Ali's 5 last title defences

Well you’re right, it was stupid, but when opportunity knocks at every turn, especially when you’re getting on in years & you have 20-year-olds throwing themselves at you…it’s a forgivable kind of stupid, shall we say.

 

Of course, it’s important to know too how the fight was scored in real time. Not suggesting you learn a whole new system for a dull fight like that, but if the judges of the time were using a totally different scoring system, that could obviously sway opinions between then & now.

 

So, one actual judge that night had it 6 rounds Ali, 4 rounds Evangelista and 5 rounds even.

You appear to have scored it 10 rounds Ali, 5 rounds Evangelista. But you said Ali looked really bad.

How many of those "really bad" 10 rounds you had for Ali were close enough, in your opinion, to be even rounds, like one judge that night had them?

Because judges then would regularly score rounds "even" if they didn't think anyone actually won the rounds. Whereas people today tend to give SOMEONE the round (no matter how close) and shy away from even rounds.

Just curious.

 

Right.

 

I watched the Evangelista fight today for the first time. A godawful performance it was. You could see clearly in the late rounds how disgusted and embarrassed Ali was, although he wouldn't admit it when interviewed immediately afterward by Cosell. Technically he won the decision but in reality he was a loser that night. With the bored fans booing, he wanted to finish Evangelista and only a couple of years earlier he could have, but now all the magic was gone.

 

Even a big match like the FotC, some people still don’t realise (or just plain forget) that in 1971, the scoring was on a rounds-basis, so the 15th isn’t 10-8 Frazier like we would assume today.

 

Right. If anyone is going to sit down and score a fight, and you want to compare your scores to the actual judges, you should score it using the same scoring rules they used.

For instance, if you give the winner of a round 10 points (in a 10-point must system) and the loser of the round 9 points ... you can't give anyone the equivalent of 9 points in a 5-point scoring system.

The most the loser of the round (in a 5-point system) would get is 4 points, and more often 3 points.

That five-point system could really skew the totals for the guy who didn't win a particular round.

 

Ali lost the 3rd Norton fight, and he knew it when the final bell rang. Young? Ali was clearly outboxed but Youngs tactics cost him the fight I guess. Shavers? Ali got the decision , but Shavers delivered punishment on him that should have convinced him to retire.
Evangelista? awful performance,

 

Naturally. It can’t be called a robbery if you’re using a dramatically different scoring system to the judges’ of the day, who were official adjudicators. But who’s gonna learn a new system just to watch him trudge his way through that Evangelista bore? LOL.

 

. . . and then the two stinkers against Leon Spinks, the mugging by Holmes and finally losing to Berbick, an unknown to most people at the time.

 

People knew who Berbick was at the time. He had already knocked out John Tate and was the first challenger to go 15 rounds with Holmes as champ. Berbick was a top contender.

 

I stand corrected.

 

Let's say Ali should have lost the third fight with Norton; legitimately.
Boxing history would take a different direction for Ali.
For Norton, she wouldn't have gone the other way, because he would certainly have met Holmes at the end of the 70s.
It is better for Ali to have lost to Norton than to Leon Spinks, and maybe in such a scenario he would not have been embarrassed by the fights with Holmes and Berbick.