Just How Great a Heavyweight Was Ken Norton?

sometimes being iconic or famous or whatever in big fights, elevates a person beyond the skill.

 

Well that settles it.

 

Ive heard it from several people who had knowledge of it not the least of which was Rick Farris who was in the gym and saw it happen.

 

Didn't Frazier do the same? Frazier's resume past Ali isn't great. Rocky Marciano made a career out of beating older legends. Gene Tunney beat an old legend. Riddick Bowe's resume consists of wins over a much smaller heavyweight, a cruiserweight perhaps. All these fighters are still regarded as great heavyweights. Why is it different with Norton?

 

He gave Ali and Holmes and Young great battles but once a fighter reached the tipping point of power Nortons weakness was backing up-he could not and usually got stopped by punchers -top 50-100?

 

Norton was a good heavyweight, the fights with Ali make his resume better, but when people understand that Ali didn’t fight Norton until his 43rd professional fight after hundreds of amateur fights and 43 professional training camps and all this after a three and an half year lay off then obviously for a reflex fighter like Ali he was no where near is prime, Norton could almost certainly not have beat Ali in the years between 65-70 before and during his lay off and many wear and tear fights earlier. So Norton was good but considering these facts if the fights were in Ali’s prime years it probably wouldn’t have been anywhere near close as it was in the seventies IMO.

 

Frazier was a lot better than Norton the stuff he was doing in all his fights v Ali was brilliant, Norton was pretty basic but he did jab with Ali which was clever, Futch told him to do this and it stopped Ali setting up his shots. Were there 50 heavyweights that had the power to KO Norton though because his chin wasn`t in the top 50 and I don`t know about his defense either.

 

Barkley had a better chin P4P than Norton.

 

Yet Norton may have beaten him more times. Frazier btw is a top 10 ATG.

Asking if there are 50 heavyweights with the power to KO Norton is simplistic beyond belief. Did Ceuvas have the power to KO Hearns?

 

Norton was a much better fighter.

 

I agree. That also applies to Bonavena. He gave Ali and Frazier problems, but was trounced by Ellis, defeated by Lyle, decisioned by an old Patterson, etc.

 

He certainly fought better v Ali than Barkley did v Duran.

 

Hearns was far more skilled than Norton.

 

Frazier basically cleaned out the division with Ali absent (no fault of his own) I understand your point about Bowe and Tunney. Tunney is a bit trickier as a lot of fighters that were around that light-heavy limit, some even smaller were fighting at heavyweight.