Team Cooney offered Ali 2.5 million or $100,000 a year for life to fight the Cooney in Madison Square Garden in 1979. Ali refused. At this point, Cooney would have beaten him? Yes or No?
Considered the health state in which Ali was against Holmes Cooney would have probably won for Alis retire or on points.
Cooney may have killed him. Ali has so many ring miles on him by 1979. Especially with Ali trying to rope a dope which he had to at that point. If you are stunned and the rope are stopping from going all the way down that is a bad spot. Like Ken Norton discovered.
never knew about this, so i gotta doubt it, since i read a lot about ali through the years. what is your source?
Let's be honest, if this fight had actually happened then we'd have seen Ali for the first time time laid out on the canvas! People thought Marciano was rough on Louis!!, this would have seemed like putting a kitten in with pit bull. I always thought that if Leon had being a big puncher then Ali would have probably been kod that night, luckily for Muhammad he wasn't But Cooney could hit like hell so I see a devastating stoppage win in a few rounds for Cooney. And just think.. He'd be the lineal champion!!
Ali was a very sick man in 1979. A shot fighter sick with the condition that would eventually kill him. Why create such a thread? What’s the purpose?
Cooney...but this is a pretty unfair match-up imo. I also don't see Cooney having it easy...Ali did still have his ring savvy (it's the only thing that basically kept him upright during the Holmes fight). Dundee probably would have stopped it in seven or eight rounds.
Cooney would have beaten Ali pretty bad as Ali's health issues were evident, a mismatch, too bad that Cooney would have not fought the Ali of 1967.
Imo the Ali that beat Foreman and Frazier III would have stopped Cooney as well. Though many argue that Ali was in decline beginning with the 1970 comeback, to me things intensified for the worse by the time of TiM. Which is why TiM was quite heroic an effort from both Ali and Frazier: Frazier had been shot since after FOTC and wanted revenge for the hugfest that was their second fight, and Ali unexpectedly struggled against both Lyle and Wepner. The prime Ali Frazier fight will in most minds be FOTC, and righteously so imo. But the most courageous fight of the trilogy by far was TiM. So, when people whom weren't around start downplaying the latter I tend to see them as just plain not getting the context (and I can partly sympathize: sports performances can sometimes live or die by the context they're set within).
