What fight made Ali into a SHOT boxer???

Foreman. Pyrrhic victory for Ali there.

 

It started to catch up with him after the third Frazier fight. It totally did Frazier in,and took it's toll on Muhammad. He did look good against Dunn though. His pride was stung after looking bad against Jimmy Young less than a week earlier.

 

Shavers was the absolute end ...

 

I meant to vote Frazier 3 because that's the one that really took the last ounce of greatness out of Ali, but Shavers is the one who made him shot.

The third Frazier fight is what made Ali seem shot compared to his former self.

 

A fight doesn't make you shot. It's a process, a cycle. Ali was already a very damaged human being in 1976.

 

It can happen in one night when your body has taken a lot of punishment and never fully recovers.

 

Well the logic herein indicates it was Dunn.

In fact, after this fight ALi was Dunn, or Dunn in.

But it may well have been normal aging along with the accumulation of blows.

Even in this fight, Ali got hit much more than he used to.

This may have been the last time he looked good, as I recall.

 

Dunn took it out of him in their epic battle.

 

If he was shot shavers would of destroyed him. The fight that confirmed it was leon spinks 1

 

For me, it was an extremely close call between Inoki and Shavers, but I went with Shavers on the strength of the fact Muhammad defeated Earnie after Inoki. Most viewers who have watched the entirety of Ali-Norton III on youtube seem to be satisfied that the controversial decision was correct, giving Muhammad two credible title defenses after Inoki. If he was as completely shot after Inoki as many of us have supposed, he shouldn't have even been able to compete with Norton in Yankee Stadium. I'm not entirely convinced the Ali of the Dunn fight would have stopped a surprisingly conservative Shavers, and a cautiously defensive Evangelista might have still gone the distance with that pre-Inoki version of Muhammad if Lubbers was able to do it with a peak second career Ali. And no version of Muhammad stops Norton.

The big difference between Inoki and Ali was neurological damage. The legs can be more resilient than the brain. He could rehabilitate his legs, and did use them a great deal in his final victory, but no amount of training could reverse the damage Shavers did to his hand-eye coordination. Yes, he was able to dance through most of the championship distance in New Orleans, but Cosell correctly made note of the fact Muhammad was misfiring even while winning lopsidedly. If Leon had a stable camp and corner support free of parasites and distractions, maybe, just maybe, he could have repeated his upset or at least push that rivalry to a rubber match. As compromised as Ali's accuracy was after Shavers, there's no way he wins a 1978 rematch over the elusive Young, no matter how hard he trained. I think he might still have pulled off a decision win in a rematch with Jimmy (for which he would have been in the best possible shape) prior to Shavers.

I have no quarrel whatsoever with anybody picking Inoki over Shavers. Again, it was a very close call for me. I think he still looked too potent against the admittedly over matched Coopman and Dunn for me to consider Manila as a candidate. He'd recovered from earlier wars like the FOTC and Kinshasa all right. For Young, he wasn't shot, just lazy, ridiculously overconfident, way overweight and badly under trained. (He was only four pounds heavier for Young than Coopman, but he was so badly winded after exhibitions between those two defenses in television interviews that I wonder just how much conditioning he applied for Jimmy's challenge.)

 

It was a combination of his whole career...

 

Not sure if there are any medical experts here or not, but i would have thought that it was the onset of (arguably) non boxing related medical symptoms which might have contributed more than any actual boxing fights.

 

I think it's apparent during the 3rd norton fight thast he's no longer the best out there, but still one of the best. i think shavers beat whatever greatness he had left out of him.

 

thrilla in manila was the beginning of the end to me but taking 15 rounds of flush punches from a prime shavers prolly didn't do him any good