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Sept. 28, 2026 (Mon.)

Sports StorySept. 28, 2026

Ali-Norton III at 50: The Last Three Minutes Decided It

Ken Norton landed more punches and lost. The scorecards counted only rounds, and his corner could not see them.

In Three Lines

Fifty years ago today, Muhammad Ali kept the heavyweight title by beating Ken Norton on cards of 8-7, 8-7 and 8-6-1.
Two judges had the fight tied 7-7 after 14 rounds, and Norton's corner, sure he was ahead, told him to play it safe in the last.
This is not a claim that the officials favored Ali. It is about a final round fought with no one in either corner knowing the real score.

Fifty years ago tonight, the final bell rang in a ring set up at Yankee Stadium. Ken Norton followed Muhammad Ali toward Ali's corner, shouting, "I beat you!" Back in his own corner, he and his trainer, Bill Slayton, jumped in the air. Both were sure they had won the heavyweight championship. By their own count, they had.

The decision went to Ali. All three officials scored it for him. Norton sat with a towel over his head and wept. It was Sept. 28, 1976, the third and last time the two men met.

Norton landed more punches

They had history. In 1973, Norton broke Ali's jaw and won a split decision in San Diego. Six months later Ali won the rematch, also on points. The third fight was the tiebreaker, and Ali, 34, predicted it would not go past five rounds.

It went all 15. The referee, Arthur Mercante, scored it 8-6-1 for Ali. The two judges, Harold Lederman and Barney Smith, each had it 8-7 for Ali. In New York that night, the referee kept a card too.

It is easy to see why people called it a robbery. Norton kept walking forward and landed the harder shots. When CompuBox, a punch-tracking company, later counted the fight from video, it credited Norton with 286 landed punches and Ali with 199. Most of us, faced with a result like that, suspect the judges first.

Ringside reporters split as well. The Associated Press writer scored it 9-6 for Ali, while the Sports Illustrated writer had Norton winning, 8-7. When the decision was read, boos rolled through a crowd of 30,298.

But those numbers had no bearing on the decision. Nobody scoring that night was counting punches.

The scorecards counted rounds

An 8-7 score is not a point total. Each official marked who won each round and added up the rounds after the 15th. The 1 on Mercante's card is a round he called even.

The system is easy to follow, and its weakness is easy to see. Tom Schreck, a working boxing judge, laid it out in a history of scoring for BoxingScene. A fighter who barely edges a round gets the same credit as one who dominates it. Win a few rounds big, lose more of them narrowly, and you lose the fight.

The 10-point must system used today lets a judge score a lopsided round 10-8. The World Boxing Council endorsed that system in 1968, Schreck writes. Yet this 1976 title fight in New York was still announced in rounds.

So whatever extra punches Norton landed in a round disappeared from the card. What remained was one name per round.

Two cards were tied 7-7 after 14 rounds

Sports Illustrated reported in its Oct. 11, 1976, issue that Lederman and Smith both gave the 14th round to Ali. Even so, the magazine wrote, Norton was still alive on both cards going into the 15th. Both judges finished at 8-7 with no even rounds, so each had it 7-7 after 14.

7-7

Judges Lederman and Smith, before the 15th round

The referee's card would not have changed that. Had both judges given Norton the last round, he would have won the decision however Mercante scored it. The last three minutes decided who held the title.

Had Norton opened that round with his right hand, Lederman said later, "he would have been champion."

Norton's corner was grading its own test

Before the 15th, the two corners sent opposite messages. Angelo Dundee pushed Ali out with a shout of "Turn tiger, champ!" Slayton, convinced the fight was won, told Norton not to get careless. In a 2002 interview, Norton recalled being told he was ahead on points and should avoid getting cut or hurt.

Slayton had reason to think so. The SI writer had Norton ahead 7-6 after 13 rounds and gave him the 14th by a wide margin. From that seat, the last round was three minutes to protect a lead.

But Slayton's score was his own. It was like grading your own exam before the results come out. The number is reassuring, but it is not the grade. The reporters' own cards ran from 9-6 for Ali to 8-7 for Norton. The only cards that counted stayed with the officials until the announcement.

SI recorded what followed. Ali fought for two minutes and 40 seconds of the last round, and Norton, in the magazine's account, came alive only for the final 20. "I wasn't even tired," Norton said afterward. Had he known it was close, he added, he would have fought harder. In the same 2002 interview, he said he thought he had done enough to earn a draw in that round.

Ali's answer had some history behind it. "You got to whup the champ!" he said, insisting that a challenger had to hurt him to take the belt. According to SI, the heavyweight title had changed hands on a decision only three times since 1932. Taking it from a champion on points required three minutes nobody could dispute. Norton's corner staked those minutes on its own card.

Boxing is still arguing about it this summer

There is a way to tell fighters the real score during a bout. It is called open scoring. The WBC introduced it in November 2006, The Ring reports. In a 12-round title fight, the judges' totals are announced after the fourth and eighth rounds. Norton's corner had nothing like it.

Few fights use it even now. It was used at a WBC featherweight title fight in Cleveland on July 4 this year, and the crowd booed when the scores were read before the ninth round. Ahead of a WBC lightweight title fight in Las Vegas on Aug. 1, the argument started again. That fight went ahead with open scoring. The winner, William Zepeda, came out in favor of it afterward, saying it lets a trainer change tactics in real time.

The critics have a point. Chris Mannix, a DAZN broadcaster, worries that a fighter who knows he is well ahead will coast. That is exactly what Norton did in 1976, except that he coasted on a score his own corner kept.

Among the supporters is a fighter who went through what Norton did. In 1999, Oscar De La Hoya believed he was comfortably up 7-2 on Félix Trinidad. Through nine rounds, the official cards had him ahead by three points on one and one point on another, with the third even. He spent the last three rounds moving away, and Trinidad won a majority decision. Scoring unofficially for HBO at ringside was Harold Lederman, the judge from 1976. He had De La Hoya up 6-3, then gave Trinidad all of the last three rounds for a 114-114 card. At a news conference this summer, De La Hoya said knowing the score would have made him press harder. Twenty-three years after Norton, the same guess cost another fighter.

What Norton lacked that night was not punches. It was the score. The cards counted a big round and a close one the same, and his corner, unable to see them, trusted its own count and planned the last three minutes around it. Fifty years on, boxing still has not decided whether to show fighters the real score before those minutes begin. When a corner guesses wrong, the fighter pays.

Sources

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