Ali's first career if his opponents were all injury free and motivated?

you may as well go to your local circus and ask this question to a fortune teller bro. how the hell is anyone supposed to know

 

injuries are a part of every sport especially in one as rough as boxing. there are entire threads dedicated to, for example, the legitimacy of pattersons bad back and listons blown shoulder. nobody beside patterson and liston themselves know if anything was actually wrong with their bodies. if patterson didnt blow his back out maybe he wouldve beaten ali. maybe he wouldve broken his ankle, slipped on a wet patch and fell on his head, or had a seizure. noone can say for sure. also, what about ali? he had his fair share of injuries too you know.

 

Interesting question. Prior to each of these fights, Ali was the betting favorite except in both Liston fights. I would expect that Ali would still have won a comfortable decision over Terrell and stopped Williams, with both bouts being more competitive. I always felt that an Ali-Patterson fight should have been quite competitive as both were very fast and skilled. I believe a healthy Patterson in 1965 would have given Ali a fight similar to their rematch in 1972. That rematch was stopped because of a cut eye, and it would have been interesting to see how the fight would have unfolded had it continued without the cut. At the time of stoppage, one judge had the fight even. I don't believe Floyd won more than one round in the '65 fight, so I have to believe the back trouble was legit. Even so, Patterson protested the stoppage in the 12th round of that fight.

 

While some injuries were actual in some of Muhammad Ali's challengers (Cleveland Williams) in his first title reign, the rest did not have any noticeable ones. If a fighter knows he is injured whether it be in training or gets a virus, there is always the option of rescheduling instead of entering the ring with a handicap. A good example being George Foreman prior to his title defense against Muhammad Ali in 1974, George was cut in sparring, he then had the match rescheduled until Oct 30 1974. All fighters do however make excuses after a loss, or blame the officials, but to take a title away, they have to really go out and take it way from them.

 

He beats all of them. Liston & Patterson give him a better fight than they did.

 

Assuming Liston trains properly for the first fight, he has a good chance of winning, despite being older than stated. Ali has the stylistic edge, but he was still green then.
Patterson will make the fight a lot closer, but I still expect Ali to win.
Williams and Terrell were too stiff, so I don't see them giving Ali much trouble.

 

Maybe Sonny threw out his shoulder and Floyd threw out his back hitting at air. As an aside it is more exerting to hit and miss than it is to hit and land

 

I don’t think Liston wins against Ali. His skillset let him down the first time he was just not good enough then (or ever imo) to even dent Ali.

Patterson could be a tricky customer. I’m not certain but I have a feeling if pushed Muhammad would most likely make that very generous size advantage count (it looked plain silly) and stop Floyd in an ugly fashion.

Cleveland Williams just isn’t good enough. He was what he was a guy with a draw with Machen and a win over a greenish Terrell…

 

This hypothetical is infinitely more predictable then say a match up with Jeffries and Foreman we have fights for reference against Ali and what they looked like at there best.

 

I would still favor him to beat all of those men. Some of them may have given him a bit more trouble however