Who gives a prime Ali nightmares?

Tommy Farr might push Ali the distance, or late round before stoppage from cuts. He could do real damage with his style and punching. Holmes is difficult. Oliver McCall?

 

I was simply stressing a point, but the fact is pre-68 Ali could fight on his toes for the full duration of a fight without gassing. If you don't recognise how fit and athletic he was in that era then I'd suggest you've hardly seen him fight.
Also if you read the rest of the post I have no problem with people picking Joe Louis over Ali,so this is no besotted nuthugger.

 

Tommy Farr was a tough guy, but please pal,do me a favour.

 

Thank's for that Pepe :good

 

He was able to do that against pretty mediocre opposition, had he faced some good pressure fighters it would have been a different story. Chuvalo put him in the hospital.

 

In Ali-Norton II, Muhammad rocked Ken, sending him wobbling upwards with a driving right which effected Norton much more than anything Holmes hit Ken with.

Looking at the footage of Earnie with Ali and Holmes, I'm inclined to give Shavers the benefit of the doubt on that one. Berbick also said Muhammad hit him harder than Larry did.

However, Ali never stopped an opponent on the strength of a single body shot like old Holmes did with that rib cartilage separating right on Paul Poirier, and I don't think the force behind Muhammad's jab ever matched what Larry's jab did to Ocasio [although Ali's jab looked pretty hard on a psyched out Jerry Quarry in their rematch].

Does anybody know what Leon Spinks and Alfredo Evangelista have had to say about the respective power of old Ali and young Holmes?

Muhammad's consistency of power seemed to depend more on how his hands felt sometimes, than how well conditioned he was aerobically. He seemed to unload with venom pretty steadily with both hands on Mac Foster, a situation where his weight and training were not optimal.

For Larry, the hardest singular shots along with the Poirier body punch seem to have been the right uppercut knockdown in Weaver I, and the overhand right to the neck which put out Evangelista [a reasonably durable customer].

I've vacillated over the years on who I think the harder puncher was, but Poirier was tilted me towards Holmes in later years, and he appeared to turn fights with a single punch more often.

 

Chuvalo put him in hospital? Maybe Ali had hand trouble off hitting him too much.
Actually the first Chuvalo fight is an example of Ali staying on his toes for 15 rounds, constantly hitting a human punch bag with a granite chin.
That takes supreme fitness for a heavyweight boxer to sustain that.
Thanks for picking that fight as an example because you've simply endorsed what I stated. :good

 

Ali rarely threw body shots. Holmes had a different type jab than Ali. Ali had the classic boxers jab...so quick an opponent could not get out of it's way and over rounds it would slice them up well. Ali was also very difficult to counter with a right over that jab because of his reflexes and side to side movement. Holmes jab was more akin to Listons...hard and for a majority of his career usually thrown flat footed (although earlier in his career Holmes showed ok movement not akin to Ali however). Holmes always dropped his jab and sometimes it caught up to him when opponents hit him with right hands. Of the two Alis jab was much more classical, much faster better punch.

 

Oliver McCall ? The same guy who struggled to beat a 45 year old Larry Holmes ? He was a tough and durable guy but over fifteen rounds,Ali would more than likely have won by a shutout.

 

Everyone who did not live through those times needs to distinguish the Ali of the 70s and prime Ali of the 60s. Either Ali beats a McCall but prime Ali does it by shutout. Very few hwts could deal with the speed prime Ali brought to the table. By far the quickest hwt who ever lived IMO...certainly the quickest in my lifetime. As in most all sports...there is no defense for speed.

 

I reckon that even the Ali of 1971-74 would shut the Atomic Bull out.

 

My guess would be that he was hospitalized by his own speed. I mean, think about it, he was so fast that not even his own body could handle that much speed. After all, the parkinson sindrome being caused by head blows is nothing but another myth created by haters who don't appreciate his greatness for what he really was. The speed caused it! :good

 

Tyson, Dempsey, Marciano.

 

u now nasing ebawt enysing. I m not d 1 posting 4 cesh .

 

Ah now we're resorting to sarcasm.:-(