Young vs. old: The 50th anniversary of one of Muhammad Ali’s worst nights

Looking back, the bicentennial year was not exactly the best and brightest campaign of Muhammad Ali’s magnificent boxing career.

“The Greatest” made four official heavyweight title defenses in 1976 to go with one bizarre non-title “fight,” and he covered himself in glory in precisely zero of these outings.

One was a boring cross-sport catastrophe against pro wrestler Antonio Inoki. Two were forgettable fifth-round stoppages of no-hopers – Jean Pierre Coopman in San Juan and Richard Dunn in Munich. One was a nearly disastrous, highly controversial (some might even say “robbery”) decision win over Ken Norton.

And in the midst of all that, on April 30, 1976, precisely 50 years ago today, was a fight that captured all the worst elements of the other uninspiring outings.

Ali found in Jimmy Young a challenger widely regarded as a no-hoper. The champ needed a controversial decision to retain his title. And along the way the two of them entertained just about nobody in an affair remembered more for Young ducking through the ropes than for any punches thrown or landed.

In the closing seconds of what would turn out to be Ali’s final victory, his rematch win over Leon Spinks in 1978, Howard Cosell famously recited the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” There was no such celebration from Cosell on this occasion a couple of years prior against a fighter named Young, when Ali was made to look decidedly old.

It was a matter of facing the wrong style… combined with not taking training seriously… combined with a long ring career beginning to catch up with him. In a calendar year stocked with subpar performances, Ali’s bout with Young may well have been the worst of them all.

And still he won – and deservedly so, to these eyes, after a 50th anniversary rewatch. Even at his worst, The Greatest was good enough.

He was certainly at the peak of his popularity entering 1976, fresh off the rubber match win over Joe Frazier in “The Thrilla in Manila” to end ’75. And he had his whole ’76 schedule mapped out in advance. Before he stepped into the ring at the Capitol Center in Landover, Maryland, to face Young, he’d already publicly outlined plans to face Dunn in Germany, then Inoki, then do a rubber match with Norton.

Provided, of course, that Young, who was cited by Cosell on the ABC broadcast as a 15-to-1 underdog, didn’t screw up all those plans.

The 27-year-old from Philly, who trained for this fight at Frazier’s gym on Broad Street, brought in an underwhelming record of 17-4-2 (5 KOs). But he hadn’t lost in more than three years and had earned a measure of respect in winning a lopsided decision over Ron Lyle in February ’75.

Young apparently hadn’t earned the respect of Ali, however. Ali, 50-2 (36 KOs), weighed a career-high 230lbs for the bout, leading Cosell to say to trainer Angelo Dundee in an interview taped earlier on fight day, “He appears out of shape, boisterous, too much so, and I’m wondering if this could be a replica of the first bout against Norton.”

Dundee replied, “Bite your tongue, Howard,” and insisted Ali was in fine condition and had particularly buckled down the last 10 days of camp.

The crowd of 12,472 was short of a sellout in the 18,000-plus seat arena, an indication that the paying public wasn’t sold on Young as a threat either. But those fans who did pay created an unmistakable swell of noise as Ali emerged from the dressing room.

In an odd moment (almost as odd as seeing Frank Gifford interviewing Rubin “Hurricane” Carter at ringside shortly before the ring walks, a reminder that Carter was briefly out on bail awaiting a retrial in 1976, a detail understandably not included in the movie version of his story), ring announcer Marvin Brooks introduced Ali as fighting out of Chicago, prompting Ali to approach him and inform him he had the wrong information. On the second try, Brooks introduced Ali as fighting out of Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Soon the bell rang, and the 34-year-old Ali proved himself to be every bit as off his game as Brooks.

Young, 21 pounds lighter than Ali, immediately established his jab. Ali immediately established his arrogance and showmanship, as he followed Young around the ring and covered up, then lifted his arms and asked to be hit to the body. Young obliged, though some of his shots strayed low, prompting a warning from referee Tom Kelly. Ali, meanwhile, hardly threw a serious punch in the first round, and the one time he did, he was greeted by a counter right from Young.

Using the 5-point must system, the opener was as easy a 5-4 round to score in favor of the challenger as you’ll ever see.

From there, though, the judging often got more difficult.

Ali, his rope-a-dope success against George Foreman in 1974 having gone to his head, spent much of the first half of the fight flat-footed, hoping Young might let his hands go and tire himself out, but that wasn’t Young’s style at all. (One wonders if Ali’s inadequate preparation for the fight included not watching any film of Young.) The third round featured some of Young’s best work – pitty-patting, jabbing, moving, tossing shots intended to score points rather than hurt the champion. That round was sandwiched, however, in between rounds where Young didn’t do much (aside from duck under the top rope once in the second round), allowing Ali to seemingly edge the second and fourth despite missing with most of his punches.

