Muhammad Ali tags Leon Spinks in their rematch.
It was “The Battle of New Orleans.”
On September 15, 1978, Muhammad Ali scored a convincing 15-round unanimous decision over Leon Spinks to regain the Ring and WBA heavyweight titles at the New Orleans Superdome. Scoring was based on rounds and favored the winner 11-4, 10-4-1 and 10-4-1.
Seven months earlier, Spinks scored one of the biggest upsets in boxing history when he outpointed Ali in Las Vegas. Despite being an Olympic champion, the 24-year-old Spinks was only 6-0-1 as a pro and had almost no chance of victory.
The loss was an embarrassment for Ali, who vowed to become the first three-time heavyweight champion in boxing history.
While he got into better shape for the rematch, the 36-year-old Ali was nowhere near the fighter he had been. He now he was in serious decline. In most of it, “The Greatest” doubled and tripled the jab, fired the right hand and went down into a clinch.
Referee Lucien Joubert called Ali in the fifth round for hanging on and could have done worse. However, with a record crowd of 63,350 fans inside the Superdome and an estimated 90 million viewers worldwide, it would take a brave man to continually admonish Muhammad Ali.
Despite Ali’s deceitful tactics, he showed some glimpses of his earlier brilliance. The challenger rocked Spinks with a series of rights in round 12 and came close to scoring a knockdown. Ali just didn’t have the energy levels to follow up effectively.
To this day, Ali remains the only heavyweight to capture the lineal championship three times. He would retire in June 1979 before making an ill-advised comeback against Larry Holmes in October 1980.
In his next fight, Spinks was stopped in a single round by South African bomber Gerrie Coetzee.
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