59 years ago today: Muhammad "Louisville Lip" Ali vs. Brian Sidney "The Blackpool Rock" Harper

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5th defense in the first WBC heavyweight title reign of Ali (fka Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., having changed his name between his capture of the belt in Liston I and first defense in Liston II). The challenger (aka Brian London) was rated #10 by the Ring Magazine and coming off back-to-back contests versus WBA top-ten heavyweights.

I've seen it claimed in multiple corners of the internet that London was a WBC ranked contender, but this simply isn't true. As it happens, August of 1966 is when the WBC released its first ever top-10 world rankings, for all eleven extant divisions (fly, bantam, feather, junior light, light, junior welter, welter, junior middle, middle, light heavy and HW) - and Brian isn't on there:

Champion: Cassius Clay (sic)
1. Ernie Terrell
2. Zora Folley
3. Karl Mildenberger
4. Amos Lincoln
5. Oscar Bonavena
6. Floyd Patterson
7. Eduardo Corletti
8. Henry Cooper
9. George Chuvalo
10. Cleveland Williams

In the preceding few months he lost a close ten rounder on points against Thaddeus "Babe" Spencer Jr. (WBA #6) and then beat "Atom" Amos Johnson Jr. via DQ. (Johnson had a victory over Clay in the amateurs). So he was Ring Magazine ranked, and maybe at the doorstep of a WBA ranking - but not an official WBC contender.

Nobody expected a competitive affair. The champ was 24-0 with nineteen stoppage victories. The challenger was 35-13 with twenty-six and clearly past his prime - and over seven years removed from getting trounced by Floyd Patterson in his only prior title shot. Nonetheless, coach Angelo Dundee was leery of Harper, having cornered another fighter against him the year before. Roger Rischer was demolished in a round, leading Dundee to believe that if allowed to hang around too long (like Henry Cooper had been) he could prove dangerous. The game plan, based on Dundee witnessing the KO1 loss of Rischer, was for Ali to jump down his throat and not let up until forcing a stoppage. No playing around, no showboating.

The result was that it took under three rounds for The Greatest to dispatch his vastly overmatched foe (who later admitted he went in with zero self-belief that he could do aught but maybe survive to earn his paycheck). Harper would later quip "I'd like a return, but only if Ali put a 50-pound weight on each ankle" and, asked what he would do differently to give himself a chance at winning, "bring a gun". Funny, self-aware guy.

There's a myth around the finishing sequence, that Ali scored a dozen punches in 2.8 seconds before dropping London. I've isolated it and found that not quite true, but not far off.

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If you change the speed to at least as slow as 0.5x, you can make it all out pretty clearly:

• Jab feint (gets London ducking) at 0:01
• Five rapid successive jab feints alternating up-down (head, body, head, body, head) at 0:04
• Combination begins at 0:05

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So, nine connects in three seconds. Still a great piece of combination punching. IMO the flurry would have probably put London down no matter what from accumulation, but it's punch #10 thrown (the second overhand right that lands) that really ended the contest.

It's often claimed that Harper/London is the worst championship opponent of Ali's career. That may not be so cut & dry, but he's certainly bottom three in terms of h2h quality. Here's the full list of Ali's opponents in world championship matches:

Liston I & II, Patterson I, Chuvalo, Cooper, London, Mildenberger, Williams, Terrell, Folley, Quarry (if you can count it, being billed as for the lineal championship but with no sanctioned belt on the line), Frazier I, Foreman, Wepner, Lyle, Bugner, Frazier II, Coopman, Young, Dunn, Norton III, Evangelista, Shavers, Spinks I & II, and Holmes.

IMO from that mostly quite impressive batch, you can make a good case for Coopman and Wepner being less worthy of sharing a ring with Ali - but at least with "The Bayonne Bleeder" he was coming off a decent run of form (emphatically winning the Randy Neumann trilogy, upsetting Terrell, and knocking out George Foreman's chief sparring partner Terry "Aurora Lumberjack / Stormin' Mormon" Hinke) ...and validated himself by lasting nearly the full scheduled 15 and by dropping the champ in the 9th, however questionable the means. As for the Belgian, he did last two rounds longer than London - but Ali had the flu and the moment he started trying he wrecked Coopman in short order. Then again, supposedly Jean-Pierre had sparkling wine in his water bottle, so he can claim to have been compromised as well. Just comparing how they looked for as long as they lasted with Ali, we probably saw higher quality from The Blackpool Rock than from The Lion of Flanders. I'd probably favor Harper/London over Coopman if those versions of them from a decade apart were to have fought.

 

IB Funfact: Brian didn't even love the game, he was a prizefighter in the realest sense - competing for as long as his body allowed just to earn enough to invest in several business ventures and be set for life.

His father, "Jack London" (born John George Harper) had styled his ring name after the American author of Call of the Wild in an attempt to sound tougher...and then forced both the career and ring name upon his reluctant son.