Whose career is ranked higher: Ali pre-1967 or Ali Post 1970?

I do not like drama in boxing, I do not even care for soap operas. You want drama, watch all the Rocky movies. But skill and grace is not luck, they are natural born gifts, 1967 Ali is better. Why did Yank Durham not want his fighter Joe Frazier to fight Muhammad Ali in 1967? His reply is that Joe Is Not Ready To Fight Professor Clay (Ali). Yank waited for Ali to get rusty.

 

I see your point, but I guess knocked silly to me applies more to, say, Mike Tyson at the end of the round before he got stopped by Holyfield I, or Mike Weaver after the monster uppercut Holmes hit him with. As in, he was pretty much unable to continue after that, knocked silly.

But hey, they're just terms, I understand what you're getting at.

 

It was great management. But I persist in believing there wasn't another fighter in the world, besides Frazier, who could have beaten Ali FOTC. He was still absolutely killer, and certainly a significant notch above what he showed in the two tune up fights.

 

But if only Muhammad Ali had 1967 stamina, timing, reflexes, footwork, and speed, he had others fight him aggressively back then, maybe the fight would have been closer. The 43 month banishment robbed Ali of his gifts, he was 25 when his banishment started, and 28 when it ended.

 

He still had heart to burn, a bit more power.

He was still great. I think you already know that, my friend.

 

Yes sir my friend.

 

I think this would be the reasoning of those trying to put him down, not the general one. It is after all something you can do with any fighter.

Even if Tyson had retired before Douglas you could bring up Tillis, say that most of his opponents were coked up has beens and never beens and that even Bruno managed to hurt him. If you want to, you can do that kind of thing with anyone.

Louis before WW2? KO'd by Schmeling and could only beat him when he was past his best. Really should have lost to Farr and Godoy and was lucky not to lose against miniature Conn. Ruled over a poor era. Best he beat were past it versions of Baer and Schmeling.

And, yes, a biased take as the one you described could be made against Ali as well and is by several posters on this forum (mostly Tyson devotees for some reason), but I don't think it would be the general one.

I do agree that it helps him in fantasy match-ups that his chin got proven more in his second career, though.

 

A persistent myth is that the generation of HWs that followed Ali's first reign was superior over all to the one he cleaned out, but that doesn't hold many up to any kind of scrutiny that well:

Ellis was really Ali's generation. Two years older and Ali's sparring partner as we all know (yes if after he transitioned to HW) and he beat Quarry and Bonavena.

Floyd, in his 30's, got the better of Quarry according to most observers and beat Bonavena.

Chuvalo beat Quarry.

A very old Cooper gave a young Bugner a close fight.


Frazier and Foreman were better than anyone Ali beat in the 60's, bar Liston. That's true. But there's no reason to say that the quality of contenders was better. That's why I think Ali's general dominance over his 60's opponents trumps his somewhat more inconsistent record against the 70's ones.

 

Truly remarkable!

Pre-exile Muhammad was better than the post-exile version but the latter has more major scalps on his resume.

 

I do suspect that Cooper 1 wouldn't have been remembered as such a huge deal if Ali had retired post 67. Ali wouldn't be remembered as the greatest heavyweight ever, so there would be less reason for people to fixate with fascination on that one fight as being the time the great Ali "almost got knocked out." All the mythology about the gloves, smelling salts, ten thousand minute delay, etc. would still exist, but it wouldn't matter as much. It would just be a bad knockdown suffered by a very good, but imperfect, heavyweight champion.

 

If 60s Ali was imperfect, than every other boxing champion was. I trust you're perfectly aware of that.

 

Well, sure. But unlike others here, I really do think his 70s career was better enough than his first that the naysayers wouldn't be irrational to rate him well out of the top 5 if he'd retired in 67.

 

Basically, we are lucky enough to have seen Ali continue fighting -- and have the matchups he did. To me, it's a lesson in making you wonder whether other heavyweight champions also had untapped skills and unexplored strengths that they just never got to show in their own timelines. We tend to view our lists of great heavies too much as a chiseled in stone orthodoxy, I feel.

 

Could be. I'm wondering if he'd be rated out after naysayers watched his actual performances. Granted, his competition after Liston wasn't of an extraordinarily high level, but his whole style, unprecedented speed of hand and foot., general adroitness...

 

Yeah, the guy was incredible on film. But so was young Tyson, remember, and he isn't rated near the top. At lighter weights, some of the stuff Hamed pulled off when he was younger looked like absolute sorcery, but people don't use it to rate him as #1, usually.