Comments Thread For: Another Anniversary Means Many Unhappy Returns

[BIGPOPPAPUMP]

By Lyle Fitzsimmons - It’s just an in-between anniversary this time, but it doesn’t much matter.

Whenever Oct. 2 rolls around on the calendar, as it did yesterday, I get pissed.

Not because I think boxing is a sissy sport or that the guys who pursue it as a profession need to be coddled. It isn’t and they don’t. And anyone who’s covered it or been around it for any amount of time – whether less or more than me – knows that’s the case as well.

If a guy wants to strip down to trunks, shoes and gloves and test his best against that of another, I’m all for it. And as long as he passes the requisite medical tests of the commission of record, I couldn’t care less if he’s black or white, young or old, champion or never-was. [Click Here To Read More]

[edgarg]

I thought at first it was going to be another maudlin rant about himself. But it was just as bad. It's on record that Ali was warned by the medical people that he was in danger, and he had been slurring his speech for quite a while before the Holmes fight. And, as is obvious in the fight itself, Holmes was trying to get the ref to step in. e didn't want to beat up Ali.

And, as is also well documented, Ali was an obsessive, highly egotistical person who couldn't be advised about anything. His glory days had given an already narcissistic personality an almost psychotic self-glorification.

No, nobody could get him to do anything he didn't want to. he was too clever, too pretty......

It's sad, but, Fitzsimmons, you must be well aware that there are many, who don't have the wealth and high reputation that Ali has, and who are far worse off in health, barely living vegetables, who can't think at all and are barely existing on charity.

[edgarg]

I've always assumed that "for 3 decades" meant "for thirty years", and "in three decades" meant "some parts of the three decades.

So as the record shows that Ali hired Dundee after he'd been with Archie Moore for a while, that maximum time that Dundee was "looking after his training" would have been 18-20 years. A long assocaition but not 30 years. And in all that time he was never able to get Ali to do a single thing he did't want to. In fact, as he says himself, he was an easy going person with Ali, and felt it never did any harm to be pleasat and agreeable.

[bigtomb]

Shame on this writer... is he supposed to be God now? Who is he to say Ali will dead in a few years.

[fitzbitz]

Edgarg, I hate to be a nitpicker, but if you're going to be... I at least need to clarify what I actually wrote. I never once said Dundee and Ali worked together for 30 years. What I said was "(Dundee) spent three decades before his death professing unwavering care for the man." Which he absolutely did, for the three decades after the fight. Hence, the hypocrisy of being a party to it when it occurred in 1980, then claiming innocence (and selling a book) afterward.

Meanwhile, to use your own definition, Dundee actually did work with Ali in the '60s, '70s and '80s - which I presume would pass your "three decades" test if I actually had used the phrase in that way.

Either way... thanks for reading.

[fitzbitz]

And Edgarg, as for Ali being too strong a character to take no for an answer, fine. Then Dundee and the rest could have walked away. Rather than wrapping themselves in the "I stayed around to make sure he didn't get hurt" blanket, which is nonsense given what ultimately occurred in the ring that night.

If Dundee had walked away from the camp, along with anyone else on the team who'd smelled what was occurring, the legs would have been taken out from under the event. And maybe it would have helped. But no one did. No one had the courage to stand up and call it what it was - an atrocity. So by staying, they're all complicit with what unfolded.

And we're left with Cosell's righteous bellowing when it finally was waved off, insisting Dundee "cared too much" to let the beating continue to round 11. Right. It took 10 rounds for him to realize that Ali had no chance? He had to watch him get beaten like a heavy bag for a full 30 minutes, when anyone else could tell long before that no victory was possible?

Nonsense. Plain and simple.

[bigjer88]

Shame on this writer... is he supposed to be God now? Who is he to say Ali will dead in a few years.

Shame? Even if you think Fitzsimmons is being presumptuous with that statement, "shame" is an awfully heavy-handed and moralistic word to use. Ali is 71, he has Parkinsons, and his deterioration has been well documented. In light of these facts, imposing your own sense of morality on the writer with a word like "shame" is more G-d-like than anything the Fitzsimmons said.

[edgarg]

No thanks needed, just my busy, critical mind. Your comment was a bit ambiguous to me, and I've been irritated a few times by your rambling, opening paragraphs. I decided to assume that the 3 decades were during Ali's boxing years. We don't really see or hears much about trainer-boxer relationships after the bocxer retires. None of the ordinary public I mean.

Vitaly Klitschko has been a champion in each of 3 decades, the only heavyweight to do so. The time duration is only 13 years-so far.

Frankly, I liked watchig Ali, up to Norton, but did not admire him one bit, as so many did or do, and always put it down to mob idiocy. His racist rants chilled me. But it is distinctly saddening for me to see the shadow of the shell of a once great fighter.

[anonymous2.0]

I wish people would stop putting Ali on top a pedestal and pretend he was more then what he really was. Being popular doesn't mean you'd make a good ambassador of the sport, and that's all Ali really was - skilled and popular. His life story isn't one that I'd tell people to emulate.

[jbpanama]

I was in Attendance for all of Ali's Vegas Fights,
and attended most of the, open to public, Training Sessions...
For the Holmes Fight, He did his usual Stich at the Q&A,
sessions, after going thru motions, of Training.. Still Very
Entertaining, and I was Impressed with how Good he looked...
Only had to lay 8/5, for Larry, and it was a True LOCK!!!