Muhammad Ali Boxing by the numbers compubox

A lot of stats without context are more misleading than informative.

 

Ali win his biggest fights with heart and grit as much as skills. It’s true.

Frazier 3, Foreman, Lyle and Shavers come to mind.

Defensively he had great reflexes within unorthodox tendencies. He wasn’t that hard to catch with the hook and clinched like an all star when he needed to.

 

Why? The OP said 12 other champions were examined, and you have to assume the punch stats with the film are correct. This is a lot to be put into context.

You could say okay, perhaps Ali was hit more than Foreman partly because he wasn't a big puncher, meaning his fights often went a longer duration, ergo he was hit more. Or you could say on average per round he was hit more often from punch stats. This could be fascinating stuff.

Boxing which calls itself the sweet silence has a way of rejecting organized data, especially if it shows the deceased fighters they adored don't measure up. Modern sports fans have little trouble amditing teams from the 1950s or 1960' could not compete today in basketball, football, hockey or baseball...likely individual sports such as tennis, golf ( if you consider golf a sport ) and track. With boxing, it stands alone saying the past was better. Greater in a meaning sense, okay. Better in a modern sense, I tend to doubt that at heavyweight as the size of the fighters has changed so much over the decades.

If you want the straight dope, fighters like Wlad, Lewis, and Holmes were not hit as often, because they had good defensive fundamentals, and used a top jab, with a right hand behind it to worry about with decent to very good footwork depending on which man you are talking about.

By contrast, Frazier to me was not hard to hit, he came at you and had to do his style, which seldom featured a jab, or much or a right hand. Joe had to fire his left hook often. It was fast. Fraizer had plenty of stamina to fire it all night, but in boxing, if you lead with the hook and miss, you're open to a counter. The hook isn't the best lead punch, far from it, and if that's all you got a good fighter can take it away.

 

Frazier the hardest to hit of the 12? Foreman had no issues. Ali at times made Frazier's head look like a bobblehead doll.

 

Compubox is pure **** and useless in this sport. I wouldnt waste money on anything associated with it.

 

Prime Frazier was indeed very Hard to nail cleanly especially when considering he was usually the aggressor, he made the fastest heavy in history miss a ton of punches in a very fast pace fight in the F.T.O.C. It was after the 1st fight with Ali is when he began to take more hard shots cleanly. Ali in his prime was rarely touched, much less hit cleanly. Compu box must be analyzing his fights after his prime and probably from the Foreman fight. Because prior to that he was extremely hard to hit. I believe my eyes....

 

Look at round 3 of Ali vs. Shavers

Do you think Ali lands more than one punch?
If yes, you might not love the book.

 

Depends on what "easier to hit" means. If it means that he took more punches, I'm not surprised. He must have gone more rounds against ranked opposition than any other HW in history. And the majority of those were when he was past his best.

Also, many of the punches registered as landed was probably punches he rolled with to take away much of the impact, whereas swarmers like Rocky and Frazier were more likely to walk into punches.

 

Compubox is often a better judge than human beings are. I read it picks the winner 80% of the time and seldom has a BS did you see that type of card which boxing fans heavy boo. Is it really all bad?

If a guy was hit on film, computbox records it. I think it's part of the fight, and should be looked at. I think it can be used as a tool to expose crooked or incompetent judging in a round when no one was hurt, and the other guy threw and landed more but lost the round on a card.

For Ali, it really didn't matter much, because he was a gritty fighter who took a good punch with the knack to land something serious when he needed to. And he got his gifted moments in the Jimmy Young fight.