Plans for Muhammad Ali’s return to the ring began to be bandied about in March 1980. This was just days before Joe and I had first broached the subject up in the lair. However, it wasn’t until negotiations with two other champions failed—and choices for preferred fight venues fell apart—that the official contract for Ali’s comeback against WBC champion Larry Holmes got put together. It was finally signed on July 17.
The fight quickly became known as “the Last Hurrah.” It was set for October 2, 1980, in a temporary outdoor facility on the grounds of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The makeshift arena seated nearly 25,000 people and wound up taking in a then-record live gate of $6 million. Promoter Don King arranged for Ali to get a purse of $8 million and Holmes $6 million, regardless of who walked away with the WBC heavyweight crown and The Ring and lineal titles.
The Ali-Holmes bout came at a busy, stressful time for Joe Frazier and his son. It was three weeks after Marvis’s shaky professional debut against the ex–football player Roger Troupe and just a week before his second match at Madison Square Garden. Yet Joe was keenly aware of the worldwide attention the championship fight had attracted and the huge payday awaiting Ali. For months now, Joe had stepped up his own training while working with Marvis in the gym.
Joe Frazier, more than most boxing people, understood Ali’s decision to fast-track his shot at the heavyweight title and the enormous payday. He knew all too well that it only took one unexpected blow to derail the best of boxing plans. And Joe had learned the hard way that no fight down the line was ever guaranteed.
Still, most boxing experts were shocked that Ali didn’t arrange for an easier tune-up bout or two before jumping in with the likes of Larry Holmes. That mistake became even more evident as I watched the airing of the fight along with a record worldwide audience of about 2 billion people. Years later, several more viewings of the bout on YouTube just confirmed that Ali had been totally unprepared to go straight from retirement to fighting an active champion like Holmes in his prime.
Holmes, at 30 years old and 211 pounds, was three years younger and 10 pounds leaner than when he had destroyed Marvis in one round. His record going into the Ali fight was 35–0 with 26 knockouts. He had already successfully defended the WBC title seven times since he had taken it from Ken Norton in 1978. Every single one of those championship bouts ended in a knockout.
Muhammad Ali, at 38, came in at a svelte 217 pounds and boasting a 56–3 record with 37 knockouts from his preretirement days. Although he weighed about the same as in his prime, it still represented a reason for grave concern. Ali had shed about 50 pounds over five feverish months of training to get down to his fighting weight. This had savvy observers worrying about the strength and resilience that had been lost along with the pounds. In addition, Ali had not fought a credible opponent since going up against Joe at the Thrilla in Manila five years before.
Howard Cosell, who called the fight on air, had interviewed both combatants before the event. Ali claimed not to have lost power or stamina from the weight loss. He also minimized the impact of the layoff on his reflexes. Cosell seemed skeptical, which led Ali to predict an unlikely victory by round nine.
Holmes countered with a more credible prediction of his own. He said he would knock out Ali in one to eight rounds. Despite his confidence, there appeared to be little joy or satisfaction in the prospect of dispatching his old friend and idol. He saw it as something he had to do to get the respect he deserved, to be seen as one of the great champions. He described Ali as “the monkey on my back.”
In the most poignant moment of the interview, Holmes confessed to Cosell that there was no way to walk away from this fight with what he wanted.
“If I win, they’ll say I knocked out an old man,” he said.
Holmes looked sharp and methodical in his approach to the fight. From the beginning, he was relentless in his attack and met literally no resistance. Ali’s response to fending off the champ’s punches seemed sluggish at best. I wondered if Joe felt as heartsick as I did by the way his old rival fared in the first couple of rounds.
The first thing to go in older fighters was their reflexes. They continually got beaten to the punch in an exchange. As a result, many simply became reluctant to attack, try combinations, or even throw a power punch that would open up their defense. Ali acted like the typical over-the-hill boxer from the opening bell. He threw only one punch in the first two rounds while Holmes constantly connected with a jolting, rhythmic jab.
In some of the earlier rounds, Ali got up on his toes to dance around the ring. The enormous crowd responded to the flashes of grace by chanting his name. Unfortunately, Ali seemed unable to throw any effective blows off his movement as he had in his prime.
By the later rounds, the fluid motion stopped. Only Holmes was moving briskly and connecting with his punches at will. The crowd groaned, and I cringed, with every shot that found its mark.
Holmes looked to end things in the ninth round with a crisp uppercut that knocked Ali back against the ropes. When Ali raised his gloves to protect his face, Holmes struck again with a right to the kidney that had the older man in agony. Somehow Ali survived.
