Interviewer:- "Your trainer, Angelo Dundee, tells me that you are an amazing judge of fighters. He said you can watch a future opponent box a round or two and know exactly how to beat him when you get him into the ring. The only other men who could do that successfully, to my knowledge, were two of the greatest lightweights who ever lived, Joe Gans and Benny Leonard. How do you go about sizing up an opponent." Cassius Clay:-" I read that Gans could do it. But I didn't know about Leonard. How do I do it? Well, I watch the way a man holds his hands. How he moves his feet. But the real trick is to spot the way he puts his punches together. For example: A guy throws a jab. What does he throw next? A hook? Another jab? An uppercut? You ask what difference does it make? I'll tell you. All people have habits. They keep doing the same things over and over again. Now I figure those things out in advance, so when I get a guy in the ring I got a great big edge going for me because I know what he's going to do. I won a lot of my fights because I had it all figured out in advance." - A young Cassius Clay, ranked 7th in the world at the time, interviewed in 1962 two years before he faced the fearsome Sonny Liston for the Heavyweight Title. This content is protected
