After his big win over Earnie Shavers on September 28, 1979, Larry Holmes took a little over 3 months off before returning to action on February 3, 1980. He easily disposed of Lorenzo Zanon in 6 rounds at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. A few months later, Muhammad Ali started making noise about a comeback and had his eyes first set on John Tate as an opponent. After Tate got knocked out in late March by Mike Weaver, Ali turned his focus on his former sparring partner, Larry Holmes, and by summer the match was set.
Larry had another easy title defense when he stopped chubby Leroy Jones in 8 rounds on March 31. His next bout came on July, 7, 1980 vs. Scott LeDoux, in LeDoux’s home town of Bloomington, Mississippi. While Ali ranted and yelled from ringside, Larry took care of business and finished LeDoux in the seventh.
Ali was on tv all summer promoting himself, but I knew he didn’t a prayer of defeating Larry. Ali already sounded punch drunk to me, he slurred his speech and his talk of knocking Holmes out was ridiculous. To be honest, the fight should have never been made, but Ali needed the payday and with Don King as the promoter, right and wrong went out the window.
I went to a concert the night of the fight, and when I got home late and heard the results, I wasn’t surprised. Holmes became the first man to stop Ali when he forced him to quit on his stool after 10 rounds, and when I saw the replay a month later on ABC, it was worse than I imagined.
Stories later surfaced that Ali had been taking thyroid medication, when he didn’t even have a thyroid condition. My personal opinion is that he was drugged by his backers on purpose, to insure he had no chance to win and they could make a fortune betting on Holmes. By fight day, Larry was only a 3-2 favorite in the Vegas sportsbooks. If I had any money at the time, I would have put every dime I had on the champ, gone home to take a nap and returned to collect my dough afterwards.
The bout is looked upon as one of the most tragic in championship history and I totally agree. Ali would return more than a year later and lose to Trevor Berbick on December 11, 1981 in Nassau, the Bahamas. Larry would go on to defend his title in 1981, and his easy win over Ali helped remove the cloud that had hung over him since he won the championship. He was no longer in Ali’s shadow and would now be judged on his own merit.
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