With all the talk of Norton on this forum recently, I bought it upon myself to watch one of my favorite fights that I haven't seen in years. His rematch with Ali. I decided to score it, as I've heard many here say Ali never beat Norton. I have to say I thought Ali won this fight comfortably (coming from someone who actually prefers Norton as both a fighter and a human being). I honestly can't even see a way one can even entertain a Norton victory here without an agenda. Ali swept the first half of the fight barring maybe the 5th. A win for Norton was out of the question at that point. He needed to win all the remaining rounds to even garner a draw, which he clearly did not do. I scored it 8-4 Ali, though I wouldn't argue with a 7-5. I'd be much interested in seeing all of your thoughts. Thank you in advance. Just to clarify this is referring to the 2nd fight in their trilogy NOT the third.
Norton had really big rds in 7-8 and 5 and 10 were also a clear rds for him from memory. 11 was close, with Ali starting fast and closing strong but Norton dominating the middle. But I don't see any other rounds for Norton, really. Maybe one of the others could be even, but better than 5 rds and 1 even for Norton is probably a bit of a stretch imo and 8-4 to Ali is entirely possible since he was good at just nabbing close rds. So close but clear for Ali.
In a scoring sense this fight was quite like Lopez-Loma, event though Norton gave Ali a tougher fight than Loma gave Lopez imo. Just like Loma, Norton didn't do much for the first half of the fight and Ali, just like Lopez, won the last round convincingly. So it's kind of hard to see just where either Norton or Loma could have seen themselves get robbed. In fairness to Norton, he never complained about the decision, though.
I scored it 8-7 Norton. One round flipped and it goes to Ali so I don’t feel it was as bad a robbery as it was made out to be. However, the issue to me was that Norton was far more dominant and I mean dominant in many of the rounds he won. Where as Ali, Nicked his rounds in competitive rounds. So the overall perception of the fight is that Norton was robbed. But if you score each round individually I found it to be close fight. Again though Ali got every close round which I think shows their was a bias towards him. I could see why Norton was gutted. Ali got all the close calls late in his career.
It appears you're referring to the third fight, which was a 15 rounder. My thread is in regards to the 2nd. Thanks for sharing your thoughts though!
Yeah, I remember Norton even said the first fight could've gone either way which puzzled me to say the least.
I will watch this one again when I get to the 70s, but I remember when I watched it, it was close, but I think I scored it 8-7 for Norton. I was in no way opposed to the Ali victory, I just hated how the judges' cards didn't reflect how close it was. And good for you swag. It's great this is one of your favorite fights. It was a really good tactical fight in my recollection. I could see a lot of people calling it boring.
Oh ****, yeah. Duh! Yeah, I think this one was close too, but I had it for Ali, like 7-5 for Ali. I've heard that there are even people who think Norton won this fight. While that's certainly not the most outlandish thing I've ever heard, I think this is the one fight of the trilogy Ali definitely won. Those last 3 rounds Ali had were very critical to his win I think, otherwise he may have lost it. Great slugfest. One of my favorite heavyweight contests. I think I've seen that one 5, 6 times. It's that damn good. George thought it was just okay though.
No problem. Please change your vote in the polls accordingly. And yes I definitely agree, it's one of my favorites as well.
