BoxRec

Il Duce wrote:January 15, 1978

Miami Beach, Florida

Muhammad Ali {235 lbs.} exhibited some fine footwork in going 5-Rounds with young Michael Dokes in a
heated sparring session.

Angelo Dundee >
"My guy has fantastic legs, and he's carrying about 12 lbs. of extra weight. Muhammad's legs are in
great condition already, and with a little less weight he will be so fast, he'll dance circles around Leon Spinks."

"I hear Leon Spinks is stuck up in a 'Snow Storm' in Monticello. He'll never be able to get in enough roadwork to
chase down Muhammad. I'm glad the 'Promoter' sent him up there. This way, he can't get any sparring
partners either."

"We always make sure we're dealing the Cards"........... ;;-)

I dont know how true this is, or would of been. I do know, however, that Ali did face off against Dokes in an exhibition match where Ali fought three or five men. Dokes, I believe, was only 17 at the time and was more or less a light heavyweight--- though you could see, his skill set was such that he looked like a certified professional. I have a hard time believing that someone aged 17 or possibly younger being a sparring partner in Muhammad Ali's training camp for a mega-fight, even for Spinks.

Il Duce wrote:If you research,

You can find that Leon Spinks left Kutsher's Country Club in Monticello, New York January 17, 1978 -
because he could 'not' do any Roadwork.

Also, there were no capable Heavyweight sparring-partners around. Leon had to use brother Michael as his
key sparring-partner.

Leon also worked out with the Montgomery County {New York} Amateur Boxing Team while up at Kutsher's.

Leon then switched his Training Headquarters to Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.

Michael Spinks trained alongside Leon because Michael had a fight on the undercard and he remained there with him to keep Leon off drugs. Leon got bored easily and was known to disappear for days on end during other training camps.

Leon had other sparring partners besides Michael, too. Leon was sparring with Roy "Tiger" Williams when he tore a muscle around his ribs a few weeks before the fight. Because of the injury, his team decided not to let him spar anymore, so Leon just ran a lot and hit the bags.

They also injected Leon with pain killers before the first Ali fight so the torn muscle wouldn't bother him. Vegas was pretty lax back then and didn't perform urine tests after fights. Spinks' team also knew if they postponed the bout it probably wouldn't be rescheduled.

If Nevada had tested him, Leon probably would've tested positive for A LOT of drugs. Here are excerpts from Hauser's book on Ali and the book "One Punch from the Promised Land" (about the Spinks brothers):

great reading those book pages.
i had this saved here, just to add to that..


...........


It was time for him to enter the ring in New Orleans for his rematch with Ali, but Leon had disappeared, and neither his camp nor his bodyguard—Mr. T., the future Clubber Lang—could find him. He was finally located in a hotel room, drunk.
As Ali stood in his corner calmly waiting for the fight to begin, Leon reached for his brother and held him in a tight, lingering embrace. He might have been voicing some version of the old spiritual’s lament: Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. But Michael knew.
Somehow Leon managed to fight on relatively even terms with Ali for five rounds before Ali took command. It wasn’t much of a fight. Ali danced for the first time in years, but he landed mostly one- and two-punch combinations while holding Leon ceaselessly over 15 rounds and winning a lopsided decision. Leon went back out partying and kept the party going for years, though his career quickly became a sideshow. He lost about as often as he won, drank up his paydays in single sittings, and generally lived the life of a wild, not terribly bright dude. Years later, training Leon for one last shot at remaking his career, Emanuel Steward went looking for the fighter and found him in the usual place—a hotel—and in the usual state—drunk, naked, and with a woman. “Coach, it ain’t like it look,” he said.
Leon wound up broke.
Where Leon was madcap, Michael was reserved and enigmatic, only slightly off-kilter and in none of the ways that make headlines. “Michael always seemed so logical compared to Leon,” promoter Bob Arum said. “It seemed to me that Michael had some sense. Leon never had any sense.” Michael turned out to be a better fighter than his older brother, too, largely because of his personal stability and discipline. But in 1983, his life was upended when his common-law wife, the mother of his two-year old daughter, was killed in a car accident weeks before he was to fight Dwight Muhammad Qawi to unify the light heavyweight title. Just as he was preparing to enter the ring, someone brought the little girl into Michael’s dressing room. She promptly asked him where her mother was. Michael almost went to pieces, but he went out and beat Qawi.
Michael had a curious ability to inspire disdain in his opponents, perhaps because of his unusual style, if it was a style. He’d start out orthodox, but in the heat of battle punches would start flying in from all angles. In 1985, when Michael beat Holmes — then 48-0 and one win away from equaling Rocky Marciano’s perfect record — Holmes complained about the decision. The following year, Holmes had a legitimate gripe about their rematch, which Michael also won by decision: most observers thought Holmes deserved the nod. Even in 1987, when Michael knocked out the much bigger Gerry Cooney, whom he feared, he couldn’t seem to convince his opponent. The usually gracious Cooney said that Michael didn’t belong in the same ring with him.
Where Leon endured a sustained descent, Michael’s downfall was mercifully brief: in June 1988, he faced off against Mike Tyson in the bout that would unify (for a few years at least) the heavyweight title. Tyson was at his peak, a terrifying force combining speed and power. Emanuel Steward told how before the Tyson fight, Michael was afraid to leave his dressing room. He entered the Atlantic City ring, as the authors put it, wearing “the look of a rabbit that had just spotted a hunter’s rifle.” Michael’s trainer, Eddie Futch, wanted him to box Tyson, to stay away for four or five rounds—easier said than done in those days. “Take him out in deep water and then we can drown him,” he said. Tyson never gave them a chance, annihilating Spinks in 91 seconds. It was Michael’s only loss as a professional and his last fight.
Michael lives on a generous spread outside Wilmington, Delaware, and mostly keeps a low profile.

(by John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro)

If I remember right, the first bout with Spinks was a little unusual for Ali because, for once, the Louisville Lip was not talking much leading up to the bout. In fact, I think this was the bout in which a Charlie Chaplin impersonator was part of Ali's entourage entering the ring to emphasize the point.

Ali guest starred in an episode of Different Stroke tv program broadcast on Oct 24, 1979. The diminished motor skills seemed quite apparent by then, and may explain how Spinks could be so competitive with The Greatest at this point in time. I'm certain he never threw the bout, and hate seeing all the unnecessary punches he took late in his career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfPcLylJRAk

I don't think he did, if anything, probably looked at Leon, first impression was that he was not all that, and trained lightly. And what happened happened. Maybe Muhammad should've fought John Tate instead.