Muhammed Ali was stopped just once in his professional career by Larry Holmes, but this was not the only time ‘The Greatest’ would be defeated before the final bell.
Muhammad Ali retired with a record of 56-5, avenging all but his final two losses.
Ali became widely known as ‘The Greatest’ after multiple blockbuster fights proved him to be just that.
Ali’s fight with Joe Frazier was watched by almost 10% of the world’s population, and his fights with George Foreman, who bounced back against Ron Lyle after the loss, and, before that, Sonny Liston, who famously scared America when he dressed as Santa, also generated a lot of buzz.
Ali was defeated five times, but only one man was able to stop him. Ali had already begun showing signs of Parkinson’s disease, and so it came as no surprise when Holmes left him unable to continue.
Though Mike Tyson avenged Ali’s loss to Holmes after promising he would, there is one knockout loss Ali never avenged.
Kent Green stopped Muhammad Ali in the amateurs when he was 16 years old
Ali’s amateur career was not too dissimilar from his professional one, with a record of 69 wins and only 6 losses, all but two of which happened before the final bell.
In 1958, at the age of just sixteen, Ali faced Kent Green in the Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament.
In the second round, it is reported that Green landed a hard right that sent Ali to the ropes. A writer described the scene like so:
“Ali clutched frantically like a drowning man onto a preserver.”
It is debated as to whether the referee then stopped the fight or Ali’s coach, but Ali was said to have cried following the bout, threatening to quit the sport.
Ali won Olympic gold only two years later. Green, however, had an on-and-off career in boxing, retiring with a professional record of 12-2.
Green and Ali crossed paths years later, in the changing rooms at one of Ali’s exhibition fights. Ali allegedly stated:
“It’s Kent Green, the only man to ever stop me, the only man to ever whoop me, except my daddy.”
There was much talk of a rematch, but this never came to fruition.
Muhammad Ali’s only other amateur stoppage loss
Though Green was the opponent who can hold the claim of truly stopping Ali, on paper he was not the first to do so.
In 1957, Ali suffered his fourth amateur defeat, and first by stoppage, just one year before facing Green.
He was in the ring with Terry Hodge, who defeated him after a cut opened on Ali at some point in the first round in their Louisville contest.
This marked Ali’s first loss by TKO, and made Hodge the first of three men to ever stop ‘The Greatest’.