Jonathan Eig’s Biography of Muhammad Ali Distorts Ali’s Post–Exile Fights

Published

6 years ago

February 6, 2019

BOOK REVIEW BY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT MIKE CAHILL — I just finished reading Jonathan Eig’s “Ali: A Life.” Although I enjoyed the first half of the book, after finishing the second half I was greatly troubled. Two things gnawed at me: his view of Ali the man and his opinion of Ali the boxer.

Thomas Hauser in his review of Eig’s book for The Ring addressed both of these deficiencies. “There are times when Eig doesn’t give Ali full credit for his ring skills when he was near his peak,” wrote Hauser. What I would add is that much of what Eig wrote about Ali’s post-exile fights was also off base.

Correcting this matters a great deal because often the last word in biography becomes the standard by which a public figure is judged. If Eig can falsely diminish Ali on his platform – boxing — it makes his social, political, and spiritual legacy easier to diminish, as well. So let’s set the record straight.

The best place to start is with a critique of what evidence Eig chooses to use — and, more importantly, not to use — in judging Ali’s fights. As Hauser noted, Eig is enthralled with CompuBox. Even if one concedes that the CompuBox punch counts are accurate (which they often are not), Eig consistently uses the total number of punches landed as proof of which fighter was superior. But boxing matches aren’t scored by punches landed across the entire spectrum of a fight; they are scored by round. A fighter could conceivably give away a couple rounds (as Ali, maddeningly, sometimes did) and thus get hit more often than his opponent. But if that fighter won eight rounds or more of a 15-round fight, the grand total of punches is irrelevant.

This is obvious to all true fight fans, but what about other readers of Eig’s book, less familiar with the scoring of boxing, who are now left with a false impression?

Let’s examine one group of fights and then five individual fights to make the point.

In 1972 Ali fought six times, winning by KO or TKO four times and twice by one-sided decisions, including his second fight against George Chuvalo that was widely regarded as his best fight since 1967. Ali’s weight was coming down for most of the 1972 fights compared to his 1971 bouts, and he was finding most of his old skills returning, if not his speed.

Eig devotes one paragraph to these fights while later noting that they helped him recover some of his finesse as a boxer. Well, yes — enough that The Ring named him their Fighter of the Year! Yet, in a supreme irony, Eig ends his chapter on this period quoting Bob Foster, who was knocked out in the eighth and was down seven times in all, saying Ali never hurt him.

Ali’s second fight with Joe Frazier in 1974 produced a unanimous decision. The scores of the three officials were 8-4, 7-4-1, and 6-5-1. In addition, the following scorecards are public record:

Associated Press: 8-4 for Ali
United Press International: 7-4-1 for Ali
World Boxing: 6-5-1 for Ali
International Boxing: 7-4-1 for Ali

Despite this, Eig chooses to tell his readers that Red Smith, who despised Ali, once comparing him to “unwashed punks,” had scored the fight for Frazier. (Who cares?) He then paraphrases Smith who suggested that judges were giving Ali rounds. Eig concludes his section on this fight by saying, “Whether the judges were biased or not,” they named Ali the winner. Here begins a pattern, seen at least three more times, of Eig associating Ali’s wins with biased judges.

Eig also gets mostly wrong his description of the famous 1974 Rumble in the Jungle. He claims Ali’s Rope-a-Dope was “a feat of masochism” and, quoting boxing writer Mike Silver, “a non-strategy.” And he wrote that “Ali lacked the speed to escape and lacked the power and stamina to fight back for more than a fraction of each round.”

He may have lacked speed, but certainly not power, not in this fight. Did Eig see Foreman’s battered face? And no one had more stamina than Ali. In fact, in this fight, the man lacking speed, power, and stamina was George Foreman, not Ali.

Ali’s strategy involved laying against the ropes, yes, but it was brilliant. What Eig misses here is that Ali was not just resting; he was counterpunching like crazy – from the ropes – and then coming off those ropes to pummel Foreman even more. The official cards had Ali comfortably ahead through the completed rounds: 4-2-1, 4-1-2, and 3-0-4.

