ONE OF the least remarkable fights of the great Muhammad Ali’s decorated career came at the end of a fight week that left on him one of the greatest impressions of all.
Ali was 30 – little over a year removed from The Fight Of The Century and two before The Rumble In The Jungle – when in September 1972 he travelled to Dublin to fight the lightly regarded Alvin “Blue” Lewis at the historic Croke Park.
Not unlike other heavyweights of their era, Ali and Lewis had history. Five days before a judge in Houston found Ali guilty of unlawfully refusing induction into the US army, Lewis had been the first of two opponents he had fought in three-round exhibitions in June 1967 at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. He had also jeopardised Ali’s comeback fight against Jerry Quarry in October 1970 when, as a sparring partner instructed by the former champion to hit him to the body, he dropped him so heavily that Angelo Dundee and Ferdie Pacheco feared a broken rib. “[The pain was] shooting up through my bones, the spine, the back of my head,” according to Ali.
That Lewis had been selected as his opponent for another occasion essentially intended as a celebration of Ali was a reflection of the threat he was perceived to pose, and similarly significant in the extraordinary fight week that unfolded. Unlike the two occasions when Ali had fought
