Fighting past age 40

Show me a single fight where Ali sliced up anyone who was his height or above. He managed to fox Foreman into punching himself out but do you think he could do that to Klitschko?

Ali in his day had huge reach advantages over almost every single fighter he faced, those that were bigger than him generally had limited co-ordination and technique.

Vitali can fight 12 full paced rounds, throws punches like a horse kick, is a scientist in and out of the ring and has a massive height advantage over Ali.

It's not even a fair fight, if you transpose Ali from 69 to Vitali of 2005.

If you take a kid with Cassius Clay's upbringing, pride, want to be the best, confidence and give him the right boxing education, nutrition and such - maybe then he'll dominate todays HW division, The mentality Ali had was world class, but an athlete from 1970 will never compete with an athlete from 2000+

 

your underestimating the size and length of ali

vitali is slow and immobile

 

You're over-estimating the speed and accuracy of Ali. I fought for several years as a LMW in amateurs and MW/LHW in Pros. You put me in the ring with a welterweight who was twice as skilled as I was and I'd still beat him.

Why?

Because the basics when done well are super effective when they're coming from a much rangier fighter with decent footwork.

Vitali isn't the easiest HW to hit and even when you do, he's one of the hardest of all time to knock down/out. He has so many advantages over Ali, 30lbs of pure muscle mass with no real loss of endurance, much more power, an equal in chin, height and for all the **** about the Klitschko's being robotic - both have quick handspeed for HW standards.

The realistic scenario is that a fighter of Ali's build today is not competitive at HW. He'll likely fight at CW.

 

Oh dear :-(

 

That's all fine, but how does that suggest that Floyd beats Greb? The lowest he ever fought was Middleweight. By your logic Greb beats Floyd, right?

 

Greb at MW wasn't anywhere near as strong as Floyd at 154, nor as fast, nor as skilled.

Greb was great for his era, but for his era only. His conditioning wouldn't be anywhere near Floyd and his skill set even worse.

That's the other difference of the day, back then, you had to be Top 5 to make a decent living otherwise you were killing yourself fighting every second week and never training properly.

These days, being Top 20 gives you a full time salary and full time training possibility, the divisions are deeper than they've ever been, hence why Baldomir can come up and beat Gatti and Judah unexpectedly.

 

Well theres a lot of factors

better nutrition, better knowledge of the human body, better work out methods,

also i know some dont wanna hear but roids probably have a lot to do with it in some cases

also fighing once or twice a yr creates longevity

 

People live longer too, its like magic.

 

Top guys used to fight every 2 or 3 months. Add that in with advancements in health care, nutrition, knowledge, and exercise routines and it's really no mystery at all.

 

I still don't see it. Chris byrd gave Vitali problems, not just talking about the injury. But stylistically Byrd was putting up a good fight, and whenever he did tag vitali, he looked discouraged. Not that he wasn't winning but a guy like byrd gave him problems. Take Cassius Clay and put him in with Vitali whos big and strong, but has no where near the hand or footspeed of ali, ali moves all night and beats him to the punch. Also Ali had an iron chin and better conditioning. I also boxed in the Ametures and no for a fact that a smaller guy with twice the skill can win, and sometimes easily. I was 160 doing the regular round robin sparring and went in against Jorge Abiague, a flyweight. He was so fast and quick, and his reflexes were so sharp that he was just too quick for me to land on consistently. I say this without downplaying my own skills, as I am a pretty good boxer. Agree to disagree maybe, but I have no odubt in my mind that Ali just makes vitali look like a big oaf for the course of the whole fight.

 

Bernard's is the superior accomplishment. Still, it is more a product of the many generation downturn in the sport.

If young gifted fit athletes were pursuing professional boxing it would be irrelevant that older athletes are better served by today's medical advancements, training techniques, standards of living, etc. Those same benefits would adhere to a younger physically peak athlete as well.

It is the lack of quality athletes pursuing boxing that has allowed BHOP, RJJ, GJ, JT, & AT to elongate their careers. In these divisions, with no size differential, talented young athletes would be running these 40+ year olds straight out the door.


Only the heavyweight division (due to not having a upper limit) enables a compensating factor to come into play where it could be quite advantageous to be the largest as an offset to being the oldest which could work to lengthen a career.

 

He gave him so many problems he lost every single round.

Let's be serious, had it not been for the injury win, Byrd would almost never even be mentioned.

 

i wouldn't say in bed by 9:30 cause a couple a weeks ago he was on friday night fights and it was way pass 9:30 lol

 

I think the current trend of fighters fighting into their 40s has more downsides than upsides. 45 year old heads don't deal with being clobbered on a consistent basis as well as 30 year old ones and the end result for most of these guys is yet to be seen.