Throw in the Damn Towel!

A s he battles an effort in his own party to get him to step aside after his disastrous debate performance, President Biden likes to use a boxing analogy: “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”

But there is another lesson he should take from boxing, which is that at a certain point, it is better to stay down.

As a longtime fight fan, watching Biden unravel before our eyes while refusing to quit, I keep thinking about Muhammad Ali’s tragic penultimate fight, against Larry Holmes. For non–fight fans: In 1980, the legendary but aging Ali came out of retirement for a then-unheard-of $8 million payday to fight Holmes, a great champion who was in his prime and had arguably the most devastating jab in boxing history. The 38-year-old Ali took a brutal beating over ten rounds before his own trainer stepped in to demand that the fight be stopped. The match is now remembered as a scandal.

“This fight was an abomination,” Ali’s longtime fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco, who had left Ali’s camp three years before the match, later recalled in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the debacle. “It was a crime. All of the people involved in this fight should have been arrested.”

To be clear, the situations are different, and I am not attempting to play armchair doctor by suggesting that Biden is suffering from Parkinson’s, as Ali did. But there is a worthwhile lesson about self-delusion in both stories. Each features an example of somebody who has beaten the odds in the past and does not know when to quit — and does not have anybody around him willing and able to convince him to do so. (At this point, it is too early to say whether Biden’s Covid diagnosis changes any calculations, but hopefully he has a mild case either way.)

While everybody now acknowledges that the Ali–Holmes fight should never have been allowed to happen, and some had said so at the time, many thought that maybe Ali had one last miracle left in him. This was the man who, as a young boxer in the ’60s, had shocked the world by knocking out the feared champion Sonny Liston. Few thought that Ali had a chance against George Foreman in the epic “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974 (Foreman had just pulverized Joe Frazier, who had once beaten Ali). Nonetheless, Ali recorded arguably the most famous knockout ever against the towering champion. He had avenged his loss against Frazier by beating him nine months before facing Foreman, and he did it again the following year. Then, in 1978, when Ali lost to Leon Spinks, many thought he was done — but he came back seven months later to beat Spinks. So, in 1980, it seemed possible that Ali could pull it off against Holmes. Sports Illustrated reported at the time: “The betting had opened with Holmes favored 3–1 and had dropped to 2–1. On the day Ali sparred nonstop for more than a half-hour, the odds were 9–5. The next day they dipped to 8–5.”

The mythology that surrounded Ali, his stubborn insistence that he could still win, and the fact that those close to him had their careers and earnings tied to his success kept everybody from convincing him to step aside.

In the run-up to the fight, it was clear that Ali spoke and moved slower than he had in the past. But the brashness was still there during his training sessions, which are featured in the documentary. “I’ll knock Holmes out,” he boasted. “He don’t stand a chance.” He taunted that Holmes “ain’t nothing but a clown with my crown” and “I’ll eat him up.” He insisted, “I’m known for finding a way to win, regardless of however it takes, I always find a way.” He vowed he would never give up: “I’m gonna die hard anyway. I’ll fight right to the end. Fight with broken jaws.”

Ahead of the fight, Ali went to the Mayo Clinic for a two-day neurological and kidney evaluation. The clinic detected some issues (for instance, he could not reliably touch his finger to his nose) but not enough to scare off Nevada from issuing him a license for what promised to be a lucrative fight for Las Vegas. Ali took this as vindication. “They say I’m going to get hurt,” he said. “When did I ever get hurt? They say I got brain damage. Liver damage. They all lied. I spent three days at the Mayo Clinic. They stuck wires in me; I looked like Frankenstein’s monster. I passed every test. Look how pretty I talk. How could I have brain damage? I’ll show those lying . . .” Ali impressed many fans by slimming down for the fight, but it later turned out that this was achieved not by a grueling exercise and nutritional regimen but by his popping thyroid medication like diet pills, slowing him down further.

From the first round, the fight was an absolute disaster. And as it went on, things got worse. The man who once floated like a butterfly could hardly move or throw a punch. All that he could do was take a beating. Holmes, a sparring partner of Ali’s when he was a younger fighter, loved the legendary boxer and hoped to knock him out early in the fight to get it over with. In the post-fight interview, Holmes was crying. He later recalled, “I just didn’t want to hurt Ali but to hit him enough to make him quit. And he still wouldn’t quit.” The younger champion threw more than three times as many punches as Ali did and hit his target at a much higher rate; in the end, Holmes had landed 340 punches to Ali’s 42. Through it all, Ali was determined to keep going. But in a spectacular scene in the corner after the tenth round, his trainer Angelo Dundee ordered the referee to stop the fight — over the objections of both the assistant trainer and Ali himself.

While Biden may not be “the Greatest,” he is also somebody who prides himself on not quitting. He has overcome many personal tragedies and political obstacles, and there were many times when journalists have written him off as a buffoon or a washed-up politician only to see him come back — as he did in the 2020 primaries and in the 2022 midterms, when Democrats overperformed. In speeches and interviews in which he insists that he is staying in the race, he reminds his doubters about this history. He has been fighting in the political arena for more than 50 years, and he knows little else. Like Ali, he is convinced that he has always found a way to win and will again.

Since the devastating debate in June, Biden has made a number of appearances meant to quell doubts about his age and mental fitness. Some of those appearances have been good, or at least fine. But the bad moments continue, as evidenced by his faltering recent interviews with NBC’s Lester Holt and Complex’s Speedy Morman — and in a speech to the NAACP that revealed his having difficulty even reading a teleprompter.

But those around Biden have been reluctant to level with him. Perhaps they know he won’t listen. Perhaps they are convinced by his bluster, believe the myth, and think, “What if he has one more comeback left in him”? More cynically, perhaps they are reluctant because as long as he’s president, Biden is their means of maintaining power and influence. As Biden biographer Franklin Foer wrote recently of “staffers whose entire identity is wrapped up in their association” with the president: “To admit his end is to provoke a crisis in their own professional life. If I’m not whispering in Biden’s ear, then what am I?”

Sylvester Stallone said that witnessing the Ali–Holmes fight was “like watching an autopsy on a man who’s still alive.” The experience clearly stayed with him: In Rocky IV, Apollo Creed (the character based on Ali) refuses to quit and ultimately dies in the ring as his trainer shouts to Rocky, “Throw in the damn towel!”

Biden clearly does not want to leave the race. He will keep campaigning well past the point of exhaustion to prove his critics wrong and avoid the stigma he associates with giving up. It is long past time for somebody close to Biden to do as Angelo Dundee did — and stop the fight.