Jimmy Young

If Jimmy had beaten Ken Norton in their 1977 matchup, would Ali had faced him instead of meeting up with Leon Spinks?

 

Many think Young did beat him.

 

Given that Ali struggled with Jimmy in the first fight, and was using safe angles to hold on to the belt as it was during the late 70's, I have my doubts about him giving Young a second chance. My guess, is that the WBC would have stripped Ali for failure to fight Young again, and the WBA would have permitted him to proceed with the Spinks fight.

 

Ali was cheering for Norton during a broadcast of Young-Norton. It is telling that despite the trouble he had with Norton, he'd still rather fight him than Young; i think you are right in assessing that Ali rather not fought Young again. Then again, he didn't fight Norton either....

 

No.

 

Jimmy Young, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes; three fighters that Ali wanted no part of at the time.

 

But then they learned that number of punches landed can alter scoring within a round and therefore all of Young's 19 losses were legit. :hat

 

Yes, and I am one of those. To answer the thread starters question, i think Young would have easily outpointed Spinks. Poor Leon would have been made to look as though he had never boxed before.

 

Ali did not want to fight Young again, Jimmy made everyone look bad and I thought he did enough to beat Ali, or I should say in the ring, Ali was hard to beat with the officials...you would have to beat him like Norton did in fight 1 or how Frazier beat him in fight 1 to get the decision...Young,Norton were on the bad ends of decisions but they did not beat him like the guys first mentioned

 

I, too, thought Young beat Norton. I scored the fight 145-142 for Jimmy.

 

Scoring punches! Ridiculous!

 

Only saw the Norton fight once,on TV when it happened.Remember thinking the decision was terrible.IMO young completely outboxed him.Acase also could be made for Jimmy to have beaten Ali,but he was never going to get that decision.Incidentally,one of our (British)heavies got a draw with Young.Probably either Billy Aird or Les Stevens.Whoever,was a good performance.Any posters know anything about that one,or maybe saw it??

 

I think he would have taken the Spinks route.

 

for the record, I think Young beat Norton

 

Little Jimmy Young, knew Ken Norton very well.

He was out in San Diego from February thru July 1970
to help work out with Kenny as his 'chief' sparring partner.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out to well, when Kenny fought
Jose Luis Garcia on July 2, 1970.