The Only Man To Stop Muhammad Ali Begged Referee To End The Fight: “He Told Me To Shut Up”

George Foreman – who lost to Ali in 1974’s The Rumble in the Jungle – once said that the only thing that would truly beat his foe was time. In a sense it was true, as Ali avenged both of his initial career defeats to Ken Norton and Leon Spinks in rematches.

It wasn’t until an ill-advised ring return following two years out that Ali was beaten without the chance to reverse the result. Those losses – his final two fights – came at the hands of Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick.

Holmes, notably, was the first and only man to stop Ali inside the distance, though it is widely accepted that, at 38-years-old and with increasing health issues, the man from Louisville, Kentucky should not have been competing that night.

On the fight, Holmes said that he begged referee Richard Green to call the fight.

“I was in a no win situation – that’s what I said then and I say it now, if I beat Ali, his body was old, he couldn’t fight no more, should’ve quit. That’s what I had to live with.

“You know, I told the referee ‘stop this fight,’ and he says to me ‘shut up and box.’ They told me ‘shut up and fight keep beating him up.’

“[I said] ‘I’m beating him up – can’t you see I’m beating him up?’ But they pushed him out there again. So I was not hitting him hard no more. I was just hitting him trying to make him quit.“I told the man ‘I still love you man,’ and he says; ‘if you love me why you beating me up then?’ I said ‘it’s part of the game…’”

Of the tenth round stoppage, Holmes also said that, “it wasn’t a victory; it was a tragedy. I saw him, not as the legend, but as a man, a brother, trying to hold onto what made him ‘The Greatest’.”