Was Ali's level of athleticism for a HW boxer unprecedented at the time?

I've always said that Ali and RJJ both knew the fundamentals but chose to use unorthodoxy as part of their style to highlight and fake advantage of their athletic/reflexive advantages.

Unfortunately, many of us fans have no clue about what we are watching and are therefore unable to go against lazy consensus dogmas of certain fighters having no fundamentals as they're being compared against more conventional, economical, slower moving/less explosive fighters. In the first Liston, Ali slips both inside and outside the Liston jab, the first punch he throws is a check hook. In his prime he throws a mix between body and head jabs, blading his body and pivoting and angling off when he jabs to the body and when he's dancing and pivotting, perfectly hiding his chin behind his shoulder and using his feet to get out of range. He blocks shots to the body with elbows, forearms and parries, times Liston's jab and counters and then when he throws combinations, he leads with the jab, doubles the jab and steps around Liston so that by the time he's throwing hookercuts in his combinations, Liston has to shell up as Ali has moved the angle of attack before Liston could counter/adjust properly.

I'm not saying that Ali was technically excellent like Louis in his punching mechanics, he had his own mechanical nuances that were inefficient in his punch delivery for sure, but to suggest that a fighter that won Olympic Gold, boxed since he was a child, had the benefit of exposure to Archie Moore's guidance and others didn't know the rudiments of boxing technique is nonsensical to me. One only had to look at the damage his jab and right cross did to many a fighter's faces, cuts, swollen eyes from the corkscrew jab thrown, even the jarring of Patterson's back by timing him for a whiplash effect that exacerbated Floyd's back issues - the guy knew what he was doing, even if we don't often see it or agree with the methods that he chose to use.

 

Just as an addendum to our visual analysis I have read that Ali spent quite some time after hours in the gym perfecting his punch technique.

I guess if there were any punches anyone thought weren’t exactly by the book, perhaps the least you could say is that they were educated - clearly well practised.

 

I don’t really think his hand speed was that unprecedented for a HW. Joe Louis was lightning fast when stringing combos together. And Floyd Patterson had real fast hands.

It was really Ali’s foot speed and reflexes that were the most exceptional thing in his prime. Nobody could move like him. That combined with his hand speed, solid power (before he developed hand problems, he was an above average puncher and broke opponents down with constant damaging shots), sense of timing, excellent stamina, and ability to ignore physics and throw damaging shots while moving backwards…. That’s why he was the best HW there has ever been in his prime.

 

that was only post-exile. Pre-exile he was real slippery. Unless you were Henry Cooper.

 

Ali is a unique specimen no fighter at Heavyweight in history has had his movement, foot and hand speed and reflexes

The closest I’d say someone has come is Usyk but even he isn’t as fast

 

Excellent post. Will add that the whole "Ali couldn't infight" thing is a bit of a lazy take. He would avoid it as much as he could, but that's not the sama as that he couldn't do it. Not going full revisionist here and say that he was one of the great infighters, but Frazier was and Ali hung quite well with him at times, especially in Manilla, even though Frazier of course got the better of it on some crucial occassions in FOTC.

 

Ali showed against Chuvalo (second fight) and others that he could sit in the pocket, evade and pick off shots and counter with strong combination punching.

Realistically Ali was taller and faster than most of his opponents and he was an outboxer. Coming inside to lessen his physical advantages made no sense - that said, his employ of overhook and underhook in the clinch at times leads me to suspect that he could have been proficient in moving his opponent into short hooks and uppercuts had he tightened his short punches consistently rather than slapped with them. Ironically, for a guy who could throw ugly uppercuts, I always liked the combo that he finished Quarry with.

 

Just because someone can run real fast doesn't mean he or she is fleet of foot in a boxing ring.

 

Still is

 

Pull counter, jab to the body, archer jab (drawing back his right elbow somewhat when jabbing on the move to anchor himself for balance, much like a cat with its tail) - all things done that temporarily exposed him to feint and counter, timed uppercut or parry and counter (think Norton) but all rooted in deep fundamental soundness/understanding of body mechanics and physics.

Many would be surprised with how many times Ali is hiding his chin with his shoulder.

 

Yes, and an example of a very tight, effective hook was the one Ali laid on Bonavena just prior to sending Oscar crashing with the full range hook.

 

The shot that rocked Bonavena was beautiful and he also threw a lovely digging hook when finishing Lyle too.

I wonder how fighters like himself and Floyd Mayweather's punching would've held up if not for the brittle hand issues. I'm pretty certain that Ali would have maintained a higher KO rate with better hands and better conditioning in the 70s.

For a fighter that people say had no power, he certainly did things to fighters that others just didn't do ala Foreman and Bonavena.

 

Totally agree re Ali’s brittle hands. More KOs for sure.

I think it was telling that Ali said he had no problems with his hands going into the Foreman fight - best they’d ever been.

Ali was hitting with bad intentions from go to whoa in Zaire - a fantastic power punching display imo. Maybe the perception of that display was not fully appreciated due to the steel in Foreman’s chin also not being fully appreciated as at that time.

Of course Ali’s vulnerable hands didn’t just affect him during real time combat, they also impacted on/impaired his preparations.

Ali had to be careful with those hands and also, in some instances, having to lay off heavy bag work altogether in less than ideal time before an actual fight.

I’ve always liked the vision of Ali seriously smacking the heavy bag whilst in training for the second Henry Cooper match (at 3:08 in the clip below).

Ali had terrific snap on his punches and the vid below is actually a very nice montage of various clips of Ali hitting the heavy bag.

Possibly the aesthetics of Ali’s deliveries sometimes belied the actual power behind his shots also.

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and the opposite is true. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I saw some times of a young Ali trying olympic style sprints. He wasn’t good at all, iirc. Like, couldn’t even win a high school track meet. Yet, look at him gliding around the ring like that. And… Ken Norton, who shuffled around the ring like a crab with a broken leg, was a one man track team in high school. He was so fast, they changed the rules in the state to stop him from showing up and winning every event for his school. Go figure how that all works. (It’s funny, Norton would probably have had an Usain Bolt level of success if he’d stuck with track).