1969 - Ali v Frazier

Cooper scored a lucky punch Ali didnt see coming because he wasnt taking Cooper seriously Frazier beat the **** out of Ali when he saw them coming, theres a big difference.

Look at Frazier's destructions of Quarry, Ellis, Foster.

That left hook has more speed and torque that few have ever matched at HW. I would say its at least the equal of Marciano and maybe Dempsey

 

Well that's your opinion.For myself I would not put Frazier in the same class as Dempsey ,and Marciano as a one shot puncher.Cooper did score a lucky punch in so far as Ali was clowning around, I dont suggest otherwise.Cooper knocked senseless a lot of second tier heavies with one punch ,Frazier tended to wear them down with an accumulation of shots.That's my view anyway.

 

Well that's your opinion.For myself I would not put Frazier in the same class as Dempsey ,and Marciano as a one shot puncher.Cooper did score a lucky punch in so far as Ali was clowning around, I dont suggest otherwise.Cooper knocked senseless a lot of second tier heavies with one punch ,Frazier tended to wear them down with an accumulation of shots.That's my view anyway.

 

On this forum I believe we all agree to disagree. I meant no disrespect to anyone. Besides, I didn't mean anyone in particular.

By the way, I agree about your analysis about Joe Frazier almost in toto. I believe I have said the same about good old Smokin' Joe in another thread on this forum.

Regards.

 

Good post. I think the first paragraph sums it up exactly.

 

For the sake of completeness (with a bit of me being an awkward twat thrown in) Mathis was rated in the top 10 by Ring at the time of the Frazier fight. I do prefer the Ring rankings to the alphabet organisations, but I think too many people regard the Ring as sacrosanct when it comes to ratings sometimes. For example, they didn't even feature Monzon throughout nearly all of 1970 so it shows how on the ball they were on a world scale.

 

Monzon never really got much recognition from the yanks. He's gets his due here at ESB, though. I do think the ring ranking system is the most reliable one out there, provided you're looking at American fighters. A bit like Janitor's rankings being good as long as you limit it to fighters before the 20's.

 

Fair enough Chris, i think people forget that Ring is American, some of them seem to regard it as the 'world' magazine. However, Boxing Illustrated rated Monzon #2 at the time of the Nino challenge- then again, that had a lot of Euro influence at the time, so they obviously had more of a clue. :yep

 

"Ali never respected Chuvalo as a puncher." Yeah right! Ali was afraid to fight Chuvalo for a while, and even broke a contract to do so. (See DeJohn v. Chuvalo in Louisville - Ali was in the audience!)

"Ali only lost 1 or 2 rds anyway vs George" I think the fight was closer than that. Possibly Ali had the edge on him because of all the jabs but the judges should have scored all of Chuvalo's shots to the kidneys. I definitely am of the opinion that Ali lost his second fight to Chuvalo, but that was in the 70's.

 

Ali was a different fighter after his lay off , and i give the fleet footed fast moving version the better chance , Ali was toe 2 toe in most of there 70s heavyweight match ups .

 

Without ring rust, Ali by decision.

 

Agree with this post.

Foreman, Liston and Lennox Lewis would have the toughest fight of their careers against the Frazier who destroyed Bob Foster. The only fighter of this group that has a chance at KOing this version of Frazier is George Foreman. However, if the ref does his job, doesn't allow Foreman to push, shove and grab Frazier's shoulders, I'd bet on prime Frazier to make it past the middle rounds en route to a late stoppage or unanimous decision victory.

Too much is made of Foreman's 1973 destruction of a depleted, overweight, overconfident Frazier, who people forget, finished the fight on his feet. I firmly believe that Frazier would have done much better in 1973 had he treated Foreman with the same respect he gave Ali. Frazier didn't look all that good against Ron Stander, which should have been an indication of what the dangers of fighting George Foreman.

 

Pushing, shoving, holding and hitting underneath and grabbing the opponents shoulders is not boxing. These are illegal wrestling tactics which is not boxing. A fighter cannot grab his opponents shoulders and shove him aside to create offensive space. I'm not going to quote the specific lines from the Marquis of Queensberry, but Foreman's tactics had wrestling written all over it. The only way a fighter can generate offense is to punch, and move in order to land more punches.

Ali tried to hold Frazier, push down on his neck with his left hand and shove him aside in Manilla. Carlos Padilla kept slapping Ali's gloves away from Frazier's neck and warned him about the pushing and shoving right from the first round. Mercante didn't do none of this probably to make sure that the ultimate decision of the fight wouldn't be in his hands. There's nothing wrong with the referee keeping a distance from the fighters and letting them decide the outcome of the contest, kinda like NFL refs who don't always call close pass-interference calls. George Foreman's tactics were plainly obvious and should have been stopped by Mercante.