Pre Exile Ali could not defeat '74 Foreman

Agree 1000%!:good This is one of my pet peeves of boxing conventional wisdom, the mythical "prime" Ali, and the fiction that age is necessarily a bad thing to hw's. In truth, in HW boxing especially, age can be a very good thing. For the speed and athleticism you lose, you can gain experience, chin, weight and power, as Ali did. All those things are what Ali needed to beat Foreman. I doubt preexile Ali eludes Foreman indefinitely, and I'm certain if and when he was caught, he would have taken it much worse than in 74.

 

This should cover it.

Comparing the weights he came in at for his best performances:

Liston I - 210 pounds
Patterson I - 210 pounds
Terrell - 212 pounds

vs

Frazier II - 212pounds
Foreman - 216 pounds
Norton II - 212 pounds

Yeah...one would think Ali was 50 pounds heavier after the lay-off considering how people keep emphasizing his apparent "growth".

Baseless.

A rusty Ali took a monstrous beating from Frazier immediately after his lay-off. Having 2 relatively easy fights in 4 years should have had a negative effect on his punch resistance, if anything. So unless he somehow got tougher getting fat and protesting while banned from the sport, I'm going to assume he always had it in him.

Debatable. Ali might have been craftier but that's because he lost a portion of his athleticism and needed to make up for it in other ways. If you think laying at the ropes covering your face, taking a beating because you don't have the conditioning you used to have is "smart", then more power to you.

Either way, Ali always seemed like a smart fighter to me. Very comfortable in the ring and always in control.

Nope.

 

Bonavena was a tough fight by any standards.
Relative to getting beaten up by Frazier it wasn't so tough, but you'd still have to go a long way to describe it as "relatively easy". It was Ali's toughest fight to that date.

 

I think the mental toughness thing makes sense, as I stated in an earlier post.
Arguably, Ali had to experience those defeats to Frazier and Norton to develop the superhuman powers it took to defeat Foreman.
It's called "experience".
I'm not convinced of it, but it does make some sense.

 

Which other fighters do you hold this as true for? Dempsey against Tunney? Liston against Clay? Frazier against Foreman? Foreman against Young? Foreman against Holy? Holy against Tyson? Holy against Lewis? Wlad against Fury?

I would agree that there are a few, like for example Lewis and Wlad, that showed improvement in their early 30's. But they turned pro quite late and, crucially, improved under a new trainer (Steward).

Ali had had a long pro career with a couple of brutal wars behind him and the same trainer, so he doesn't really follow this template. His case is more like Holy in his 30's. But, yeah, some would claim that the older Holy did better against Tyson than the younger would. I'm not one of them, though. And if you said that before the fight you'd be laughed out of the room. As you would if you said before Ali-Foreman that Ali's age played to his advantage.

A younger and greener Foreman had struggled with Peralta and a somewhat older and more experienced Foreman would lose to Young. What on god's green earth is there to suggest that he'd beat the Ali of 66-67?

 

What made Ali a legend was simple, his speed declined post exile. This made his fights more competitive and he had to show more heart and grit to overcome opponents i.e. Frazier, Foreman, Shavers, Bonavena, Norton etc.
Ali of 1964 - 1967 was such an incredible boxer with rapid flurry's and great reactions that if he faced the above mentioned in that period, the fights would have been far more one sided.

 

chuvalo was a natural 217 pounder, and he was not packed of muscle like tyson, he had huge frame, a total monster

 

He also faced a new bigger, faster, and stronger generation of heavyweight.

 

The fastest he faced was Patterson in 1965 (and, no, his back wasn't injured for the whole fight).

Strongest would be between Liston and Foreman. Not much between them.

The 70's HW was a bit bigger, but not by that much. Liston was as big as Foreman more or less, Terrell almost as big as Bugner, Wiliams almost as big as Lyle. Lewis, Norton and Wepner were a bit bigger than the guys Ali faced in the 60's (except the above mentioned).

Incidentally, Chuvalo and Patterson who both faced him before and after his lay-off said the pre-exile version was better.

 

I think pre-exile Ali would have been a nightmare for Foreman.
For all George was good at cutting off the ring I think he would have had great difficulty getting himself set and landing on Ali.
Despite his own good jab he still would have been eating the jab all night and rapid fire combinations, let's face it Ali managed to land plenty on George when backed up on the ropes in Zaire when under fire.
Whether George would have gassed as quickly is debatable because he would probably have been unloading less against the elusive Ali, but he would have had to chase much more which would have taken more out of his legs.
Either way I think a battered and demoralised Foreman does eventually gas out at some point and is stopped.

 

Great point there about Chuvalo and Patterson. There view would have been simple, in their 2nd contest's with Ali post exile they would have found his reactions, movement and hand speed had dropped. As a result they had more chance of catching him.

SRR, SRl, Duran, RJJ, Tyson etc were all better fighters when they were younger when they had more speed. Ali was no different. When he was older, he became tougher, stronger, fought smart, relied on an incredible chin as well.

 

This whole obsession with "Ali getting stronger in his 30's" - which you for some reason don't hear about Dempsey, Louis, Liston, Frazier, Holmes, Tyson etc... Did he really?

Not that it would have mattered more than for the above mentioned as a substitute for loss of speed, timing and stamina (less really, since Ali didn't have the great equalizer of punching power), but just as food for thought. Did Ali's strength even recover from the 3,5 years his muscles were away from the every day training and intense training camps a pro boxer goes through? Without even putting on real muscle mass?

And this very questionable increase in strength should somehow have more than substituted for the loss of speed and stamina for a speedster without a punch? When it didn't for punchers such as Dempsey, Louis and Tyson?

Is that really more reasonable than just fans looking for excuses that fighters they like (Frazier and Foreman it seems) were bested by a man past his prime (tbf Frazier was past his best too in his losses to Ali, but Foreman was as smack middle at his peak as it gets)?

Ali was plain better. At the end of the day there's no more to it than that. Had he still been at his peak, he'd made the difference even clearer.

 

66-67 ali was better than 70s ali in every single department except experience, but then i think that a 60 years old ancient got more experience than me but he does not beat me.

 

he did hit harder in 66-67 too, he was more explosive and faster

 

Ali was a ****ing fighting machine in the 60's. He was the perfect specimen. He had perfect body proportions. Enough said.