How good were Ali's pre exile title challengers?

Terell, Patterson and Liston are all very good wins.

They were the most relevant fighters in the division at the time, and Ali beat them up when it mattered.

The others were ok, with some like London and Cooper being low-quality opponents.

 

Agree. Williams must be seen as a poor opponent as well, considering his condition at the time. Chuvalo was close to average. More of a gatekeeper than a proper contender.

It gets forgotten have good Terrell's record was going into the fight, though. In beating Williams, Machen, Folley, Jones and Chuvalo he had done somewhat of a semi clean-out of the division. It's actually better than Liston's run before Patterson - apart from the fact that Liston won his fights in a much more dominant fashion, of course.

 

troll thread detected

 

Liston is an interesting one, many would say those wins are completely meaningless. personally I thought the first fight showed Ali's technical advantages over Liston and the same thing would have happened with any version of Liston. In that case he basically beat another great at 22 years old which don't look too bad, but there is obviously another way to see it. The rematch was a farce, fixed or not, Liston wasn't there. Ali made some decent fighters look foolish in those years.

 

He basically fought anyone there was to fight, tho many had seen better days or weren't up to Championship snuff to begin with.
Wasn't his fault. Liston, Patterson, Chuvalo, Cooper, London, Mildenburger, Williams, Terrell, Folley....not a bad lot. The latter 60's saw a new crop emerging. Never saw Ali from 67-70 against Frazier, Quarry, an increasingly dangerous Patterson (sorry, couldn't help that one ) Ellis, Bonavena, Martin, M. Foster, etc...IMO he would have run the 60s against them all, including Frazier, a fight which may have been set at the latest by late 69. I often criticize Ali's second reign and I'll still stand by that but I still put him #1 Heavy only because we didn't (but IMO would have) see him entering the 70's 35 or so 0 winning every fight in impressive fashion.
Perhaps his 'Waterloo' may have come (had he continued non-stop) against a 73-74 Foreman but, even then, might have won the initial s****, perhaps failing in a rematch.
Guess I'm just thinking 'what-ifs' here.
No fighter seems to know when to quit, sadly...
My somewhat limited $0.02

 

I like to look at where guys were ranked at the time; how they were thought of going in.
Per Ring at the time of the fight -

Sonny Liston - 1
Floyd Patterson - 1
George Chuvalo - 9
Henry Cooper - 4
Brian London - not ranked
Karl Mildenberger - 3
Cleveland Williams - 3
Ernie Terrell - 1
Zora Folley - 2

 

Ali basically gave Cleveland Williams a good payday for being a long time "contender".

Cleve Williams had been "gut-shot" by a .357 magnum about 15 months before.
Williams had been inactive the entire year of 1965 while recovering from a gunshot wound he suffered during a scuffle with police officer Dale Witten after a traffic stop. Williams was shot with a .357 Magnum in the abdomen, barely survived, and suffered permanent kidney damage, a loss of over ten feet (3m) of his small intestine, and nerve damage from the bullet, which affected his left leg above the knee and caused it to atrophy as a result. It was in the above greatly diminished physical condition that Williams fought for the heavyweight championship against a peak Muhammad Ali on November 14, 1966 and was stopped easily in the third round.

 

Folley, Liston, and Williams were past their primes. Liston took a dive in the second fight and Williams had been shot by a cop and sustained permanent physical problems as a result. London was pathetic. Mildenberger was average. Chuvalo was tough but average. Terrell was good but far from great. Patterson had a back problem at the time. Cooper was fair but he used to start bleeding at the weigh in.

 

They were a fairly weak bunch.
Terrell was probably the best.

 

Well, when you look at the heavyweights of the 1960s, he basically fought about all of them.

Floyd Patterson and Archie Moore fought for the vacant title after Marciano. Ali stopped them both. Liston succeeded Patterson. Ali stopped him twice. Ernie Terrell won the vacant WBA title. Ali beat him. Zora Folley, Cleveland Williams, Doug Jones, George Chuvalo were perennial contenders that decade. He beat all of them. Henry Cooper was the dominant heavyweight in England in the 1960s. Ali stopped him twice. The WBA staged an eight-man elimination tournament when Ali was banished, and Ali ended up facing and beating six of eight (Ellis, Quarry, Patterson, Bonavena, Terrell and Mildenberger). Frazier and Mathis fought for the other version of the title. Ali beat both of them, too.

Probably the only guys who were top fighters in the decade who he didn't step in the ring with were Ingemar Johansson and Eddie Machen. (And he had a famous sparring match with Johansson where he boxed circles around him and then taunted Johansson saying maybe he - Clay - should be fighting Patterson.)

If you want to gauge his contenders, it's basically how you view that eras heavyweights. He was clearly better than they were.

I guess it would be like if Anthony Joshua knocked out Wlad a couple times, knocked out Wilder, beat Fury a couple times, knocked out David Haye, beats Joseph Parker, stops Povetkin ... maybe Vitali Klitschko comes out of retirement and Joshua destroys him in a couple rounds.

How big of an accomplishment all that was would depend on how you viewed those guys who Joshua beat.

You could say Wlad and Vitali were old, Fury wasn't that skilled, Povetkin was on his last legs, Wilder and Parker were never that good ... or you could say Joshua beat everyone of this current era.

As always, I guess it depends on if you're a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty person.

 

Liston was the best of the bunch but its hard to tell if he gave effort or opted out for gamblers. Patterson had back issues, and gave Ali some fits.

Williams was Ali's best-filmed effort, but he was shot.

You could make a case that Terrell was in the best shape, and gave Ali a good fight by going the distance.

 

You continually outdo yourself.

 

Good post.