I don't believe that Quarry KO'd Norton in sparring

Norton actually boxed with a more conventional style vs Frazier in sparring, he stick and moved and didn't use his cross arm defense either.

Although he never showed this in actual fights though.

 

Excellent post. Some people only care about "style matchups" when it's convenient, such as when they want to discredit boxers they're not fond of. Norton and Foreman get blasted for this for their best wins all the time. "Tailor made" is another expression. It rarely gets used outside of the 70's boxers for some reason.

By that logic, Spinx, Tubbs, and Williams were tailor made for Tyson. Peter, Areola, and Briggs were tailor made for Vitali. I could go on.

 

Norton obviously did well with Ali. I've always wondered about the scoring for the Holmes fight. I think the boxing establishment wanted Norton to win, but it never looked like a close fight to me. Whenever I've scored the fight and if I remember right, when the board scored the fight for Fight of the Week, most of the scores were 10-5ish for Holmes. On the other hand, I scored all 3 Ali - Norton fights for Norton. I can't remember how I scored Young and Norton, but it was close either way.

As far as Norton vs. big punchers, I think Norton's cross arm with his right hand in front of his face makes him hard to hit with a jab, his left shoulder makes it difficult to hit him with right hands (unless you can "open" him up), but he doesn't cover his right jaw area and he is vulnerable to left hooks. Shavers threw a lot of hooks in a short time with Norton and hurt him with a hook first, Cooney always threw hooks, Foreman got Norton with the right, but he used the hook to make Norton adjust to deal with the hook and that left him open for the right hand. I don't know what Dutra, Gilmore, Eastling, and Garcia hit Norton with. Norton was the type of guy who would give 1-2 (jab - cross) fighters a tough fight, but a guy with a good hook was a problem for him.

Norton's cross arm worked against some good fighters, but against some that might be considered "limited" like Tua and Morrison I don't think Norton would have done well at all.

 

I've always thought Norton's confidence was never quite the same against punchers after the Foreman bout. He froze up, and never fought his fight particularly against Shavers when he tried about three different strategies within a round. Against Foreman, he didn't have this weakness. He stuck to his preferred style, and while not exactly setting the world on fire, had much more success in the first round against a far better puncher than either Shavers or Cooney so I personally can't see that version, getting knocked out in the first round as he did when he met them. He even gave Foreman something to think about as Pugs mentioned, causing him to adapt.

Shavers while a decent fighter, was very inconsistent and flawed. As seen by his loss to journeyman Bob Stallings, and his one round blow out to Quarry. While I do think Shavers' chin is badly underrated, I think Norton had the firepower to hurt him, and this was seen even in their fight, Norton hit Shavers a couple times, and while he didn't have him in trouble Shavers was clearly bothered imo.

Cooney is a bit of an enigma and a bit more difficult to assess. We don't know quite how good he was, because we never saw him go up against fellow contenders of his time period. He beat one ranked contender, the aforementioned Norton who was shot and didn't deserve his ranking at all. I don't think his blow outs of Lyle, and Norton tell us much considering where they both were in their careers. Young while definitely past prime, was still a good fighter, and I'm very impressed with Cooney's performance in this bout, which indicates to me, he may very well be better than his record suggests. All we really know is, he clearly wasn't as good as Holmes, but even in that bout I don't think he was quite as his best as he hadn't fought in over a year and was lacking ring time, fighting just over 3 and a half minutes in the last two years. I prefer the Cooney in the Young bout tbh.

So to answer your question, I don't think a pre Foreman Norton would or should change up his usual style, as imo that was a big factor in his downfall against Shavers.

I think a more confident Norton would be better able to withstand their power and wouldn't freeze up the first time, he was hit, and he'd be better able to stick to his game plan.

But you may very well be right, he may not have been able to handle their power at any time in his career.

Thanks for the compliments Greg and I'd like to return them to you. You are among the best posters here, and I have you in my top 5.

 

I don't know what Norton was thinking vs Shavers TBH, he just sat on the ropes allowing Shavers to wail away at him.

Vs Foreman atleast Norton used some movement and hit Foreman with a few decent punches in a somewhat competitive 1st round.

 

First it looked like to me, he was trying to counterpunch Shavers but when he couldn't keep up, he tried to do sort of a rope a dope imo. That's why I say he froze. He didn't know what he wanted to do, and didn't have an actual plan.

 

Thanks for the well thought out response and compliment Swag, much appreciated.

Personally I wouldn't discount prime Norton against Shavers or Cooney. I'm not sure I'd favour him, but was interested in the perspective of someone who did and who has probably watched more of him, and this HW era in general, than I have, and your response did not disappoint. Thanks again.

 

Maybe he saw the Lyle vs Shavers bout and thought he could fight off the ropes to tire Shavers out. Problem was, he wasn't as tough as Lyle and just froze when he got badly hurt.

 

In his commentary Cosell referenced his prefight discussion with Norton re strategy.

It seems Ken was looking to allow Earnie to tire himself out - and laying on the ropes, ala the rope a dope, was meant to lend itself to that strategy.

Crazy? Yes, but it was preconceived. Interesting that Norton was actually landing some heavy leather himself until Earnie’s left hook struck through the accomodating gap in Ken’s cross armed defence. Once that got home, it was a slippery slope for Ken thereafter.

Even when Earnie faced the originator of the rope a dope, Ali, Muhammad himself got off the ropes quick smart after tasting some power shots - Earnie was very good at picking his power shots with an opponent right in front of him, back to the ropes, trying to cover up.

 

I’ll just repeat the question (as above) Klomp @klompton2 but of course you don’t have to answer.

I find it to be a narrow and superficial address to simply say that Norton NEVER won the title in the ring without considering the belief of many that Norton did, in all truth, beat Ali in the rubber match - some going so far as to say it was a robbery.

At least imo, among many, for all intents and purposes, Norton won that fight and should’ve won the title - IN THE RING.

It certainly wasn’t as if Norton didn’t rise to the occasion with the Big Brass Ring up for grabs. The argument that Norton “blew” the fight by not going out to win the 15th round is a false positive imo. Ken had already established an unassailable lead.

I objectively believe that Norton beat Young in a close fight - but I note that you labelled it as a “gift” decision - but by omission, should I assume that Ali himself didn’t receive a “gift” decision over Norton and that you in fact believe Ali won that fight?

I’m just curious as to who you thought won that fight, the Ali-Norton rubber, - and by what margin.

 

He'll never answer you because he's a no nothing and a coward. He may have a lot of rare footage, but he doesn't see ****. 99% of the time in a H2H his posts consists of "Who did so and so beat in order for him to be the favorite over so and so". It's because he's too stupid, to actually analyze what both participates bring to the table.

 

It would be interesting to hear Klomp’s opinion on that point of contention.

Btw Swag, try not to mince your words so much - just tell me what you really think in future.

 

Are you asking if I believe Norton was robbed against Ali? I dont. The third fight was close, could have gone either, but wasnt a robbery. Norton didnt convincingly beat Ali. Frankly I thought Young beat Norton (and Ali) more convincingly than Norton supposedly beating Ali. Sorry, just never been impressed by the guy. He fought in the deepest era of the division and somehow missed out on a ton of big name fights. Given what I know about him turning down several offers from Aileen Eaton to fight Quarry (what originally started this thread) and taking into account his shaky chin its not hard to see that he was carefully matched and that resulted in a pretty weak resume for a guy who somehow made it to the HOF and yes even remaining the only HW champion to never win a title fight.

 

Shouldnt you be making love to your cleveland williams blowup doll? Or do you just generally slobber all over any muscular HW with meager accomplishments?