By round 10 of the scheduled 12-rounder, Ali was defenseless. He looked lifeless in the ring, and boos alternated with a sad silence. Mercifully, Angelo Dundee stopped the one-sided affair before the 11th round began.
The scorecards screamed support for the trainer’s decision. All the officials had Holmes winning every round. In fact, many rounds went to Holmes by a wide margin using the 10-point must system of scoring.
Despite the dominant performance by Holmes, many observers claimed he held back at times out of admiration for Ali. Holmes said they were mistaking a careful approach to the fight for too much concern for an old friend’s welfare.
“I love the man,” said Holmes, according to a report posted by the Guardian years later. “But when the bell rung, I didn’t even know his name.”
In the postfight televised interview from a jam-packed ring, Holmes came across as much less detached. His emotions welled up and his eyes glistened with tears. He seemed moved by the way history had been turned on its ear. He had gone from the sparring partner for the Greatest to the man who had demolished his old benefactor.
“I did what I had to do,” said Holmes, in response to being asked what it was like beating up his idol. “I still love the guy. Can’t knock a man for trying.”
Holmes was asked if he found it surprising that the fight seemed so easy.
“I thought it would go quicker,” Larry admitted before paying his respects to the legend. “Ali is still the baddest man. I always respected the man. He will go down as the greatest of all time.”
Fan reaction to the fight wasn’t nearly as kind. For instance, the Guardian piece got this gruesome take on the demolition of Ali in round 10 from Sylvester “Rocky” Stallone.
“Like watching an autopsy on a man who’s still alive,” said the actor.
As disturbing as it was to watch the Ali-Holmes fight, the medical news that broke sometime afterward seemed even more troubling. It was eventually revealed that the Nevada State Athletic Commission had initially expressed serious concerns about Muhammad Ali’s fitness to fight on such a high level. It had mandated that Ali submit to a neurological examination at the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine in Minneapolis before a ruling could be made on granting a license to box.
Ali was admitted to the Mayo Clinic on July 23 and took part in a battery of neurological tests with Dr. Frank Howard. The results were “shocking,” according to the Telegraph (UK). The doctor’s report said Ali confessed to “tingling in his hands and slurring of his speech.” The ex-champ also had a problem with touching his finger to his nose and hopping on one foot with the kind of agility expected.
Surprisingly, Dr. Howard concluded that there were no specific findings to justify prohibiting Ali from fighting. The results of his exams were dutifully sent to the Nevada State Athletic Commission. The report was not made public at the time. Based on that report, Ali received his boxing license in Nevada.
Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, a.k.a. “the Fight Doctor,” took care of Ali’s medical needs, supposedly free of charge, from 1960 to 1977. In a 2016 interview with the Mirror (UK), he admitted to begging Ali to quit boxing for years—starting right after the Thrilla in Manila. He felt that the champ was taking too many punches, sustaining too much damage despite continuing to win.
The beating Ali took at the hands of Earnie Shavers, en route to defending his title in a September 1977 match, was the last straw for Pacheco. The fight went 15 rounds, and the heavy-hitting Shavers kept swinging most of the way. Pacheco wound up giving Ali an ultimatum when it was over—quit the game or go on without him.
“I implored him, ‘You have to stop, Champ.’ But Ali refused to quit boxing—so I quit Ali,” Pacheco said. “It was the hardest decision of my life.”
The Fight Doctor had supposedly sent the medical report from the Mayo Clinic to members of Ali’s camp before the Holmes fight. But, obviously, nobody saw grounds for calling the match off.
According to another more recent article in Slate, Pacheco saw the refusal to stop the Holmes-Ali debacle as downright criminal.
“All the people in this fight should’ve been arrested,” he said. “This fight was an abomination, a crime.”
After his disheartening loss to Holmes, Muhammad Ali refused to accept his newfound vulnerability. Ali initially said that he had felt unusually weak and lethargic during the bout. And he claimed to have been inordinately affected by the 100-degree heat in Las Vegas at fight time.
Most people present, including Holmes, took Ali’s complaints as a lame excuse. One more aging boxer unable to accept the inevitable. However, a later press conference with Ali’s doctor in tow made the ex-champ’s take seem more plausible.
Dr. Charles Williams, according to an October 23, 1980, article in Jet, confirmed that he had originally prescribed the thyroid drug Thyrolar for Ali in 1978. It was just prior to Ali’s two fights with Leon Spinks. The doctor said his patient had suffered from a thyroid deficiency at the time of his diagnosis.
