Young Once Again at 36

Ali defeats Spinks and regains his heavyweight title

It was not a great fight, this second meeting of Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, but it was a remarkable fight nonetheless, a dramatic revelation of the changed hearts of two men played out over 15 rounds in New Orleans' Superdome. Muhammad Ali's fight was a statement of will and pride, redemption for the humiliation of losing his title to Spinks and reassertion of his uniqueness as an athlete. Leon Spinks' fight was a cry of confusion, a constrained attempt to retain a title he had not known how to wear outside the ring. When it was over, Muhammad Ali had added another achievement to a long and extraordinary career: at 36, nearly a quarter of a century since he started to fight as an amateur, Ali became the first man to capture the heavyweight championship three times.

From the opening seconds of the first round, it was clear that only the names were the same in the Ali-Spinks rematch. Both men were starkly different than they had been six months ago, when Spinks had pummeled Ali and stripped him of his crown. Then Ali was overweight and undertrained. Spinks had been a fury, lashing blows with desperate abandon. With an intensity that was touching, he fought to claim the right to an existence, not just a title. He wanted to be somebody. The outcome left both men with terrible challenges.

For Ali, there was the prospect of ending his career as a defeated fighter, no longer the champion he had dreamed of being since he was twelve. And there was the challenge of bringing his body back into condition to fight--really fight, not rope-a-dope--a powerful champion eleven years his junior. Leon Spinks, on the other hand, was overwhelmed by the new status he had so frantically sought. The privations of a ghetto background had suddenly been replaced by $3.75 million purses. The gap-toothed young street fighter was, overnight, the biggest man in sports. There were cars, women and arrests for driving without a license or headlights or a proper sense of direction on one-way streets.

While a deadly determined Ali holed up for intensive training, Spinks caroused and skipped workouts, counting on the strength of youth to carry him through. Ali relied instead on conditioning and the canniness of age, all the skills learned in 58 professional fights. He stepped into the New Orleans ring with a look of fierce concentration unseen since his third and final bout with Joe Frazier.

Spinks, defending the title in only his ninth professional fight, was obviously ill equipped to run Ali to ground. The former champion's talent may have dimmed, but he was still a superbly conditioned athlete. Six months ago Ali could not escape Spinks and had folded his hands over his face, leaned on the ropes and allowed Spinks to bash away. Now Ali backpedaled on resilient legs and, more important, he used his hands. The famous Ali jab lacked the sting of old, but it held Spinks at bay. Each time the boxers closed on one another, Ali threw short, tightly paced combinations into the younger man's face. Once, Spinks had swarmed over Ali with furious flurries; this night, Ali beat him to the punch. By the fifth round (which Ali won on points but lost when the referee penalized him for holding), he was in control of the fight. The only question was the most basic: How long could he last? For Ali, the answer was 15 masterful rounds.

After the eleventh round, Ali took stock. "Am I winning?" he asked his seconds. Back came the reply: "You're way ahead." And Trainer Angelo Dundee added, "Just sock him--sock him!" In Spinks' corner, one of his handlers frantically urged: "You've got to fight your fight. You're fighting his fight now!"

That, of course, had been Ali's strategy all along. When the fight had ended, Spinks simply and articulately summed up the reasons for the loss of a crown after just 212 days: "Maybe my heart wasn't in it because there are a lot of things on my mind, problems the heavyweight championship brought me that I didn't know how to deal with. But who knows? I don't know myself."

Ali exulted in a victory that was as multidimensional as himself: over Leon Spinks, over encroaching age, over his need to leave an enduring mark on his sport--three times a champion in 14 years. The new champ laughed with reporters in postfight interviews: "What do you think of this old man?" he asked. Quite an old man indeed. qed

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