Just as Rat'Lar is about to give the go-ahead to his backup forces, his own champion Hun'Ya becomes enraged at Rat'Lar's dishonorable tactics and deposes him.
Yet after witnessing Superman's decimation of his forces, the Scrubb leader cries foul and decides to invade the now helpless Earth anyway.
In the predicted fourth round, he not only knocks the alien champion out, but out of the ring as well. In his showdown with the armada, however, Superman is again badly hurt, and is left drifting in space. Disguising himself as Ali cornerman Bundini Brown, he steals into the Scrubb command ship and sabotages their space armada. Meanwhile, Superman's great recuperative powers have enabled him to make a speedy recovery. Once the match begins, however, Ali quickly starts to suffer from fighting the super-powered Hun'Ya. (Ali was known for predicting the round in which he would knock out his opponent.) After some chiding, Ali predicts that he'll knock the alien out in the fourth round ("He'll hit the floor in four!"). The alien leader then asks Ali to predict at what round the fight will end. Now crowned Earth's champion, Ali is set to face the Scrubb's champion, the behemoth Hun'Ya. Superman then falls face-first on the canvas (making the knockout more than technical). Finally, Ali stops the fight, urging the referee to call for a technical knockout. Superman takes a serious pummeling, but somehow refuses to fall down he stays on his feet all through the beating. With match underway, it soon becomes apparent that in battling with more or less equal strength, Ali is the superior fighter. Muhammad Ali match is broadcast on intergalactic television to thousands of other worlds (with Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen acting as broadcaster). They journey to Superman's Fortress of Solitude to have his powers temporarily deactivated.
The two would-be champions decide that Ali will train Superman in the finer points of boxing. The winner would simply be the best boxer. To make the fight fair, he decrees that the match should take place on his home planet, Bodace, which orbits a red sun (which temporarily robs Superman of his powers). Intrigued, Rat'Lar decides that Superman and Ali should fight one another to see who really is Earth's champion. In typical Ali-style verbiage, he puts himself forward as the obvious choice. However, Ali argues that Superman is not really of Earth, and has an unfair advantage in his many superpowers. Superman and Muhammad Ali each come forward to volunteer. If Earth refuses, the Scrubb and their huge armada of spaceships will destroy it. Rat'Lar, the maniacal leader of a species of aliens called the Scrubb, demands that Earth's greatest champion fight the greatest Scrubb fighter. This is a 2010 re-issue of the All-New Collectors' Edition Vol 1 #C-56 from April 1978.
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