Word: aly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tehran too was shaken by a bomb blast. As Iran's President Seyed Ali Khamene'i was delivering a speech at the University of Tehran, a terrorist detonated a homemade bomb strapped around his waist, killing himself and five other people. The President, who escaped unhurt, blamed the attack on Iran's own Mujahedin-e Khalq guerrillas, who are trying to overthrow the country's leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini...
...Ezzard Charles' misfortune was to succeed Joe Louis, Holmes' sorest miscalculation came in following Muhammad Ali, who claimed to be bigger than boxing and was correct. Often graceless in public, Holmes has a gentler streak that comes out in private, for instance, when discussing Ali, whom he served as a sparring partner and studied as a man until Holmes' embarrassing skills & necessitated his firing. "I always sat myself in the back," he says, "and just watched. Today's fighters don't discipline, they don't dedicate. But worst of all, they don't sit themselves in the back...
With only Gerry Cooney for a hyphenated rival, Holmes is undefined in an Ali- Frazier, Leonard-Duran sense, though the Ken Norton fight was memorable to everyone who saw it. That started Holmes' term of office almost seven years ago, when Easton, Pa., threw the only parade. "I was so happy, I thought I was going to cry," he says. "But I kept things in, and I just waved. It wouldn't be right for the world heavyweight champion to be crying." Having seen Ali wander from Louisville to Chicago to Los Angeles, Holmes knew enough never to leave Easton...
...pleased. "But I don't think he's coming back, do you? Deep down inside, Cooney really don't impress himself." By this standard, Holmes is fulfilled. "As a boxer, you got to put me up there with all of the top three," he figures, "Marciano, Louis and Muhammad Ali. I just didn't have the charisma. If Ali came in here now (Holmes is speaking in a restaurant), right away he would start shadowboxing with you. But I can't be that way. I'd be afraid of sticking a thumb in your eye." Meanwhile...
People say he never fought anybody, but he never declined to fight anybody. He fought with broken hands, throbbing ligaments and twisted ankles. Against Ali in 1980, that sad and empty passage, Holmes actually started the fight with stitches in one eyelid expertly hidden. If several foes have slammed him down, he always got up to win. In this sense, he is fit company for Marciano, whose wounds sometimes imposed deadlines that he always met. Of late, not surprisingly, Holmes has been reviewing all his fights on tape cassettes; but more than on Earnie Shavers, Mike Weaver or Renaldo Snipes...