Boxing author Michael Ezra wrote: “You very well may hear that Ali scored a dramatic victory by backing against the ropes, weathering a brutal battering, and then delivering a sudden knockout. They’d be wrong, though, because what really happened was that Ali whipped Foreman comprehensively from start to finish.” Eig seems only partially to grasp this. At the end of the year, The Ring once again named Ali its Fighter of the Year on the strength of his two strong victories against the two best heavyweights around other than himself. He had won back his title. Reading Eig, you’d never know it.

Now we come to Ali’s 1976 defense against Jimmy Young. In this instance, Eig was correct in that the judges seemed biased for Ali, at least the two that had Ali winning by the scores of 11-4 and 10-3-2. (The third judge also scored it for Ali, but more reasonably at 7-5-3.)

Ali may well have lost that fight; I’m not arguing it either way. Young clearly won the first three rounds and he finished strong. But in the middle rounds, in the eyes of many, Ali had the best of it. “Most ringside writers seemed to agree with the verdict,” wrote Ron Rapoport in the Los Angeles Times. Sports Illustrated’s Mark Kram, noting that Young ducked his head out of the ropes on six occasions, said the decision was correct.

The point is that when Eig states that “everyone but the judges thought Ali had lost,” that simply is not true. A journalist or a historian shouldn’t change facts to fit a narrative.

On page 442 of his book, Eig describes the Ali-Norton rubber match. “Norton was doing most of the punching. He was the busier fighter, the more aggressive fighter, the more artful fighter.” He then claims Ali finished strong in the last minute of the final round.

Ironically, it was actually Norton who opened up in the final 20 seconds of the fight. Eig’s description of Round 15 makes me wonder if he actually watched the round.

If we accept the CompuBox stats of which Eig is so fond (which I do here solely for the sake of argument) they show that Ali landed and threw more punches in Rounds 1, 3, 7, 9, and 13. Norton did so in rounds 2, 5, 6, and 8. Not surprisingly, those rounds were scored unanimously for Ali and Norton respectively, with the exception that one of the supposedly biased judges scored the third round for Norton. In the remaining six rounds, according to CompuBox, Ali threw 404 punches to Norton’s 280, more than 20 more punches per round. CompuBox records Norton as out-landing Ali 108 to 80, a mere 4 punches per round.

Even assuming those numbers are correct, (which is highly doubtful; watch the fight and draw your own conclusion), one can see why Eig — who considers the percentage of punches landed to be the overriding factor in judging a fight — gravitated to those who thought Norton was robbed.

One thing is clear: Ali was busier and more aggressive. In fact, in the last six rounds, Ali out-threw Norton by almost 25 punches per round, while Norton supposedly out-landed Ali by less than three punches per round. I don’t claim Ali definitively won Ali/Norton III (for example AP scored it 9-6 Ali, while UPI had it 8-7 Norton). What I’m arguing is that Eig has ignored the clear evidence that this was a close fight and no one was robbed.

As to the charge that judges in this and other fights were loath to score rounds against Ali, the reality is different. Other than the Young fight, there is no reason to support this theory. At the end of six rounds, the Ali/Norton III fight was scored 5-1, 4-2, and 4-2 in favor of Norton. Had Norton continued to out-box Ali, nothing suggests that the judges wouldn’t have continued to score rounds for him.

It’s important to remember that Ali had by this time already lost decisions to Joe Frazier and Ken Norton. As for the argument that things changed when he became champion, the 1975 Ali-Lyle fight is instructive. Before the fight was stopped in the 11^th round, Ali was tied on one scorecard, behind one round on another card and behind 49-43 on another. The 49-43 card gave Ali only one of the 10 completed rounds while scoring two rounds even.

Finally, let’s look at Ali’s 1977 fight with Earnie Shavers. Once again, Eig skews the evidence to support his theory of a fading fighter being carried by the judges. He again writes about percentages of punches landed and thrown, and about how hard Ali was hit in this fight, which he was. But except for acknowledging Ali’s “astonishing” final round, he has nothing positive to say about Ali’s performance. “Once again, perhaps not surprisingly, the judges gave Ali the win,” says Eig.

Where is the evidence? Eleven of the 15 rounds had unanimous scoring, seven of those going to Ali, four to Shavers. In other words, very few rounds were in doubt and the doubtful rounds were split pretty evenly. The official scoring was 9-5-1, 9-6, 9-6. Both wire services, AP and UPI, had it for Ali, respectively 10-5 and 8-6-1. Earnie Shavers himself, in his biography, said Ali was deservedly victorious.

