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Budd Schulberg, the Academy Award winning screenwriter of On the Waterfront, once wrote: ‘Nothing reflects character more nakedly than boxing.’ Schulberg once regarded the heavyweight champion of the world ‘with a reverence just this side of religious fervour’. According to Schulberg: ‘The heavyweight champion was no mortal man but stood with Lancelot and Galahad.’ Ali stood with Lancelot and Galahad, perhaps more so than any of the great heavyweights, from Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey to Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano.

Ali and Holmes faced each other on 2 October 1980, a few days after the Minter–Hagler fight. Ali was 38, Holmes 30. Ali had been retired for about two years. Holmes had graduated from being Ali’s former sparring partner to world champion. Ali by this point had already started slurring his words, walking slower, talking slower.

Ali’s biographer, Thomas Hauser, recalled on ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary episode Muhammad and Larry: ‘Before the Nevada State Athletic Commission licensed Ali to fight, they asked him to go to the Mayo Clinic for a full report. That report said that when Ali tried to touch his finger to his nose, there was a slight degree of missing the target. He couldn’t hop with the agility that doctors expected he would. He had trouble coordinating the muscles he used in speech. This is before he fought Larry Holmes.’