Ali's power is underrated

Don't tell that to the Kleechko fans, they will be on you like a rash.

 

You would be on safer ground saying “Ali’s finishing ability is under-rated”. We can’t be sure how hard he hit, or what role his power played in his finishing.

The salient point for me is that he fought a ridiculously high level of opposition, and still had a high knockout percentage. Normally a fighters KO% falls off dramatically when they start meeting elite opponents, which is why most of the heavyweights with high KO%s, had a large proportion of their fights against mediocre opposition. Given that nearly half of Ali’s fights were against ranked opponents, we would expect him to have a low KO%, even if he was a puncher.

We are not seeing that, and this means that we have to take him very seriously as a finisher.

 

You beat me to it.

 

The more you look at KO percentages, the more you see that it reflects the fighter’s opposition. You get guys like Bob Satterfield who were obviously helacious punchers, who have low percentages, because they were fighting ranked opponents all the time.

The heavyweights with high percentages like the Klitschko’s, Marciano, and Foreman (no disrespect to any of them), usually have a lot of padding on their records, and a comparatively small number of fights against ranked opponents.

The guys who had a high number of fights against ranked opponents, and still came out with a high percentage, are few and far between. With somebody like Joe Louis, we could simply argue that he was the greatest puncher of all time. With Ali, we know that he was not a Louis/Marciano/Foreman type puncher, but he was still holding his percentage against this absurdly tough field!

 

Spot on.

 

He dropped The Big Cat while going back wards , so i would say Yes. It requires a degree of pop to do that

 

The thing with Ali was that quite a lot of the time especially in his first career he wasn't particularly looking for the knockout, in that respect he was similar to Mayweather.
Mentally he wasn't a cold blooded assassin he was happy to showcase his boxing skills.
I would never try to say he had big time pop but when did come down off his toes he tended to hurt people and in some cases knock them out.
He hurt them all Liston, Foreman, Frazier, Lyle, Quarry and others all tough rugged men, his power was certainly nothing to be sneezed at.

 

I think Ali was an underrated puncher and the fight that did it for me was his fight with Lyle. For 10 rounds he basically let Lyle have some fun, covering up and letting Lyle tee off on him and build up points. Then in the next round Ali basically ended the fight with a single right counter that caught Ron on the chin. Lyle was useless after that punch and offered no resistance until the ref stopped the fight soon after. Even Foreman had more trouble putting Lyle away after being dropped himself by Ron in their fight so I think it's safe to say that Ali could punch when he wanted to. He preferred to box from the outside and use his speed and I believe he had tender hands but he could bang nonetheless. To say he couldn't punch is very shortsighted in my opinion.

 

Good post!

 

Cus said that Ali had very sneaky power in aka.

 

If Ali's power is so underrated, how come he wasn't able to deck Joe Frazier in 41 rounds of action? I mean, Frazier has been anointed as "chinny" in this and other boxing forums...hell, everybody is likely to deck Frazier according to soooo many posters....mmmmm....but Ali never managed a single kd on Joe. Oh, I know that that abbreviated second round of the 2nd bout between the two allegedly "robbed" Ali of a knockout some will say, but still, Ali was the only one of the two to hit the deck in their trilogy.

 

Without a doubt.

 

You've only got to think of him dropping Ringo Bonavena 3 times to realise the man could hit.

 

Good point.

Frazier gets floored by George bloody Foreman (note floored not knocked out) numerous times and against one other fighter when a novice despite employing one of the more physical arduous and punishing fighting styles you can and people carry on like he's some glass jawed fraud.

Watch some of the bombs Ali loaded up on Joe in Manilla in the 13th and 14th rounds and tell me that Joe couldn't take a friggin punch. The rock jawed Bonavena got floored and stopped with less. As a matter of fact I can name a few so called "iron jawed" heavyweights who I seriously doubt would be able to return to their corners under their own steam after a sustained beating like that.

Ali could punch and Joe could dam n well take a punch.