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Ron Lyle, Who Met Ali for Title, Dies at 70

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Associated Press

Ron Lyle, left, in the 11th round of his heavyweight title fight with Muhammad Ali in 1975. Lyle lost on a technical knockout.

Ron Lyle, who learned to box while in prison for murder and went on to fight Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship and wage a memorably furious battle with George Foreman, died on Saturday in Denver. He was 70.

The cause was complications of a stomach abscess, his sister, Sharon Dempsey, told The Denver Post.

In the 1970s, when the heavyweight champions Ali, Foreman, Joe Frazier and Larry Holmes captivated the boxing world, Lyle was not only an unlikely contender but also a man lucky to be alive. At 19, he had been convicted of murder in a Denver gang fight. While serving his sentence at the Colorado state penitentiary, he was stabbed by a fellow inmate and narrowly survived surgery.

He was released after more than seven years in prison, became an Amateur Athletic Union champion and then turned professional at 30.

A slugger with a strong right hand, Lyle, who was 6 feet 3 inches and about 220 pounds, won his first 19 fights, 17 by knockouts, before landing a fight with Jerry Quarry in 1973 at Madison Square Garden.

“I’ve been as far down as a man can go,” Lyle said before that bout. “To me, Jerry Quarry is just another obstacle. I’ll go through him or over him.”

Lyle lost to Quarry in a unanimous decision, but he continued to face leading heavyweights. He defeated Oscar Bonavena and Jimmy Ellis, a former champion, before challenging Ali, who was in his second reign as the champion.

Lyle was ahead in the scoring in their May 1975 bout in Las Vegas and had inflicted a purplish swelling under Ali’s right eye by the 11th round. But Ali unleashed a flurry of punches in that round that left Lyle defenseless, and the referee stopped the fight.

Lyle fought Foreman in January 1976, also in Las Vegas, 15 months after Foreman lost his title to Ali in Zaire — the Rumble in the Jungle, in which Foreman was knocked down for the first time.

Lyle caught Foreman with a left-right combination that knocked him down in the fourth round. Then Foreman floored Lyle with a right hand. As the round was drawing to a close, Lyle knocked Foreman down again with a flurry of blows.

Early in the fifth round, Foreman battered Lyle in a corner with repeated blows, many of them left hands. Lyle fell forward and was counted out.

“It was most definitely the toughest fight I’ve ever had,” Foreman said.

When The Ring magazine observed its 75th anniversary in 1997 by citing various “bests,” it listed Round 4 of the Lyle-Foreman fight as one of boxing’s most memorable rounds.

Ron Lyle was born on Feb. 12, 1941, in Dayton, Ohio, one of 19 children. His father, William, was a minister and worked in a steel mill. The family moved to Denver when Ron was a youngster.

He dropped out of high school, and then came the gang-fight killing that led to his imprisonment. He proved an outstanding boxer in the prison’s recreation program. A Denver cable television executive, Bill Daniels, who worked to rehabilitate prisoners, guided him into the boxing world on his release.

Lyle never got a title shot after his bout with Ali.

He was arrested on a murder charge on New Year’s Day 1978 in the shooting death of a former aide at his home the night before. Lyle cited self-defense, saying he had struggled with the man when he tried to rob Lyle at gunpoint. He was found not guilty.

Lyle retired after being knocked out by Gerry Cooney in the first round in 1980, then came back when he was 54, winning four bouts against nondescript fighters before quitting for good. He won 43 fights (31 by knockout), lost 7 and fought 1 draw.

Lyle was divorced from his wife, Nadine. Information on survivors was not immediately available.

Lyle supervised a Salvation Army boxing program for youngsters in Denver in his later years.

“I tell the kids if you get into this for the notoriety, for the money and the girls, the fast life, well, those are the wrong reasons,” he told The Rocky Mountain News in 2002. “But if you get in it for the respect of your peers, if you fight for the right reasons, it will all come.”