[1974] More ex-champs' Ali-Foreman predictions

Sharkey said he picked Ali in all his fights except the first Frazier one.
In the book In This Corner by Peter Heller, Jack Sharkey's interview is full of praise for the fight Ali and Frazier put on.
I can't see what's bad about what he said.
People seem to be forgetting that Foreman was looking invincible and Ali was considered past it.

 

I was thinking mostly of how he easy he thought he'd beat Ali. But that might be because of self-confidence.

As you say, he says that he picked Ali in nearly ever fight before that.

 

Yeah, he did seem to go off on a boastful tangent there.

 

Sharkey said he almost always bet on Ali...he liked good boxers like himself

 

One person who called it correctly was Willie Pep.

 

Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing, but Foreman had demolished Frazier and Norton, both of who had beaten Ali.

You can understand that it would have been hard to pick against Foreman.

 

I should have expanded on Tunney (as i am talking of him overall post boxing) but it's not their picks i have a problem with as almost everyone picked Foreman, absolutely.

Sharkey's comments about popping Ali and putting him out are downright embarrassing.

Tunney said Dempsey would have knocked out Holmes and Norton in one round. He said Ali wasn't as great as Willard. He said a lot of things, embarrassing things.

You yourself said of him - "Tunney was a pompous racist idiot in earlier times anyway. He'd probably always been an idiot."

I reckon you were onto something.

 

Yes but what he said overall was embarrassing. Not his pick, overall. He was certainly watching enough to give a description of his chances and how.

 

Fair enough. Yeah, Tunney was bad, but his quote in the OP on this thread was fair enough at the time.

Fair enough. I try to give 70-year-old ex-champs a bit of a pass when they go off like that. Not always, but I should do, like if Larry Holmes or George Foreman went on about what they'd do to Fury or Joshua, it's all good fun.

Yeah, Tunney stands out as an embarrassment generally, I agree.

Although, Dempsey KO1 Norton is actually reasonable.

 

Dempsey could possibly stop Norton fast, absolutely but IMO it's no given he even beats him.

 

I find it interesting that Sharkey is the only one to really bring up Foreman's jab before the Zaire fight. Despite later making an absurd claim that he would have dropped Ali with no trouble, he does have a point: Foreman had a devastating jab even in the 70's when he bothered to use it--look at how he demolished the durable Chuvalo and outboxed him with sledgehammer left hands before pounding on him in the corner.

I find it very strange that Saddler and Moore never told him to use his jab. It's mind boggling in hindsight because not only did he have a great one and trained with good jabbers like Sonny Liston, Ali himself had trouble with guys who would jab back at him. This is exactly how Futch was able to devise his strategy for Norton to block/parry Ali's jabs and fire back with one of his own while constantly pushing Ali toward the ropes to set up his own shots. Norton and Ali fought twice (Foreman was actually sitting ring side for the 2nd fight then "got bored" and left halfway through) and Norton had tremendous success with this strategy, yet nobody in Foreman's camp put 2 and 2 together and decided the best strategy was to simply cut the ring off and bully Ali with a non stop barrage of power punches. Imagine what would have happened if Ali had Foreman constantly jabbing back at him and pacing himself rather than simply swinging for the fences.

 

There were talks that Sadler was bribed or was part of a plot against Foreman.

He supposedly gave money to the ref and told Foreman to stay down during the count until the ref reached the number 8.

A lot of interesting things surrounding the fight with Ali.

 

Interesting

 

Foreman actually did say that his trainers always told him to look at them during a count in case he was dizzy or got confused. Up until Zaire he had never hit the canvas so it was probably a very confusing moment for the young champ who had never been in that predicament before. Idk anything about Saddlier giving the ref money tho. Supposedly when Foreman asked for a rematch Ali told him he had to hire Saddler back as a trainer which is a bizarre request. Foreman was in fact entitled to a shot since as the NABF holder he was a mandatory. Despite going on a win streak against Lyle, Ledoux, Frazier, etc it just never happened.

There are also conflicting reports about the ropes and if Dundee made them looser or if he "made them tighter" in his words because they were even more loose before the fight. Is it normal for a trainer to inspect the ring before a fight?

Honestly Ali won that fight with raw courage and determination, but at the same time many things did go his way. He got the crowd on his side by painting Foreman as a colonist and pseudo white man (didn't help that he brought German Shepards which people in Zaire were traumatized by) who chanted for him, he got the fight outdoors in the hot humid environment that Foreman wasn't used to (which favors the boxer more than the slugger), the fight almost didn't even happen because of a cut Foreman got during training, etc.