Did Ali ever beat Frazier when he had two good working eyes ? When did the accident with his eye happen ?
There have been threads on it. Dunno if a conclusion was reached: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/fraziers-blindness.591617/page-2 https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/when-exactly-and-how-did-joe-frazier-go-blind-in-1-eye.647526/ https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...li-if-he-wasnt-blind-in-one-eye.539923/page-3
I honestly never thought I'd have to explain this multiple times... to the same poster. This is basic fundamental information.
Yeah, every now and then someone has started a thread where they say Ali should have won and the push back has been pretty fierce. I actually rewatched this again yesterday. Not to rescore it really, just for fun, but still couldn't help myself. Before I've landed at 9-6 or 9-7-1 to Frazier, but this time I felt more like 8-7 to Ali (giving him 1-5, 9-10 and 14) or 7-7 (rd 3 even). This wouldn't feel totally fair since Joe had such big rounds in 11 and 15, but going by the round by round scoring that was in effect it was the score I ended up with. An important part is to use the old Mercante trick and score every round in three parts, one for every minute. Otherwise, the fighter who ends rounds strongly might get rounds he really didn't deserve since the last bit is what you have in fresh memory when scoring the round. Joe come on strong in the last minute in each of the first four rounds, but the work Ali did in the first two gace him those rounds on my card. Maybe round 3 could have been evened out by Joe's strong finish.
Eddie Futch said this has been blown way out of proportion and if he had trouble with his eyes he wouldn't have let him fight. A few in here fob that off claiming it was Futch looking after Futch basically. Personally i think Futch is above that, just look at him pulling Joe out of Ali late so late in the fight.
And I'd replied that I wasn't convinced that sparring plus training plus two fights against top 10 contenders was insufficient to remove ring-rust from an already experienced and still young ex-champion. I understood your position the first time. It just didn't convince me. It is what it is.
Sorry, missed this earlier. And no worries. As I mentioned already elsewhere, he'd had sparring, training, and two fights against the best competition available not named Frazier. I'm assuming that readiness is going to be a combination of factors. Training before fights is one of them. Ali would have trained before all 3 fights. Sparring is another. (It's important enough that you can occasionally get by with just sparring and training, as Leonard did.) Well, Ali would have sparred. Fights are another. Well, Ali had fights. More than one. Against top fighters. I don't get the emphasis being put on counting up minutes as if we're talking about a 45 minute workout instead of a professional fight. Contenders don't have much in-ring time per year. 45 minutes of in-ring time in a 6 month period isn't that unusual. If anything, it's high by modern standards. I mentioned the Tyson/Bruno fight as one example of that. Tyson had less in-ring time during the year before he fought Bruno than Ali did because fighters just don't clock tons of professional in-ring time per year. I probably could have mentioned 2020s guys as well, since they only fight 1-2 times annually. I don't see why multiple fights over Ali's comeback against contenders, plus training, plus sparring wouldn't be enough to shake off the rust. It might not be enough to regain his pre-exile conditioning, and it certainly doesn't rewind the clock and make him young again. But since we were talking about ring rust, I put those issues to one side. Anyway. That's all. I don't think any new ground has been broken, but I figured I should clarify what I was saying.
All good. Totally respect your opinion and appreciate your points. My musings were generalised, not specifically addressed to any particular counter argument against Ali not being in form straight out of exile. Ray did sharpen himself via sparring to a surprising degree, an exception? - but then he wasn’t facing an ATG in his prime and we saw Ray suffer badly from fatigue from the mid rds on. The crux would be if you could simulate every condition of a real fight in sparring - apparently Ray came as close to doing so as anyone has ever done - or even attempted. There are myriad features involved in a real fight that aren’t simulated in regular sparring - or at least not expressly so (see Ray again). Ali did roll two top contenders in his first two comebacks fights. He looked pretty sharp vs Quarry but it was stopped via a bad cut after just 3 rds and it seems Ali was already feeling the stamina issues - so maybe he dodged a bit of bullet there. Against Bonavena, it was more grit and determination that saw Ali through than a fast recapture of fighting form - though Oscar was an awkward opponent at any rate which has to be factored. In all possibility, in sparring, there may be better ways/methods to approximate oneself to real fighting conditions - an interesting and isolated approach in itself (again, see Ray). I don’t think Ali’s regular sparring necessarily brought him that much closer to “real fight” form - I think he got far more out of his fights vs Quarry and Oscar than he did from any sparring prior to - standing him in far better stead when it came time to face Frazier but, just imo, still without Ali being back to the best fighting form possible.
Yeah, I don't see the minutes in the ring as the big issue either. I think more time to get as much conditioning back as possible would have been important, though. I think Pacheco probably was truthful when he said that they wanted more time to get Ali's legs back but was forced by outside factors, which would be the overhanging sentence. If they had waited for the Supreme Court ruling they would have risked missing out on a huge payday and a chance for Ali to make history.
Their is no proof he was sparring or training all that much. All evidence indicates the opposite. Like I said you're not debating in good faith. You keep saying 45 minutes of action isn't out of the ordinary for most fighters but MOST FIGHTERS DON'T HAVE A THREE AND A HALF YEAR EXILE. If Ali had a relatively normal schedule then yes I'd agree a mere 48 minutes of ring wouldn't hamper him greatly. He'd returned in October of '70 just FOUR months and a week before his big fight with Frazier, and had ONE long fight. That's clearly not enough to counteract 3.5+ years of inactivity and anyone with an ounce of objectivity would agree.
I read he ballooned up to 250 pounds during his exile. That suggests he wasn't doing much exercising.
No, Ali doesn't seem to have been working out much during the exile. There's a clip of him when he was hired as Ellis sparring partner where he says he is rusty as hell after being out for years, and also a story in his autobiography where he, rusty and out of shape, tests himself against a young pro to see if he has anything left when he's about to get his license back. The clip when D'Amato and Dundee watches him spar before Quarry I and discuss how he looks also comes off like they're watching a rusty fighter. Dundee says he is consciously taking punches because he wants to feel what it feels like after being out for so long.
Per Wikipedia, he was granted his license to box on August 11. He fought Quarry on October 26. He weighed 213 pounds for Quarry. You don't think Ali trained for the Quarry bout? 1) How much professional ring time do you think is required to shake off ring rust from a 3 year exile, then? Give me an approximate number. 2) How did you arrive at that number? You keep using the 4 months figure. Again, you don't think he trained for Quarry? You've twice now accused me of dishonesty for disagreeing with you in this thread. Between that, complaining to another poster about explaining things to me, and the shouty all-caps above where you repeat what you've already said multiple times, you're clearly very emotionally invested in this issue. It's a boxing history forum. People are going to disagree. Lots of people disagree with me in this thread, which is fine. That's just life.
