The arguments have been extreme on both ends IMO. Both sides are giving lots examples of fights for why one wouldn't beat the other.
Hasn't Purrity, Peters etc been used as to why Foreman well could beat Wlad, not Ali? I can't see that anyone has brought up them as reason why Ali would beat Wlad. Only as an illustration to how equally silly it is to use Norton. Norton and Jones, and even Holmes and Berbick, have been brough up, though. Reading through the thread I see no equivalence.
Fair enough some of them were also tyed into Foreman vs Wlad debate which was going on at the same time which made it confusing. I would toss out Holmes and Berbick losses completely agreed. I think someone brought that up as a counter to using Wlad at 39 but I can't remember the full context what was the point there. I think both Fury and Norton are both very legit arguments that can be used however and both Wlad and Ali still had enough left in the tank at the time and were the best in the world at the time so you gotta give big props to Fury and Norton. And while Jones was brought up so was Tony Thompson.
Guys Ali barely even walking straight to the ring against Holmes is not the same with Wlad visibly not knowing what to do against Fury and giving AJ the fight of his life 2 years later.
Nobody said they were the point is that we're comparing the two at their best not when one or the other was past their best.
Neither is a 21-year old boy suffering a KD before going on to stop their opponent the next round or beating a ranked contender in a close decision, the same as a 27/28-year old man losing by stoppage to two unranked contenders. The point about neither Ali vs Cooper/Jones, nor Wlad vs Sanders/Brewster, being the best version you'd select for a fantasy fight, is fair though.
You CAN use past-prime matches for certain aspects. Wlad losing to AJ because he was too slow at 41 is one thing, him getting absolutely bambozzled by Fury’s style is another. Same with Ali losing to Berbick because he had no strength left in his body, but then genuinely not knowing what to do against Young.
Wlad at 39 still had plenty left, so comparing a 39-year old Wlad with a 39-year old Ali is even worse than comparing them when both were 22. Absolutely props to Fury and Norton, of course. Ali of the Norton rematch was still formidable and Norton took him to the brink. Wlad was righty seen as head and shoulders better than anyone else going into the Fury fight, so big props for that one too even though it was a bore. I would have liked a rematch there, though, as Ali got. But Norton and Wlad wasn't very alike style-wise. Wlad was very much the stand up straight classical boxing guy, while Norton fought out of a crouch and cross-arm guard. Fury, though, looks to have copied lots of what Ali did, but unlike Ali he had height and reach advantage so that one is also hard to compare. I'm never crazy about these comparisons. Style wise Jones and Norton aren't even close to Wlad, though: What you can say is that they came forward, which Wlad would likely do as well. But they had much better head movement and activity, and speed in Jones case at least. Wlad was much bigger, stronger and more powerful. And better on balance. But so was Liston and Foreman. Clearly don't give us much of a clue.
Just look at Ali against Young compared to Ali ten years earlier. I actually don't see much resemblance. He had slowed down that much. Had had Parkison's for several years according to some estimates. He looked to have aged terribly even since Manilla just a few months earlier. Which doesn't sound very surprising for someone in the onset of Parkinson's going through something like that. And "genuinly not knowing what to do" is just the kind of hyperbole you almost always see in arguments against Ali. That could be applied to Stevenson-Lopez, but much less so to this fight. It was a close fight and it was Young who got a standing eight for seeing no other escape than sticking his head through the ropes, not Ali. You saw Shakur having to do that?
Completely agree on the first statement no argument there. Wlad was way better preserved than late 1970s Ali. I say Norton and Wlad aren't to similar other than the fact of the jab and certain fundementals. It's hard to say because neither faced a fighter which was exactly like the other which is to be expected. The rest seems to be subjective. Ali beat great jabbers like Liston and Foreman but struggled against Norton. Wlad dominated multiple smaller speedy awkward fighters/outboxers and even some before his long reign close to the same dimensions as Ali barely losing a round for close to decade but when he faced Fury who is a bigger fighter who replicates some of Ali's biggest strengths in his peak is a speedy fighter he got shut out.
I personally don't draw much, if any, conclusions from any of this. But I'd love to see this fight. Would be fascinating to see if Ali could navigate the siz difference and Wlad the difference in speed and agility. Against Terrell, Ali made that size differnce look non-existant, but Wlad is a different animal. He likewise made Byrd's superior slickness count for very little, which of course is sometthing different than prime Ali, But both make for a great what if.
He slowed down but he wasn't any worse than Klitschko was against Fury. Both were in a clear decline by that point, but they were still game, still elite. Watch Ali against Berbick and Holmes. THAT's what I mean when I say shot. Klitschko never got there imo. It could be a hyperbole, at least unlike Wlad Ali didn't freeze and forget everything, but it was pretty clear that his usual strategies were not working as effective (ESPECIALLY if you look at the punch-stats of the match, because goddamn), but instead of adjusting to Young, he kept doing the same things and just pushed harder.