It's a knockout: Larry Holmes on Muhammad Ali's fighting spirit
As a new watch commemorating Muhammad Ali is released, Larry Holmes, the champion who once beat him - describes what it was like to spar with the icon.
I’m one of the few people ever to beat Ali, and what people always want to know is how that felt. The answer is: not good at all. He was my friend, my boss, my mentor. He’d given me a job and so many opportunities. It was a feeling I’d never experienced before, because I wanted to win, but then again I was thinking: this is the man who’s been a huge influence on my life.
We first met in 1971, when I was starting out as an amateur boxer. I was going into the Olympics and got a chance to spar with him. I was nervous, obviously–I’d been told flat out he’d beat me up – but it was so exciting. I bragged non-stop about it.
After that, for four years, I was Ali’s sparring partner. He never sat me down and gave me advice; I learnt through watching and studying.
him, and I incorporated what he did into my own game. Training with him, I’d watch him run every morning – he showed me that exercise focused the mind.
Young men who want to be like him should watch movies of how he fought: the combination of punches, his lightness. There was no one like Ali; he really was ‘the Greatest’.
I remember when he first gave me a black eye. He wanted to put some ice on it and I said, "No way!" –I wanted to show that black eye off! I walked around town with it that day, so everybody would ask me how I got it and I could reply, "I was boxing with Muhammad Ali and he gave me this black eye."