.
But, again in retrospect, he played us fans like trained bears in his second reign.
In closing, given his kind demeanor towards 'poor folks' do you really think he should have taken one red cent in his "defenses" against Evangilista, Dunn, Lubbers, Blin, etc, etc.???

Not to mention his brutal comments about Frazier being an 'ape' which led to Joe's kids being abused in their schoolyard(s)...

 

Seems like you need to watch the fight again actually. Ali took a beating in that fight and wasn't winning it on the cards. To say Ali didn't take a beating that night is simply not true, he did

 

Huh? Ali was way ahead on the cards. One official did not give George a round.

For the poster stating Ali controlled all aspects of the fight.....untrue. Just one point ......a boxer fighting a puncher the boxer wants a quick ring so he can move and outmaneuver. A thickly padded ring is a boxers nightmare as it's very difficult to move side to side but easy for the puncher to dig his feet into the canvas to launch bombs. What type of ring did Ali walk into that day? A thickly padded canvas. Also the reason the ropes were loose was they agreed on an odd sized ring and the ropes were made for a larger ring. This made the ropes difficult to tighten.