Muhammad Ali’s health has ‘vastly improved’ following pneumonia scare
BY MITCH ABRAMSON NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Published: Monday, December 22, 2014
Doctors hope to send boxing icon Muhammad Ali home from the hospital soon.
In October, Rahman Ali described his brother’s well-being as pretty dire at a publicity event for the documentary, “I am Ali,” saying he was in failing health and could not even speak.
Ali is regarded as one of the greatest heavyweights of all time and participated in fights that doubled as cultural events, such as,
the “Fight of the Century” against Joe Frazier at the Garden;
the “Rumble in the Jungle” with George Foreman and
the “Thrilla in Manila” against Frazier for a third time.
Elliot Seymour was paid to take a dive against Mickey Rourke, according to The Daily Mail.Photo: AP What does Mickey have against boxing that made him do such an embarrassing thing to the sport?
A homeless man helped Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke stage boxing glory by taking a dive in his bout against the actor, according to a published report Sunday.
Rourke knocked out Elliot Seymour, 29, in a match Friday in Moscow and the fight is now being called into question. The Daily Mail reported that Seymour, who lives on the streets of Pasadena, Calif., agreed to take a fall for “The Wrestler.”
“It was clearly a fixed fight. The whole bouncing off the ropes, hands down, punches were not landing and they were intentionally hitting each other’s gloves,” a source close to the Seymour family said.
Seymour was once an aspiring fighter, but is now struggling on the fringes of society. He’s a drifter who spends most of his time living in Memorial Park in downtown Pasadena, according to The Mail.
Seymour trained at the same gym as Rourke and has just one victory in 10 lifetime bouts. “All these headlines Mickey Rourke beat someone half his age… yeah he did but you’re not telling them the real story,” the source close Seymour’s family said.
Mickey Rourke trains in Moscow prior to his Nov. 28 fight.
Photo: EPA
“The real story is he’s homeless and desperate and he will probably go back to living on the streets when he gets back. People have no clue about that.” It only took minutes for Rourke to record his knockout win on Friday when speculation began that the remarkable fight was all one big staged event.
“Mickey Rourke has made his living as an actor, and if you expected his sanctioned boxing match today in Moscow against a 29-year-old to be totally legitimate then you’ve been watching too many movies,” wrote Deadspin’s Timothy Burke on Friday.
The tough-guy actor, who recently “won” a boxing match in Moscow against a middleweight 33 years his junior, was spotted exercising at Equinox in Soho in a fur hat, gray tights and matching fur vest while running on the treadmill and lifting weights.
The 62-year-old star of “The Wrestler” barely broke a sweat before stopping to take photos with gym members.
The Post reported that the Russian boxing bout was fixed because his opponent was paid to take a dive.
The boxer beaten by tough-guy actor Mickey Rourke in a publicized bout last week in Russia was actually a troubled homeless man who was paid to take a dive, sources say.
“Obviously, it was beneficial for Mickey Rourke. It probably made him feel good, boosted his ego, to be able to say he beat somebody half his age,’’ said a family friend of Elliot Seymour, the down-and-out boxer who hangs out at the same LA gym as Rourke and allegedly took the fall against him.
“Yeah, Rourke did [beat him], but you’re not telling them the real story. The real story is [Seymour] is homeless and desperate.”
Another source at the fighters’ Wild Card gym called Seymour, 29, “a professional opponent.”
“Meaning you pay him to lose,’’ the source said. “The fight was a joke. Mickey needs to stop pretending he ever was very good and just keep acting. It’s kind of an embarrassment, really. Mickey throws punches so slow an infant could avoid them.”
The first source produced text messages from a friend of Seymour’s who helped the flailing pugilist get a passport to Moscow, where the fight was staged.
The source said he told the friend that he was worried Seymour wasn’t mentally fit to go to Russia and that the pal “said he’ll be with movie people.”
After the fight, the source said, he sent the pal a link to a news story questioning whether the bout was fixed.
The friend texted back, “They told him to throw the fight I hope he gets home safely and paid. They wanted him down in the 4th total BS.”
Seymour went down in the second round, earning headlines for the 62-year-old Oscar-nominated star of “The Wrestler.”
“Maybe the arrangement changed from the fourth round to the second, but the fact he was saying they wanted him down in the fourth lets you know . . . what the situation was,’’ the source said.
Seymour was once an aspiring boxer but never managed to break out and is now a homeless drifter, spending most of his time at the gym, a Starbucks and on benches at Memorial Park in Pasadena, sources said.
“One of the well-known boxing reporters writing about the fight said they might as well have got somebody who was sleeping on the subway and it would’ve been a better opponent,” the family friend said. “Well, what he doesn’t know is that’s pretty much what happened.”
Rourke’s agents did not return multiple messages Sunday seeking comment.
Doctors hope to send boxing icon Muhammad Ali home from the hospital soon.
