BYPLAY by ROGER KAHN: Doing It Just One More Time

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Such alternations tax credulity, except for this: he is the champion and he is locked into a style. He turned professional during the last days of Dwight Eisenhower's Administration, and he has fought well, sometimes brilliantly, through five presidencies. Young, he was Cassius Clay, the "Louisville Lip," establishing himself with his fists, his doggerel and his outrageous predictions. Now, four months away from his 35th birthday, he is Muhammad, the Muslim minister, pledged to peace and God. But he is also a great ticket salesman. If vulgarity sells tickets, let it be.

Fight night broke chilly, and for all of Ali's noise, only 30,000 people appeared in the cavernous stadium. There was more violence outside the ring than in. Ali still moves with a lithe beauty, but he no longer punches in flurries. He had predicted, "Norton must fall in five." After five rounds, Norton stood strong. Across the whole fight, neither staggered the other. Ali reddened Norton's face. Norton bloodied Ali's nose. Eight-year-olds would do more.

Norton appeared to win narrowly, but a law of boxing holds that no heavyweight champion can lose by a narrow decision. Dutifully, the referee and two judges gave the fight to Ali. Dutifully, Norton's manager protested. Norton wept in frustration. Ali stole off into the night, frightened by hoodlums clawing at the windows of his car.

"Not exactly your classic fight," I said to Harold Conrad, a boxing scholar, engaged by Ali as a personal aide.

"Dorian Gray," Conrad said. "The face is still beautiful, but what's gone on inside the body? The kidney punches. Shots to the liver. That stuff, and time, have taken a toll. It just doesn't show on the champion's face."

"This isn't the fighter who took on Joe Frazier in 1971."

Conrad puffed a cigarette. "Nobody," he said, "makes love as well as he did five years ago."

Ali sees his future in evangelism. He would become a cross between Billy Graham and William Jennings Bryan. To do that, to take care of his children and his divorces, to work his private charities, he has calculated that he needs $83,000 a month. That is why he has gone on boxing with eroded skills. That is why, his mind heavy with death, he shouted nigger into the face of a decent man like Kenny Norton.

But three days after the fight, Ali was not on the South Side of Chicago. He was in Istanbul. The dullness of his performance had sunk in. "As of now," he announced, "I am quitting boxing and will devote all my energy to the propagation of the Muslim faith."

He meant it. He means a lot of what he says. But six months from now, when he is hoarse from preaching and someone offers him $10 million to fight George Foreman, we will behold a mighty crisis of faith.