What if Muhammad Ali had kept his weight down..?

The age is not a factor with Ali, but definitely the ring wars and less motivation.

 

If Ali had kept his weight down he would be lighter,FACT...
His legend wouldnt be as BIG...

 

If Ali had stayed in the 213-217 range longer and had avoided ballooning between fights, it would have improved his performance long term.

 

Ali always seem nice and hydrated sans the idiotic Holmes debacle.

Cutting weight late into his career, which probably would have partly been water weight if only partly, might have resulted in him becoming damaged faster.

 

He may have lasted longer.And he needed to lay off the ladies too.

 

Don't think so. He was too old to try and dance for 15 anymore, so he did the right thing: lifted weights and bulked up so he would be more effective slugging it out with Frazier.

I actually wonder if he did the right thing getting down as low as 212 when 32. That was the ideal weight for him at 25, but not necissarily at 32. I think he looked really good at about 217-218, which he was in the rematches with Quarry and Chuvalo and the first fight with Bugner.

 

the peak ali that fought williams & terrell could dance 15 rounds but then he was banned for 4 years. no comeback person could get that light of feet back (but confidence was always there!). look at all the fighters who have tried to comeback - uk recent ones prince naseem & now hatten (he was no dancer) but massive output - once you've had a big break it's harder to come back than one thinks it is as they found out. well u can comeback but nothing compared to what u were!

ali was different cuz he came back in 70 but it took him another 3 years to get somewhere near his best e.g. norton 2, frazier 2, foreman - that's 3 years of constant fights to get back to top level e.g. reflexes - they don't work very well after a big break unless you start the whole constant fighting process again.

young ali trained everyday from the age of 12 to 25 - no break. then 4 years out. hmmm....cus d'mato knew the score. same thing happened to tyson after jail, big break before dempsey v tunney 1, louis comeback etc. they're peak has gone unfortunately.

ali peak 66/67, tyson peak 87/88, dempsey peak 18/19

 

are we forgetting that Ali had parkinsions syndrome anyways
i think that's what really prevented him from fighting at a very old age like foreman and holyfield.
He would've been succesful if he stayed in shape. If only every boxer had Holyfield's conditioning.
But in my opinion it wouldnt matter even if he had his weight down. Parkinsons syndrome destroyed his whole performance around the end of his career.

 

But wouldn't he be very young in the 40's.... But if it weren't for Parkinsons Syndrome, I think he would've fought into the mid 80s. An old Ali, without parkinsons, may have been able to fight Tyson.

 

Yeah, at the weigh-in. But he said himself in an interview afterwards that he came in at 213, and Frazier also commented at ringside that Ali looked a couple of lbs lighter than his weight at the weigh-in.

Perhaps he had just had a meal and drunk water before the weigh-in. He had no reason to really watch his weight before it. It's pretty normal to fluctuate a couple of lbs on a day-to-day basis, and that might have been the case here.