Ali admitted to eventually abusing the drug by taking two pills a day rather than just one, as prescribed. He figured if one pill made him feel stronger, two pills should be better. The article noted that an overdose of Thyrolar resulted in fatigue and a “waste of physical energy.” Other side effects from doubling the dose also included weight loss and sensitivity to heat.
“Two weeks before the fight I started to get more tired,” said Ali, with Dr. Williams at his side. “I thought it was just because I was nearing the peak of my conditioning. If it’s age and I’m finished and washed up, I’ll face it. But if it [the loss] was because of the drugs. . . . Healthy I can beat Holmes. I shall return.”
True to his word, Ali returned to the ring 14 months later on December 11, 1981. However, there was no Larry Holmes involved and no heavyweight title on the line. The nearly 40-year-old legend was matched instead against Trevor Berbick, 27, an up-and-coming contender with a 19–2 record and a world of promise.
Ali had obviously stopped abusing the thyroid medication and brought along one of his doctors to verify it. He even held up a medical report as additional proof prior to the contest. However, the change in regimen had allowed his weight to balloon up to 236 pounds, and he came across as generally more subdued than usual.
Berbick stood 6ʹ2ʺ and weighed a compact 218 pounds for the 10-round match with Ali. The Canadian resident had won his first 11 fights as a professional, 10 by knockout, after representing his native Jamaica in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. In 1980, he had attracted major attention with a surprise ninth-round knockout of former champion John Tate.
That win over Tate had earned him a shot at the heavyweight crown held by Larry Holmes in April 1981. Berbick lost by a unanimous decision in 15 rounds. Yet he had managed to break Holmes’s streak of eight straight title-defense victories via knockout.
The Ali-Berbick fight took place in Nassau and came to be known as “the Drama in Bahama.” It headed up an impressive card that included big names like Thomas Hearns, Greg Page, and Scott LeDoux. However, the new company promoting the event was notoriously unorganized and ran into serious financial difficulties. By fight time, the biggest drama in the Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre revolved around whether some boxers—including Berbick—would get all the prize money they were promised.
The fight between Ali and Berbick, on the other hand, offered little suspense right from the beginning. Berbick took on the role of the aggressor in the early rounds and did a good job of pressuring Ali throughout the fight. He landed some solid shots in the first round, controlled most of the second, and pummeled Ali’s body all through the third. It quickly became clear that he was too strong, too determined, and just too young for the aging star.
For his part, Ali came across as a slower, immobile, less graceful imitation of his younger self. Before the match he had promised to “dance all night,” according to a New York Times report the next day. Although Ali rose up on his toes from time to time, there was no movement or dazzling footwork. Instead, he looked like a tired old soldier marching in place.
After being pushed around and bullied in the fourth, Ali finally woke up and showed flashes of the Greatest in the fifth and sixth rounds. He won the fifth by putting together several effective combinations and flustered Berbick with some flurries. At the end of the sixth, he actually had the younger fighter wobbly and praying for the bell.
Berbick ended the Ali uprising in the seventh with a brutal barrage of punches that just kept coming. He landed close to a dozen blows in a row, and the tired, beaten old champ settled in and accepted his fate. The one saving grace was that he managed to go out on his feet and lasted to the final bell.
Of course, the lopsided, unanimous decision surprised no one and the muted crowd took it well. Ali took his final defeat with a measure of grace too.
“I did good for a 40-year-old,” Ali told a circle of reporters, in the New York Times story. He then referenced the vitality of his opponent as opposed to his own. “I could feel the youth. Age is slipping up on me.”
Ali was questioned about coming back for another fight. He didn’t give a direct answer at first. But he eventually addressed that question later in a postfight interview reported in the Telegraph. He forced himself to face the inevitable.
“Father Time has finally caught up to me and I’m gonna retire,” said the three-time heavyweight champion, his speech slightly slurred. “And I don’t think I’m gonna wake up next week and change my mind. I came out all right for an old man. We all lose sometimes. We all grow old.”
After a failed negotiation or two of his own, Joe Frazier finally agreed to a comeback fight. The match took place on December 3, 1981, at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. It was not-so-coincidentally scheduled just eight days before the Ali-Berbick bout in the Bahamas. As usual, Frazier had one eye on his old rival when making boxing plans.
Frazier, about a month shy of his 38th birthday, signed to fight an un-ranked 30-year-old named Floyd “Jumbo” Cummings. Although ABC-TV covered the match, it was a modest affair compared to Ali’s return against Larry Holmes. Only around 6,500 fight fans chose to pay at the gate. There was also no worldwide closed-circuit audience to bank on. I didn’t know too many people who watched the original telecast.
