Strange Muhammad Ali versus Michael Dokes Miami Beach Three Round No Decision
By Robert Brizel, Head Real Combat Media Boxing Correspondent
Muhammad Ali versus Michael Dokes, The Fountainbleau Miami Beach Exhibition, 1977
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM6UpbLgLJI
In April 1977, Muhammad Ali fought two exhibitions of three rounds each against Jody Ballard and future World Heavyweight champion Michael Dokes, both to a No-Decision. The exhibitions event took place only four weeks before Ali’s fifteen round title defense over challenger Alfredo Evangelista of Spain at the Capitol Centre in Landover, Maryland.
Ali clowned for three rounds with the nineteen year old Dokes, then 5-0 as a professional, who was the National AAU and Golden Gloves champion and an Olympic Trials semifinalist, with an amateur record of 147-7. Of interest is how Dokes outdanced Ali in the third round of the sparring session. Dokes then tried to play ‘possum’ on the ropes late in the third round, and bait Ali into coming in and falling for his own rope-a-dope. Ali, very thankfully, did not fall for the Michael Dokes trap. The third round of the exhibition gave enough of a hint Dokes was on a meteoric rise-which-when Ali got outdanced in the third round with Dokes jab on the move-Ali had to realize subconsciously even if he didn’t give it away.
It should be noted that long before Dokes, Ali never won a sparring session round in the gym or out against the good sparring partners in his later years: not with Larry Holmes; Al Blue Lewis; Cody Jones; Mel Turnbow; Tim Witherspoon; and Greg Page. Michael Dokes and Tony TNT Tubbs sparred for Ali in Deer Lake. Ali fared better in his earlier years in the 1960s against sparring partners Jack Bodell, Jimmy Ellis, Jody Ballard, Eddie Bossman Jones, Jeff Merritt, Levi Forte, Allan Harmon, and Roy Williams, his brother Rahman Ali, Terry Lee, George Hill, Johnny Hudgins, Rufus Brassel, Lee Carr, Ingemar Johansson, Rodney Bobick, and Joe Bugner. Ali was faster in his younger days, but more taken to clowning around in sparring sessions in his later days, joining Elvis Presley and Liberace as the world’s great showmen. One fact remained true: If Ali could not win a round in the gym against Larry Holmes for many years, how did he expect to win a round against Holmes when they fought in 1980? Floyd Patterson said it best: “I think Ali is going to win the fight with Holmes before he even steps into the ring….with his mouth.”
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