I thought about it before and my main candidate is Corbett. Ali is pretty much bigger and more durable version of Corbett to me. What do you think about it?
Ali said he copied Walcott’s style and you can see elements of it but it was def a style all his own that I’ve yet to see replicated. When I see someone doing the mirage in the ring again I’ll tip my hat to em
Does Billy Conn count? He was pretty similar Corbett and Wallcott are good shouts, can't really think of many more
Walcott, Conn, Tunney, Corbett Walcott would be my #1 pick. Walcott was more savvy with the counter punches and hit harder, therefore adjusting his style wheras Ali kept a range more often
I thought of him too based on the one film we have of him and Robert Thornton's 1960's Boxing Illustrated about Slattery, but he wasn't really a heavyweight. He did hold his hands low and did a lot of dancing around similar to what Ali did later.
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see.” This quote is most often associated with boxing legend Muhammad Ali, but Ali borrowed it from his trainer Angelo Dundee, who used it to describe the first Light Heavyweight boxer he trained to win a world championship: New Orleanian Willie Pastrano https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...01EEC8616E8A740BDCCF01EEC8616E8A740&FORM=VIRE
I absolutely love that maneuver. Gets you to lower your guard by moving away casually and then does what is essentially a legal sucker punch!
Walcott fought nothing like Ali. I guess you could make the case that Ali fought like a bigger, stronger, faster, better trained, more durable Corbett with a far more advanced skill set and offensive repertoire, maybe, but the differences still far outweigh the similarities. So I wouldn’t.