Spinks' aggressive style and superior stamina allowed him to outduel Ali in a 15-round split decision, becoming the first boxer to take the title from Ali in the ring.
Jones outboxed John Ruiz and became the second person to hold both light-heavy and heavyweight belts.
Ken Norton, the former heavyweight boxing champion who broke Muhammad Ali's jaw in a 1973 bout, died on Wednesday at an Arizona hospital at age 70, his manager said.
Muhammad Ali and his family never seriously considered donating the boxing great's brain for research, according to the doctor who treated him. "Not really," was Dr. Abe Lieberman's answer when he was asked Monday if submitting the brain for research was discussed. Lieberman said he didn't think boxing contributed to Ali's contraction of Parkinson's disease but he couldn't be "a hundred percent" certain. The doctor spoke at a news conference at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. Lieberman was among those who diagnosed Ali in 1984. The doctor said he believes Ali had the disease earlier, when he fought Larry Holmes in 1980. Ali thought the Holmes fight did serious damage.
Important bouts in the career of former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.
More than 60 years ago, a bicycle thief in Louisville, Kentucky, unknowingly set in motion one of the most amazing sports careers in history.
Bikash Mohapatra salutes boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
'Every Ali obituary I read made the point that he 'transcended his sport' -- a reference to the many battles he fought with America even as he fought in America.' 'What the obituaries leave out is that Ali equally transcended the boundaries of geography and of information -- as witness the Chennai teen who assimilated that most mobile of fighters through still images shorn of context.'
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