Muhammad Ali 1973 v Ken Norton 1976

I think I may have been ewading that article too.

 

Ken Norton at his best would have been poison for Ali at his very best, IMO..it was a matter of styles and Eddie Futch.

 

Over the championship distance, the superbly conditioned Ali of the second Norton bout decisions any version of Ken in a close UD. Norton was very, very good when at his finest, but he wasn't a true great.

 

Do you think that a 1967 version of Ali might beaten Norton in slightly more decisive fashion?

 

You're probably right...

On a sidenote though, it really is amazing to me how fast and graceful Ali was in the 60's, when I look at him on film.. I don't think any heavy weight before or after has moved like that.. Muhammad was certainly still very fast and fluid in the 70's, but I do think that he had lost some of the speed and workrate... In some of his later fights, he almost appears a bit more flat footed, and resorts to holding tactics more often, probably to compensate for some of that lost ability... I think it would really be something to see the 60's Ali against the greats of the 70's.

 

Due to styles, Ken may never have been an easy bout for Ali, but I can see Muhammad continuing the pattern set by the first several rounds of their middle fight until he had it sewn up on the cards. (If you recall, Norton followed him around the ring but failed to pull the trigger while a dancing Ali did all the punching. At his peak, Muhammad's legs could have carried him through a few more rounds like that.)

I have stated before my belief that if Ali had never been forced into exile that Ken, and not Frazier, might have eventually handed him his first defeat, but your question has to do with peak for peak.

 

Although this is entirely speculative, I think boxing was robbed of Ali's best years frankly... He was only 25 years old and reaching his peak when he left the sport in 1967.... I can only imagine, what a 27 year old Ali, with further experience might have looked like by say 1969.... I don't even know if Joe Frazier would be remembered as a champion today, under such circumstances..

 

Cosell repeatedly emblazoned the concept that he lost the three best years of his fighting life to exile into the public consciousness.

Frazier could have gotten his first shot at Ali in late 1967 or certainly sometime in 1968. At no time would he have been ready until after getting the rugged 15 rounds of the Bonavena rematch under his belt in December 1968. Even then, while he would have presented a hectic title challenge for Ali, I suspect that Muhammad's retained athleticism would have been too much for him to overcome.

With no imposed exile, Ali becomes boxing's first champion to reach 30 successful title defenses. Without the benefit of a WW II hiatus, he also could squash the record of Louis for longest title reign, and may well have ruled uninterrupted for over a dozen years. (The Guinness Book of World Records always listed Louis as having the longest reign of any champion in any weight division, but I feel this was compromised somewhat by his wartime inactivity. Holmes defended the title in eight consecutive years, which I also believed should have been acknowledged by Guinness. Whether or not Louis could have matched or exceeded that, the fact remains that he didn't. In complete fairness to Louis however, he deserves the same speculation on what he might have achieved without WW II that Ali gets because of Vietnam.)

He was off to a fast start in 1967, after a stellar five defense year in 1966. Come May 24, he was slated to defend against Bonavena in Tokyo. (His first defense in 1966 was on March 29 against Chuvalo. By that same date in 1967, he'd already faced Folley and Terrell.) He was on maybe a seven or even eight defense pace for 1967. Liston, Terrell, Ellis, Frazier and Foreman simply do not measure up to that exalted standard of a fighting champion. Ali's stride during his late 20s would have been an awesome, nearly incomprehensible spectacle.

 

Agree on all accounts,

Had Ali's reign not been interrupted, I think that by 1970 he would have likely picked up defenses against Frazier, Quarry, Mathis, Bonavena, Ellis and perhaps a few others... By the dawn of the new decade, there would have been little else left for him to fight. Men like Norton, Shavers, Lyle, and Foreman were still years away from emerging on the scene.. Ali would have been left with probably Mac Foster, Bob Foster and the Ron Standers of the world.. Could this have helped him or hurt him in a motivational sense? Who knows. There might have been a brief period where a bum of the month club would be taking place, and when a REAL challenger came along, it would be difficult to anticpate just exactly how Muhammad would have responded to it...