The Sad End of the Muhammad Ali Era
Six weeks ago, passersby discovered the body of the former heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick, bludgeoned, in a churchyard in Jamaica. Someone had murdered the former boxer with a steel pipe. His moment of glory, such as it was, was a long way behind him. Twenty-five years ago today, on December 11, 1981, Berbick had defeated Muhammad Ali in the great champion’s final bout. The aging Ali, nearly 40 and showing it, had succumbed to a frankly unimpressive assault, ending an era in sports and in history.
Ali’s final fight brought tears to the eyes of many of his fans. For nearly two decades he had embodied confidence, youth, masculinity, and black pride. He was, some said, the most recognized human being alive.
Muhammad Ali first caught the world’s attention in 1964 when, after defeating the widely favored Sonny Liston, the young fighter, still named Cassius Clay, appeared on TV shouting, “I’m the greatest fighter that ever lived! I’m so great I don’t have a mark on my face. I upset Sonny Liston and I just turned 22 years old. I must be the greatest!” Here was something new, a brilliant boxer who could talk. Before Clay most fighters were seen as silent muscle. He brought eloquence and showmanship into the ring. In all his fights thereafter, as Clay or Ali, in Miami or Manila, he offered tremendous charisma backed by technical skill and tactical innovation.
In 1981 Ali was still maintaining his trademark confidence, but he acknowledged, “I’m the last of the heroes of the sixties.” He was beginning to slow, to accumulate fat around his midsection, to wheeze after jogging more than two miles. His speech took on a strange slur, an early sign of the Parkinson’s disease that plagues him today. Always the entertainer, he scheduled what most believed would be his final fight, a Caribbean battle against Trevor Berbick promoted as “the Drama in Bahama.”
The 27-year-old Jamaican, though a mediocre boxer, was in far better shape than his rival. Ali stood six feet three inches tall, Berbick a half inch shorter, yet Berbick was 20 pounds lighter and noticeably more muscular. At 236 pounds, Ali had never been heavier, and even his handsome face looked slightly bloated. During a press conference he displayed his trademark confidence, preening for the camera and asking, “Do I look old to you? I know I’m pretty.” Before the fight, however, he shot a nervous glance at Berbick while the referee read the rules. The expression in his eyes was clear. It said: So this is the man who will end my career.
It was. Ali lost by a unanimous decision after going the designated 10 rounds with Berbick. He succeeded in staying up for the whole fight, but at times he looked pitiful. No longer a graceful dancer in the ring, he stood with his legs awkwardly spread apart. The audience went wild whenever he managed to hop up on the balls of his feet, yet a commentator complained, “Ali may be entertaining the crowd, but he’s not throwing punches here.” The public’s partiality infuriated Berbick. In the third, fourth, and seventh rounds he beat Ali severely, once landing more than 30 blows without a taking any in response.
Berbick didn’t win the match so much as Ali lost it. Berbick fought with the furious style of an angry toddler, getting in close, planting his feet, and blasting Ali with swinging shots to his belly and sides. There was no artistry in his game; he was simply a wild brawler battling an older, weaker man. He shouted through his mouth guard, “Do the best you can, cause I don’t want to hurt you,” but he was lucky Ali fought as poorly as he did.
Older men than Ali have won championship fights. George Foreman reclaimed his title at 45 by relying on his surprising strength to topple a younger man; strength lingers in a fighter even after speed is gone. Ali’s style simply did not weather well. Throughout his career Ali’s particular method, what Joe Frazier called “fighting backward,” involved leaning away from his opponents. Against Sonny Liston he used his defined abdominals and lower back muscles to dodge the slugger’s shots with his upper body. Versus Foreman, Ali’s “rope-a-dope” meant reclining on the ropes, “like a man leaning out his window to see if there was something on his roof,” as George Plimpton put it. At 39 and with a paunchy belly and a bad back, Ali was forced to lurch forward into Berbick’s wild, artless body shots. This neutralized his advantage in height and reach, cancelled out his speed, and kept his classic jab at bay.
In the final round, one ringside commentator announced, “Win, lose, or draw here, I hope he doesn’t fight again,” to which his partner solemnly replied, “I pray he doesn’t fight again; I’m worried about this man fighting anymore at all.” After the unanimous verdict was announced, Berbick thanked Ali respectfully, like a man speaking with his grandfather. Confronted with questions of his retirement, Ali mumbled, “Sure, this is enough. . . . Father Time called me,” and he quietly left the ring.
Life after the Drama in Bahama would prove disappointing for both men. Trevor Berbick continued to fight, achieving another moment of fame in 1986 as a high-profile punching bag for the 20-year-old Mike Tyson. After that embarrassing beating—Tyson knocked him down four times in the two-round fight—Berbick turned to crime. He reportedly assaulted the boxing impresario Don King, threatened his former manager with a gun, and was finally convicted and deported from the United States for raping his family’s babysitter. His life ended in late October outside of a Jamaican church. He was 51.
As for Muhammad Ali, formerly charisma personified, he has receded from public life to struggle with Parkinson’s disease. As his condition worsens, his era seems ever more distant. Compared with the next generation of fighters, men like Berbick or Tyson, Muhammad Ali looks almost saintly. He was able and eager to be a role model for millions of African-Americans struggling with the upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s—and, more broadly, for millions more around the world who simply admired him and what he accomplished. But what he accomplished, at the sport that allowed him such influence outside the ring, also brought about his current, heartbreaking condition.