If This Forum Had Being Around...?

Early 70s, they would’ve been saying Ali was washed up, since at one point, he had 2 unavenged losses against Frazier and Norton.

Mid 70s they would’ve been saying Ali had the judges in his pocket like they do with Canelo, because Ali did get the nod in most close fights, like Norton 3 and Jimmy Young for example.

Late 70s, the title was changing hands to Larry Holmes and he hadn’t had it long enough for people to be ripping him about anything, (title defences etc)

 

Ken Norton would have been the original "email champ".

 

What a time it was to be alive. Our junior high class went on a field trip to the local community college. When we visited the computer school i asked the instructor if the computer could tell us if Muhammad Ali would beat Foreman.

 

The round by round threads for the FOTC, Jamaica, and the Rumble in the Jungle would be wild.

Also, the people parroting Ali one-liners would be even more insufferable than the Fury fans used to be when they did it for Fury.

There would probably be this obsessive guy in every thread fixated on how much he hates Larry Holmes or something.

 

In the mid to late 70s (and certainly into the 80s) I was in junior high and high school and you could basically have a conversation about boxing with ANYBODY. It was on network TV every weekend and people not only know who Ali/Leonard/Holmes/Hearns/Mancini/Camacho/etc were, they probably watched Alexis Arguello’s fight that weekend and were looking forward to Bobby Chacon in the weekend coming up.

When football player Ed “Too Tall” Jones debuted, basically anyone who knew or cared about sports even a little was aware and probably watched it.

 

Are there any sports today that have the kind of prevalence that boxing had back then in the public sphere?

Relatedly, do we talk about sports in general less now than we used to?

 

Football and baseball were huge in the 70s, basketball not so much. As to boxing it occupied a much larger space in the public mind. Ali just brought in so many casual viewers, especially after the Rumble.

 

It’s more niche.

I know people who know everything about every guy on every NBA roster but they couldn’t name 10 QBs in the NFL. Soccer-heads who pay little attention to anything else. College football and basketball fans who don’t watch NFL/NBA and vice versa.

Boxing has more or less died of self-inflicted wounds — too many champions, PPV cards that don’t feature someone in a key undercard fight to build them into the next big thing, top guys never fighting each other, etc.

 

I posted this before. I was at a dive bar in DeBary Florida to watch the Norton-Holmes fight. (The drinking age was 18 then, not 21) There was a pool. Practically everyone bet on Holmes via KO. I picked Norton by decision. I lost the bet but in retrospect the decision validated my judgment. I came closer.

 

Bob Foster

 

I can’t imagine Ali changing his name, joining NOI, and skipping Vietnam would’ve gone over well on this forum. Add in the loses to Frazier and Norton and upset of Foreman and it would’ve been a powder keg.

 

When we were in typewriting class we would emulate boxers and send poison missives to one another.