Muhammad Ali won this fight. As Michael Ezra wrote, “In that 15 round struggle, Ali’s ability, confidence, character and intelligence were all on display.”

As mentioned in my opening paragraph, I was also troubled by Eig’s depiction of Ali the man. I was gratified to read Hauser’s comments in his review of Eig’s book that Ali was not only a genuinely nice man, but a spiritual man, perhaps especially in his later, so-called diminishing years. My wife, Cathy, and I have an adult son and daughter who we raised to try to live a spiritual life based on love, service, acceptance of others, learning to rise above adversity, and standing up for what you believe. Although we are Catholic (and white), one of the prime examples of the kind of life worth living that I held up to them was the very imperfect, but yet very beautiful life of Muhammad Ali.

Editor’s note: Author Mike Cahill resides in Chicago.

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Late Bloomer Anthony Cacace TKOs Hometown Favorite Leigh Wood in Nottingham

Published

12 hours ago

May 10, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Late-Bloomer-Anthony-Cacace-TKOs-Hometown-Favorite-Leigh-Wood-in-Nottingham

Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions was at Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England, tonight with a card featuring hometown favorite Leigh Wood against Ireland’s Anthony “Apache” Cacace.

Wood, a former two-time WBA featherweight champion, known for dramatic comebacks in bouts he was losing, may have reached the end of the road at age 36. He had his moments tonight, rocking Cacace on several occasions and winning the eighth round, but he paid the price, returning to his corner after round eight with swelling around both of his eyes.

In the ninth, Cacace, an 11/5 favorite, hurt Wood twice with left hands, the second of which knocked Wood into the ropes, dictating a standing 8-count by referee John Latham. When the bout resumed, Cacace went for the kill and battered Wood around the ring, forcing Wood’s trainer Ben Davison to throw in the towel. The official time was 2:15 of round nine.

Akin to Wood, Northern Ireland’s Cacace (24-1, 9 KOs) is also 36 years old and known as a late bloomer. This was his ninth straight win going back to 2017 (he missed all of 2018 and 2020). He formerly held the IBF 130-pound world title, a diadem he won with a stoppage of then-undefeated and heavily favored Joe Cordina, but that belt wasn’t at stake tonight as Cacace abandoned it rather than fulfill his less-lucrative mandatory. Wood falls to 28-4.

Semi-Wind-Up

Nottingham light heavyweight Ezra Taylor, fighting in his hometown for the first time since pro debut, delighted his fan base with a comprehensive 10-round decision over previously undefeated Troy Jones. Taylor, who improved to 12-0 (9) won by scores of 100-90, 99-91, and 98-92.

This was Taylor’s first fight with new trainer Malik Scott, best known for his work with Deontay Wilder. The victory may have earned him a match with Commonwealth title-holder Lewis Edmondson. Jones was 12-0 heading in.

Other Bouts of Note

In his first fight as a featherweight, Liam Davies rebounded from his first defeat with a 12-round unanimous decision over Northern Ireland’s previously undefeated Kurt Walker. Davies, who improved to 17-1 (8), staved off a late rally to prevail on scores of 115-113, 116-112, and 117-111. It was the first pro loss for the 30-year-old Walker (12-1), a Tokyo Olympian.

In a mild upset, Owen Cooper, a saucy Worcestershire man, won a 10-round decision over former Josh Taylor stablemate Chris Kongo. The referee’s scorecard read 96-94.

Cooper improved to 11-1 (4). It was the third loss in 20 starts for Kongo.

A non-televised 8-rounder featured junior welterweight Sam Noakes in a stay-busy fight. A roofer by trade and the brother of British welterweight title-holder Sean Noakes, Sam improved to 17-0 (15 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of overmatched Czech import Patrik Balez (13-5-1).

Photo credit: Leigh Dawney / Queensberry

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Published

2 days ago

May 9, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.

One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?

I answered “yes, many times.”

She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”

This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.

This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.

The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”

Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.

Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.

Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.

When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.

Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.

Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.

Others on the Top Rank card in San Diego include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.

They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.

Probox TV

A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.

Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.

Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.

Nottingham, England

Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.

Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.

Lampley at Wild Card

Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.

Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).

Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

3 days ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Stephen-Breadman-Edwards-An-Unlikely-Boxing-Coach-with-a-Panoramic-View-of-the-Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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