Ali’s disdain for the body

Everyone can always punch more to the body.

 

yes would be improved with it
it enhance the style to punch more at body. no doubt

 

I don't think he would benefit from throwing body shots because there was a valid reason why he didn't throw them.

The way he thought - floating like a butterfly, usually on the back foot, basing on reflexes and stinging real fast when he saw the smallest openings - there was hardly any place to really plant his feet and drive a hook damaging enough under the ribs in that.

You need a lot of power to hurt a guy with a body shot. Hardly anything Ali ever threw was hard enough and he knew that so he abandoned it almost entirely.

 

When Ali had legs, he had a very good jab to the body and sometimes threw hooks to the body. As said, the most he threw to the body was likely Vs Williams.

Ali was taller than most of his opponents, going to the body with anything other than jabs, would mean being closer to his opponent, evening up the playing field. Ali preferred to outbox his man at a distance where he could hit but still slip, pull or dance away from return fire.

There are times when he stands in range for body shots - Patterson, Chuvalo, Lewis but he doesn't throw body shots, preferring to show his defensive reflexes and throw flurries at the head.

 

He was mostly an outside fighter. Not a lot of outside guys go to the body well because the opponents head much easier to hit from range. Think about someone in a fighting stance. The head is forward over the body and when that person punches the head moves forward even more and is easier to hit from range.

Conversely, an inside fighter is typically moving forward and not trying to establish range. They are underneath and in a much better position to land body shots which are typically hooks and uppercuts on the inside.

 

A preference for head has long been the downfall of many a fighting men.

 

I think for Ali the problem would have been to throw a body shot he would have had to drop his body weight and that would make it harder for him to be evasive/light on his feet. He would often narrowly evade a punch by pulling back. Had he been a few centimeters lower because he was throwing to the body, he may not have been able to avoid those punches.

 

He did go to the body a little more in his early bouts. He beat Donnie Fleeman with what the UPI described as "a devastating body attack that damaged his opponent's rib."

 

A body punch is least reliant on power. The target is what matters.

 

Excellent post and nice observation regarding the Williams bout. If one studies the bout, they can see Ali did things in that fight he never did in any other. Going to the body as you mentioned was one of them.

 

I thought that fight was stopped on cuts around the eyes and nose?

Another interesting thing about Fleeman is he's said to have fought Sonny Liston though their is no official record of the bout. Fleeman himself said the following about the bout "I didn't know who he was except he was a monster, and I felt sorry for whoever was going to fight him. Then I go out to see my opponent. It was him [Liston]. I lost that fight sitting beside him...I was never knocked out. But Sonny Liston hit me so hard that if I had not got tangled up in the ropes, I would have been knocked out."

Very strange