Didn’t Ali say something like “ He only went down to get a closer look at Elizabeth Taylor sitting at ringside ”
All three times Ali was knocked down in his career came from left hooks, Sonny Banks Henry Cooper Joe Frazier. There was a fourth knockdown called against him when he fought Chuck Wepner but replays showed it was actually a slip .
Not just Cooper's bitterness but almost an entire country's. I thought Cooper won the fight but the nation's subsequent dislike of Bugner was ridiculous. Any criticism should have been directed solely at the referee as he was the only person officially scoring the fight. Michael Parkinson even put Bugner down (not in the boxing sense) on national television during his 1971 interview with Muhammad Ali. It was in his response ('Yes, well, no comment') to Ali saying that Bugner was a good up and coming prospect. It was a disgraceful thing to say especially when Bugner was only 21 at the time. You can see it here (it's time-stamped): This content is protected
"Chinny" is strong, but he got dropped and hurt badly by a guy roughly the same size as Bivol despite having Cooper's number in virtually every way. Again, not saying he was David Price, but he wasn't as steel jawed as he was later.
Not the only time Parkinson tried to belittle Bugner in televised conversation with Ali. Easy for the smug prig and churl who gets paid for talking to sit on his ass and sweepingly dismiss the hard work and craft of a far better man than he.
Exactly. I remember Parkinson saying in his second interview with Ali (just weeks after the Rumble in the Jungle) that Bugner had no class. Bugner was the European Heavyweight Champion and had recently beaten Jimmy Ellis. The year before he did something that no other boxer ever did - he went the distance with both Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. But none of that mattered because he got a dodgy decision over Henry Cooper...
Ali was up at three seconds of a possible ten count. My definition of chinny has more to do with getting knocked out. I think Ali's chin always made it difficult to KO him. But I understand your point, in some folks' books.
Ali wasn't chinny. He had a great chin. He was heavier than a lot of his opponents though and when he stepped up to Brit Level against Cooper and Bugner he wound up getting dropped heavily by a LHW and taken the distance x 2 by Joe Bugner. He performed much better down at lower Brit Level (sometimes mistaken for American Level) against Richard Dunn and Brian London who had incurred like 22 losses between them prior to facing Ali. Would love to have seen how Ali fared at elite Brit Level against the likes of Lewis and Fury.
