The Day in Sports : COUNTDOWN TO 2000 / A day-by-day recap of some of the most important sports moments of the 20th Century: SEPT. 10, 1973 : In Fight to the Finish, Ali Was the Better Man

The decision, The Times’ John Hall wrote that night, was “friendly and kind.”

One more loss to Ken Norton, many believed, might finish Muhammad Ali as a big-time heavyweight. And on this night 26 years ago at the Forum, many in the crowd of 12,100 went home believing Ali had lost a second consecutive fight to Norton.

Probably by the thin margin of a stronger 12th round, Ali gained a split decision over Norton, 30.

Ali, at 31, was matched with a superb defensive fighter who had beaten him in San Diego six months earlier in what was considered then a major upset.

Maybe not, reasoned the Forum crowd, as the fight unfolded.

Norton, weighing 205, hurt Ali, 212, with thundering body shots. The middle rounds were all Norton’s, when he seemed oblivious to Ali’s best punches.

Ali hurt Norton late in the 11th round with his best punch of the fight, a right to the chin that rocked Norton. Ali won the last round by snapping Norton’s head back several times, but even at the final bell Norton was pounding away on Ali’s body.

The live gate of $548,000 and closed-circuit TV revenue of $10 million set a California record that has not been approached.

Times columnist Jim Murray considered Ali’s performance an affront to those who had marveled at his faster, float-like-a-butterfly, sting-like-a-bee style of the early 1960s.

Murray wrote that night that it was like “Paderewski on the harmonica, Caruso singing jack-in-the-box jingles, Van Gogh painting cupboards.”

Also on this date: In 1972, Yale graduate Frank Shorter became the first American to win the Olympic marathon since 1908 when he finished first in Munich by nearly 2 1/2 minutes. . . . In 1962, Mickey Mantle, returning from a rib injury, hit his 400th home run, at Detroit.