Foreman never hit Ali with his best shot, right?

Muhammad Ali sang to George Foreman, Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Fire Away. Ha Ha.

 

As you know the transitive argument doesn't work in sports.

 

No it doesn’t always work - styles vary producing different dynamics and outcomes.

However, psychologically, the intuitive “logic” of A beat B who beat C therefore A beats C always hangs heavy.

And when A never ends up fighting C many will still give the advantage to A by deferring to the above line of “logic”.

If Foreman had quit abruptly after rolling Norton (= never facing Ali) , I’m almost sure that, to this day, most would hypothesise that Foreman “would’ve” destroyed Ali had they fought.

In fact, the highlighted wisdom behind rejecting the A beat B…etc. line of “logic” is more often based on it having been disproven after the fact of the match up, not so much as it being forecast beforehand.

I’ll also add that when A beats B and then B goes on to beat a C, a fighter who is perceived to be of high quality, that almost always feeds into and fattens up the rep. of A - an application of referred credit to A which can obviously be somewhat of a misnomer.

 

One thing people aren’t stopping to consider is that Ali hit Foreman with some hellacious shots of his own in that fight. I mentioned in a recent thread having just rewatched the PBS documentary which had so much high quality fight footage in it, and I was struck by how many solid shots he hit Foreman with, just like he hit Liston in Miami, although he picked his spots in Zaire. He didn’t just rope a dope until George wore out. I think the combination of the rope a dope and Ali popping him ultimately frustrated Foreman and amplified the fatigue.

 

I was mirroring what you said. You were correct when you said fans assumed that because Foreman blasted Joe and Kenny who beat Ali they assumed he would blast Ali too. The "styles make fights" argument trumps the transitive argument more often than not.

 

The Pug like The Fonz always speaks the truth. Ayyy ! The Pug.

 

I saw it in real time. They were writing his epitaph after the Norton fight.

 

Not to be mean ThatOne, Ali started getting lucky in his later fights, I saw Ali fight on free television or Closed Circuit Television. I preferred the champ from his first title reign of 1964-1967, the second reign Ali did not like the gym.

 

And rightly so, a once talented champ who did not to train just to pretend he is Arnold Palmer and play golf instead of training.

 

Which in retrospect was silly. Norton was a bad matchup. They still fought thirty nine competitive rounds. I would add comparing Ali to some mythical Ali is always going to leave the real Ali short. Cosell didn't mean any harm but he did it all the time.