Frazier’s take for the milestone event amounted to a paltry $85,000—a $73,000 purse and $12,000 for expenses. I could only imagine how hurt Joe must have been, especially in light of the $8 million Ali had earned for his title-fight comeback. Joe’s opponent got tipped $10,000 for his services.
Of course, in typical ain’t-nothing-but-a-party mode, Joe refused to bemoan the demeaning payday. He tried to put a positive spin on things before the bout.
“I always need money,” said Joe, in a Sports Illustrated article on the fight. “I love to spend money. I love to party. I have the ability, the energy, the know-how. Why take all that energy and know-how and [just] party with it? Why waste it?”
I never saw evidence of Frazier’s opponent addressing his meager pay. He appeared happy to merely be in the ring with the former champ.
The heavily muscled, 6ʹ2ʺ, 223-pound Cummings boasted a 17–1 record against middling talent after a little more than two years in the professional ranks. The late start to his career was due to a 12-year prison sentence for murder served at the Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois. Jumbo, a former weight lifter, had found boxing in prison. He said he looked up to Smokin’ Joe as his role model.
Frazier’s decision to go with a modest opponent, in a low-key bout, was contrary to his usual big-fight, big-payday mantra. Yet he really had no alternative. He had to find a predictable, less dangerous tune-up that allowed him to work off the rust after a whopping five-year absence from professional boxing. The proud warrior didn’t want to risk looking as helpless as Ali had just a year before. In addition, no titleholder in his right mind was likely to see an upside to giving another rusty old legend a shot after Ali’s recent fiasco with Holmes.
When Frazier first announced his plan to get back to fighting, he crowed about turning the heavyweight division on its ear. He envisioned himself becoming a champion again. Other than maybe Holmes, he said he didn’t see anyone who could beat him.
For any other boxer of his age, this would have been just willful bravado. It would have been an obvious fabrication for the press to sell some tickets. I didn’t think that was true of Joe Frazier. From what I had learned about him, Joe likely believed every word of it.
Nonetheless, the timing of the Frazier comeback—just before Ali’s bout with Berbick—reminded me again of Joe’s original reason for returning to boxing. He had always pictured another fight with the Greatest and a chance to even the score. If both looked good this week, then an Ali-Frazier IV match became a more respectable, marketable event.
No doubt that same thought had been on Muhammad Ali’s mind. He decided to phone Joe from the Bahamas. The call came in just after Joe’s prefight weigh-in with Cummings.
“We got to make the old men proud,” Ali said, in the Sports Illustrated piece.
“I hear you,” Joe replied. “I’m gonna hold my end of the deal up.”
Ali decided to keep the folksy-old-friend bit going.
“We’re old men and we gotta show the world we can do it,” Ali said, playing his part.
“Don’t call me old,” Joe suddenly snapped back.
Frazier was still only able to muster just so much civility when dealing with his longtime tormentor.
I watched the fight over and over on a grainy YouTube replay years later. The old film reminded me of key details and thoughts long forgotten. It brought back a flood of memories from my time with the Fraziers.
It was surprising to see Joe Frazier enter the ring first. I figured the plan would be to build anticipation, let the returning legend make a grand entrance. He wore a lush purple-and-white robe and danced in place in the corner. His three-man entourage was led by his son.
In an amazing role reversal, Marvis now served as the key man in his dad’s corner. He gave Joe a long, detailed set of prefight instructions. He also stayed in his ear throughout every break between rounds. Ah, that must have been sweet for the kid.
Even better, Joe showed every sign of listening to what his son had to say. Marvis was almost three months into a year-and-a-half illness break after his sixth pro fight. He used a lot of that time to get Joe ready for the comeback. He had become the closest thing to a trainer for his dad.
Joe removed his robe before the bell and loosened up in his corner. There was a thick roll of fat surrounding his midsection that jiggled slightly as he moved. I couldn’t help thinking of big Buster Mathis and the way Joe had taunted him, called him “Fat Boy.”
Joe weighed in at a hefty 229 pounds. This made him about 10 pounds lighter than the man I saw peel off the plastic sweatshirt up in the lair nearly two years earlier. However, he still remained 20 pounds above peak fighting weight from back in his prime.
In the first round, Joe bobbed up and down and weaved like the old days. However, he missed badly on several lunging hooks. He also tried to stay on top of his opponent and go to the body but got hit too much coming in. Fortunately, the awkward Cummings didn’t make a whole lot of solid contact in the round and missed his share of openings too. Joe escaped unscathed.
