Suppose Ali had a strong 15th round in the FOTC

If Muhammad had won the 15th round,he'd still have won only 7 rounds on my card making it even closer than it was but still behind by one round.

 

No. Fraziers lead was too big.

 

Agreed mate.
Ali wins the last round but still loses the fight.

 

Unless a big 15th includes dropping Joe a few times and forcing a stoppage, nah, he would've lost on total rounds won.

 

I didn't check again but I think now you'd have a really close fight but Frazier still wins. It'd be a conventional close fight with a lot of people thinking Ali won.

I see FOTC as the border between a "controversial fight" and a "close fight" where no one argues the outcome.

 

Good call!
Ali tried to argue the outcome, saying he landed more punches.
But this is not how the rules of professional boxing go.
If things were scored that way, Frazier would likely have fought differently.

Ali did not want to live up to his promise to crawl across the ring & declare Frazier The Greatest if he lost lol!

 

Frazier's lead began with the 11th. You can watch that round here for yourself:

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15th round was just icing on the cake for Frazier. He still would've won.

 

I would have had Frazier scrapping it still I think.

 

Frazier clearly won the 1st fight. His punches landed harder, cleaner, and more effectively. He had Ali nearly knocked out in the 11th round, and had him more badly hurt then than he was in the 15th, although it was a flush clean knockdown on the jaw and Ali was hurt and tired in the 15th as well. But he got right up and was fairly stable, though tired. In the 11th, he was very badly buckled, wobbled and hurt, and probably only the ropes saved him from a knockdown. (BTW, I actually think Ali got dropped twice in the 11th, though the referee did not rule the first one a knockdown; nor when he twice buckled down into the ropes.) But based on the overall trajectory of the fight, the sheer number of brutal flush hooks Frazier landed throughout, to the body and head/jaw, it practically was inevitable that Ali eventually was going to get hurt or dropped. The human brain and body can only take so many of those flush blows for that many rounds. Frazier was a puncher, perhaps not on the level of a Foreman, but being one level below allowed him to be busier, more active, and to keep it up more consistently round after round for 15 rounds and not gas out. Plus he had a certain quickness and timing to his blows that made them hard to defend. Everyone knew the left hook was coming, but no one seemed to be able to do anything about it. So I don't think Frazier needed a knockdown in the 15th to win that fight. To me, that knockdown was the result of the natural progression of the fight more than some fluke out of nowhere that changed the decision.

This is not to say that Ali did not land a lot of blows himself and win rounds. It was a brutal fight in which both took a lot of punishment, and quite frankly, neither man ever was the same again. But Frazier's quick, relentless head movement, fast footwork, pressure, and nonstop inside attack was too much for Ali on that night, despite all of the ferocious, fast, lashing blows that Ali threw and landed. Frazier simply was an unstoppable force that night.

 

I view the FOTC as being a lot closer than most but not sure if a good 15th round would’ve necessarily have gotten Ali over the line for the win…maybe…otherwise perhaps a draw at best?

 

He needed to flip two rounds to get the decision.

 

Muhammad did say that the result was fair post-fight. He did claim he was the true victor later on when the publicity drums for a rematch started. Years later though Muhammad did admit that Joe won the first one fair and square.

 

I only remember one round where I thought Ali was genuinely dominating it strong, and it was not arguable, but I largely remember scoring rounds for Frazier where others were saying Ali was banking early points and thinking "We're simply watching two different matches." I had Frazier so clearly winning the bout by the last round that on any points system, Ali would've had to do something that caused Dexter to anachronistically come out of hiding and analyze the spatter pattern to win it.