Rico verhoeven vs prime muhammad Ali

Oh god no

Ali by brutal demolition.

This is also I meant when I said that Ali is a better combination puncher than Usyk and one Usyk fan boy disagreed with me yesterday.

Ali isn’t going to wait to unload brutal 5-7 punch combos. Rico would be seeing stars by round 5

 

Usyk is overly cautious with combination punching , especially in early rounds, despite having good natural ability. The refusal to let go with both hands in multi punch combinations. The same tippy tap combinations with 4 soft punches with 2 hard ones mixed in .


It doesn’t work vs guys who don’t fall for feints. This is why Beterbiev gave him nightmares and under pro scoring rules, Beterbiev would have won the fight IMO.

Usyk should have unleashed proper two fister combos early to earn Rico’s respect but he refused to do that. This is why I found it absurd when his fans were claiming he is a better combination puncher than Ali

 

Would Ali come into the ring at 39 and hog fat?

 

I knew it. I called this in another thread

 

Irrelevant. Ali was only 3 years off from being formally diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He was reportedly struggling to pass the medical test prior to Holmes fight. Usyk is a medically fit fighter. 39
Year old Ali wouldn’t get cleared to fight by any decent medics board

 

Similar result as Ali vs Coopman.

 

Age is just one factor, one that the modernists lust after due to modern sports science and medicine, spacing fights out ridiculously comparative to the old days, and the general lack of wear and tear like hard sparring etc.

Usyk has his 25th professional fight tonight. By 25 fights Ali had Liston x 2 behind him and was then hitting his 60's (form)peak against Mildenberger, Williams, Terrell and Folley. One can only imagine how easily that Ali would have dealt with Rico.

 

Amazing isn’t it? They refuse to accept that scheduling matters. I have had guys in the general forum argue that Usyks 300 something amateur fights are the same thing or somehow more exhausting than Ali and Louis defending their actual world titles 20 plus times while fighting 3 times a year .

just mad.

it it’s so easy to fight 3 times a year as world champ, why don’t most modern guys do it? Because they know they are more likely to have an off night .

Ali beat Foreman in late 74 and lost to Spinks 4 years later. Including his title winning and title losing efforts, he fought 12 times in just under 4 years

 

Yeah the hundreds of amateur fights is the go to for a whole host of guys including Usyk and GGG. GGG actually had a similar amount of amateur fights and at this point 20 more pro fights.

The likes of Ali and hundreds of others were having tougher sparring sessions than a lot of these amateur fights. Talents like Usyk and GGG would have won multitudes of these amateur fights ohhhhhhhhh so easily too. You also don't have to flog yourself into the sort of shape that allows you to go 10-15 rounds in one stint. It's night and day.

 

There are some boxing fans that are so stubborn that they cannot take a step back and just admit they got it wrong every now and again. They would rather die on the hill that Usyk is the GOAT, even after this disgraceful Rico fight, rather than putting their hands up and admitting they got a bit carried away with a guy who has had less than 10 fights at heavyweight.

 

The level of cope and denial is incredible at this point. I mean, I'll accept Usyk is aging, may not have trained hard (despite promising he had) and Rico fought a surprisingly good fight. The same guys that piled onto Fury are now throwing out multitudes of excuses for Usyk including the ridiculous notion that the stoppage was fine. All in all it's a bad night for Usyk excepting that he got home, with huuuuge controversy. He needs a good performance or two to go out on now to rebuild some prestige. Fury lost a heap of prestige over Ngannou but one things for sure - you won't see any Usyk followers bagging him for it again LOL

Any talk of GOAT heavyweight is surely done tho.

 

rico

 

Even before this fight. GOAT talk was a bit over the top.

you need to beat a wide range of guys to be in goat category. Depth is crucial.

Holmes and Lewis didn’t beat any prime atgs but look at the depth

Holmes- Shavers x 2, Norton, Witherspoon, Mercer, Cooney, Weaver, Williams, Smith etc

Lewis- Tua, Ruddock, Bruno, Vitali, Tucker, Mercer, Briggs, Ruddock


Wins over Joshua, Fury and Dubois are fine and dandy but you need at least 10 title defenses and some more depth to be in the goat category


I still think Usyk deserves a ton of credit for being the 1 guy in his era, unifying the titles , you can make a very very good case for him being an all time top 10 hw. But goat or top 5 is bordering on absurd