The same pattern continued in the second round. Joe tried to fight in tight. He missed on hooks while bulling his way in and took some hits in the process. Then, midway through the round, Joe rose up from his Smokin’ Joe crouch to connect with a right uppercut flush on the chin.
Oh baby! That’s it! I thought to myself, It’s all over!
But, amazingly, it wasn’t over. Jumbo just took a step back and smiled at Joe. This was the biggest revelation of the fight. Joe still managed to move and bob and connect. Unfortunately, his knockout power was gone. It had vanished somewhere between the gym and the road in the five-plus years of eating and singing and just living his life.
Joe charged across the ring to begin round three. He surprised Cummings and connected with his patented left hook. Once again, there was no discernible damage done.
The boxers continued to lean on each other for the rest of round three and through the fourth. Joe usually thrived on the inside, but he got the worst of the in-fighting now. He saved himself by clinching whenever in trouble. Luckily for Joe, Cummings didn’t know enough to press his advantages when they arose.
By the end of round four, I feared Joe would tire himself out. I expected him to sink into the same sluggish kind of performance Ali showed for most of his fight with Holmes. I thought of it as the “old-man swoon.”
Then, in round five, the fighting angels sang out loud. Smokin’ Joe suddenly appeared to be reborn. For one glorious stretch, it all came back.
Early in the round, Joe clobbered Cummings with a tremendous left hook to the head. He hunkered down in his Smokin’ Joe stance, bobbed up and down, and connected with several more vintage Frazier hooks. Bam! Bam! Bam! The shots landed one after the other.
Joe snapped Jumbo’s head back with a right cross. It made him feel good enough to dramatically lower his gloves. He made a show of taunting his younger opponent. The crowd sprung to life chanting, “Joe! Joe! Joe!”
Later in the round, Joe followed up a jab with another solid hook to the head. Cummings absorbed the shot and just stood his ground. He laughed off Joe’s effort. He made a point of showing everyone Joe Frazier couldn’t hurt him. The effort seemed forced, unconvincing.
Seconds before the bell, just as Jumbo was starting to believe his own bravado, Joe landed one more crushing left hook. This one did serious damage and shook Jumbo to his core. He was wobbly and definitely not laughing when the bell rang and saved him.
In the sixth and seventh rounds, Joe had his moments and scored with some left hooks. Yet none seemed to sting or stop Cummings from pressing forward. Joe’s reflexes, however, seemed better than Ali’s and his legs had more life. He basically held his own even if Jumbo never felt the famous Frazier knockout power after that miraculous fifth round.
By the end of the seventh, I stopped worrying about Joe. I took a breath and thought, This will be okay. I figured Joe would plod his way to the end without paying a heavy price. Then, if Ali somehow handled Berbick, the old warriors might get a chance to make history with that mythical fourth fight.
My illusions fell apart in round eight. Joe got hit hard and often. It offered a glimpse of what he could face every round with a better opponent.
Cummings landed some uppercuts and stiff shots to the head early on. After trading body shots, he drove Joe into the ropes with a flurry of lefts and rights. Jumbo continued to pummel Joe’s head with both hands, leaving the older man’s legs weak, eyes puffy, and mouth streaming blood. Joe grabbed his opponent in a fight-saving clinch and held on for his boxing life and dignity.
Both fighters claimed victory in the end. The referee and judges upset both men by scoring it as a virtual tie. The two judges had it even, and the referee had it 46–45 for Cummings. The fight was officially ruled as a draw. It appeared to be the fair outcome.
After the fight, Joe remained true to form. He saw nothing but success, eternal youth, and legendary feats. That perspective on the fight, and his life, held firm into the next day.
“Everything I wanted to do out there, I done it,” he said, according to Sports Illustrated. “Last night I was just beginning to get back into what I wanted to do. . . . I went the distance. . . . You can’t say at 37, 38 I’m old. . . . Anything my boys can do I can do better. And longer. You hear me?”
Joe Frazier finished his tirade by climbing the proverbial mountaintop. He anointed himself superhuman, above the realm of most men.
“I’m one of God’s men,” he said, the spirit still stirring in his voice. “Separate me from the rest of them. Things that happen to me don’t happen to every man.”
A while later, once the spirit had a chance to die down, Joe got to see the fight film. He heard what his family had to say. Reality began to set in.
The desire for victory, to be the best, still burned bright in him. But Smokin’ Joe admitted the steam in his attack had dissipated, the power in his punches had started to wane. Like his eternal rival, he knew it was time to quit. Joe announced his permanent retirement from the ring.