Muhammad Ali was beating...

I remember when I first actually saw the fight after reading so much about it and I thought "which ****ing one-sided beating, Ali is winning this fight almost the whole way through"?

But I think that's part of the Ali myth, just like the "long break" against Cooper and Ali wanting to quit before the last round in Manilla.

 

it's becuase he was agaisnt he ropes and not dancing as poeple were thinking ali was going to do.

really george foreman played out his blueprint perfectly...did everythign right...except ali's speedy left - right all night.

 

I concur.

Wish there had been a rematch.

 

no ofcourse. in a rematch george wouldnt pile through.

but if your fighting a guy who is known for dancing and moving and is past it. and your a puncher with good trapping moves.

then your gameplan would be to cut off the ring get him on the ropes and let loose to the body....which he did.

yah semme?

 

Because it fits better to the story. Man lays on the ropes, takes a one-sided beating in taking everything one of the hardest all-time punchers throws at him, before he gets exhausted and Ali knocks him out. That's how many people see the fight. I bet a lot of the more casual fans of the sport think he didn't throw any punches for 8 rounds and just sat on the ropes for 3 minutes per round.

 

As others have said, it makes for a better story that all took clean body shots all night and then KO'ed Foreman.

Also, Ali was expected to dance and didn't as others said. Which is what prompted Norman Mailer to say "It's a fix."

I will say this, I believe it was towards the end of the 1st round and George caught Ali on the chin with a pretty big hook and Ali looked a bit scared.

 

Damn those ropes.

 

I heard that the ropes were loosened by Dundee so Ali could lean back further. Is this a myth?

 

Ropes looked loose to me.

 

I agree NOW

The 1st time I saw this fight, I was only about 12 yrs old & didnt know ****, it looked as tho Ali landed a few good punches here & there but mostly took a 7 rd beating then KOd a tired Foreman.

Only watching the fight yrs later after Id been into boxing for a while did I realise that it was Ali who was handing George his ass mostly & it was George who was having success in small spots until the KO.

Its amazing how experience can open your eyes.

 

Myth.

George himself admits he used every excuse he could think of back then because he was having trouble coping mentally with his 1st ever loss, he has admitted in his later yrs that Ali was just the better fighter on that night.

 

Considering that Ali didnt invent the rope-a-dope until between rds 1 & 2 were he realised he wouldnt last dancing for a full 15 the way he did in rd 1.

Maybe Angelo loosened the ropes in between rds 1 & 2 & nobody noticed

 

On page 229 of his autobio 'I Only Talk Winning', Dundee admits to "refitting the ropes" before the fight, although he claims in the book that he was tightening them rather than loosening them. Either way, the looseness (or tightness) of the ropes that the fight was fought between was decided by his hands and/or supervision.

 

There are multiple reasons, in my opinion.

1) The degree of the rope-a-dope gets exaggerated because so many people at the time thought Ali's only chance was to outmove Foreman. So the shock of the fact that Ali stood there and stood up to George became the story of the fight. This got focused on and focused until it became the main story that everyone heard and takes over in people's minds as the story of the fight.

2) Furthermore, a lot of people are not boxing smart. They can only pick up on the basic and obvious things going on in the ring, and in many cases they've been influenced by how the story of the fight has always been told before. So what they see is Ali seemingly getting beat up by one of the hardest punchers the game has ever seen and don't realize how many times Ali is blocking punches with his elbows, arms, or dodging those punches by an inch. They also don't realize how much damage the much less flashy shots by Ali are doing to Foreman. They don't get how mentally unsteady and beaten Foreman is, and how that affects his willingness to fight on, or to try something different.

I've heard from multiple sources that Dundee was trying to tighten them because the ropes were initially so loose that it seemed sure that someone would fall out of the ring. It might not be true, but if loosening the ropes was the plan all along, then why was Dundee constantly screaming at Ali to get off the ropes? :huh