A green 1963 cassius clay vs ezzard charles

Ezzard Charles was 42 and retired for 4 years in 1963, so sure, a very green Ali would most likely beat him.

 

Which version of Ezzard Charles?

 

It depends if were talking about the old broken down Charles that was around when Ali was green or if were talking about a prime Charles, I'll just assume this is the Ali of the Henry Cooper fight, if were talking about the old corpse of ezzard Charles then Ali would impose his will on him and break him down after 4 rounds, if were talking prime ezzard then he would certainly have Ali in more trouble than Henry Cooper did

 

If we're talking about the Ali that struggled with Doug Jones against the Ezzard Charles that beat Louis...Ali gets taken to school and is beaten convincingly.

 

Prime Ezz beats a 63 Clay. Taking nothing against Clay at that time, Angie moved him along slowly (like many fighters were), Doug Jones & Cooper, two fighters who Ezz would have ate up! Angie wanted no part of Eddie Machen circa 62-63 on Clay's rise to the top and for good reason; he may have gotten 'schooled' in that one with Eddie's skills. Lastly, as I've previously said, Clay improved exponentially after the Cooper bout.
In closing, a prime Ezz would have beaten a 62-63 Clay.
My $0.02

 

Clay could find Charles a little to much here .Charles will exploit clays weak spots .But even then Ali's tremendous talent and speed makes it at least competitive .So I'll go with a close decision win for Charles but by a whisker.

 

Well obviously people are looking at the Cooper fight and coming to the obvious conclusion that a prime Charles takes him.
As that's the OP's question then I would have to go along with that consensus.
The thing is just 7 months later Ali produced a mature and quite masterful performance against Liston, a performance I think has become very much underrated.
I think Ali just didn't take Cooper seriously and if that had been a prime Ezzard Charles in there he would have produced a performance of a much higher calibre.

 

Researching Liston v Clay fight, I found that the original date for Liston v Clay I was September 1963, but was postponed to Feb 1964, which let Liston grow 6 mos older and rust some more, while Clay got bigger and worked on the Liston fight battle plan.

 

63 ali clowns charles, but not without a serious scare at some point.

And then he stops clowning and eeks a SD.

 

I pick Ezzard Charles. He was a lot more well rounded and experience gives him a great edge.