Cosell noted at the fifth began, “The crowd was booing the fight at the end of the last round, and I don’t blame them.” Ali was again the ineffective aggressor in round five, while in the sixth, Young pulled a rope-a-dope routine of his own but accomplished next to nothing offensively.

Young again ducked under the top rope for a moment in the eighth, his upper body outside the area where Ali could punch it legally, but arguably won the round anyway on account of a couple of body shots that led Ali to hold. Through eight rounds, I had Ali ahead five rounds to three, though four of the Ali rounds and one of the Young rounds easily could have gone the opposite way.

Everything seemed to change in the ninth, when the 34-year-old Ali suddenly began dancing and bouncing and jabbing in a throwback to his signature 1960s style, energizing the D.C.-area crowd.

In the 10th, however, Ali’s dancing and bouncing was not accompanied by much punching, and Young, in the role of aggressor, landed several solid jabs and one long right hand. The challenger then kept that momentum going in the 11th.

Norton sat in on the broadcast in the 12th, accompanying an otherwise solo Cosell, and observed of the close contest, “I think so far it’s just a matter of Ali being out of shape and Young being in shape.” At the tail end of that round came the fight’s signature moment: Young leaned outside the ropes again, and ref Kelly ruled it a knockdown and began counting, only to be quickly interrupted by the sound of the bell. Cosell and Norton seemed not to notice a knockdown had been called.

The championship rounds did not deliver championship-level excitement. Young leaned through the ropes twice early in the 13th, drawing boos from the audience and, briefly, punches over the ropes from Ali. Otherwise, Young controlled the action in the round, making it clearly his on the cards – provided you were willing to give a round to a boxer who’d twice intentionally removed the upper half of his body from the ring.

Round 14 was probably Young’s best since the opener, as he landed his finest single punch of the bout, a counter right hand, early in the round, and perhaps buzzed Ali with a combination toward the end of the frame (though Ali was likely more tired than hurt).

Young undid that progress, however, by ducking through the ropes immediately at the outset of the 15th, and the aging and undertrained Ali, the finish line in sight, found enough energy to jab and move his way to a narrow edge in the round.

After the final bell, Young celebrated as if certain he’d won the title, but Cosell and Norton were of the opinion that it was too close to call. I had it eight rounds for Ali and seven for Young, making the champion a two-point winner with the 12th-round knockdown ruling.

As for the official judges, two of them handed in scorecards that forced you to wonder if they didn’t want to be responsible for spoiling Ali’s big plans for the rest of ’76. Larry Barrett favored Ali by a reasonable 70-68. But Terry Moore had it 71-64 and ref Kelly, pulling double duty as a scorekeeper, tallied 72-65 – two scores as disrespectful to Young as Ali’s preparations for the fight were.

Over the next couple of years, Young continued to secure a place in history as one of the best heavyweights never to win a world title. He defeated Lyle again in November of ’76, then famously upset Foreman in ’77 and sent him into retirement for a decade. He then lost a split decision to Norton in November ’77 that was at least as disputed as Ali-Young or Ali-Norton III.

The losses piled up from there for a demoralized Young, who finished 35-18-3 (11 KOs), fought off and on until 1990 and died of heart failure in 2005 at just 56 years of age.

In the ring following his controversial victory over Young, Ali pushed back, partially, on Cosell’s assertion that he wasn’t in fighting shape.

“No, I’m not out of shape. I couldn’t go 15 rounds out of shape with that young man,” Ali said. Then he walked it back, to an extent: “I learned a lesson, that I played too much in training, I didn’t train as hard as I should. But I got by like I wanted to, really.”

From there, Ali made two statements about his future that he couldn’t quite make come true.

“I’ll be down to about 215 pounds for Norton,” Ali said, “fifteen pounds lighter than I was tonight.” He got about halfway there, weighing 221 for his fight with Norton at Yankee Stadium that September.

He also acknowledged: “I’m getting old, that’s why I’m quitting this year.”

The first part of that declaration was no doubt accurate, but Ali of course fought six more times after 1976, losing three of his final four, the only victory among those four being the rematch against Spinks that prompted Cosell to quote those Dylan lyrics.

Ali had a few better moments after the Young fight that proved he hadn’t yet grown forever old. But he was getting there, and could only turn back the clock so much, even with better training camps and better game plans.

It’s easy for us to say now, knowing what we know, but Ali would have been well-served to learn this lesson from Young: that sometimes your best move is duck out of the ring, where you can’t be hit.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.