A tale of three heavyweight jabs

If Ali said that many times without changing the story, he's helluva right about that.
Here is what Ali said about his opponents:
Frazier-toughest
Foreman-strongest
Shavers-hardest puncher
Patterson-best skills
Liston-scariest.
Muhammad Ali was not known as a liar as much would you and swag would like to be when he's talking about Marciano just to discredit him.

He has stronger leggs, he was better in foot.
He could run backwards and his leggs are more stable than Frazier's.
Frazier had strong upperbody but his leggs were not that strong.

 

Yeah, I don't know where to start.

Frazier beat Ali and Ali liked Rocco. I don't see why he's going to unnecessarily discredit Rocco when there's every incentive to talk down Frazier. There's a little thing called ego which makes me take boxer statements with a pinch of salt and Ali had mountains of ego.

Please don't accuse me of discrediting Rocco - I've posted for many many years here and can and have highlighted many things Rocco did to a high and even elite level. What I contend is any notion of his having better footspeed and footwork than Frazier, same goes for punching accuracy and placement. You suggest that Frazier only had handspeed on Rocco and I rebut that Frazier's headmovement, as in active slips, ducks, bobs, weaves and rolling with punches was more consistent, refined and achieved against a faster punching Ali than anyone that Rocco faced relative to performance in the ring.

Since when did having stronger legs equate to footspeed and footwork? If that's the criteria by which you rebut my submission that Frazier has superior footspeed and footwork to Rocco, then I'm going to start putting Tua top of the tree - running backwards? Running backwards? This has nothing to do with having faster footwork - re Rocco's movement, he was a creeper, not a plodder as he could be explosive, especially with his leaping hook, but he didn't move as swiftly into close range as Frazier, instead relying on the lean and duck to inch in closer before exploding his body mass into this kayo shots, starting with his legs and generating his full body weight into his opponents.

It's actually okay to suggest that a fighter was better at something than another - here's one, Rocco was a better two handed puncher than Ali. Ali had better footwork and speed than Rocco. Foreman likely had a better chin than Ali. Ali takes a body shot better than almost any fighter I've seen. Floyd has likely the most complete and consistent use of defence on film. Louis, SRR, Napoles, Williams and Duran are arguably the best 5 proponents of punching excellence and so on and so on ...

 

For both it’s quality and frequency of use combined maybe Holmes’ jab could perhaps be reasoned to be “better” than Ali’s.

But then Larry had more of a savant type dedication to his jab whereas Ali, with the jab in its own right and in supplementary support, mixed and varied his punches better than Larry did imo.

Louis had a great jab. Very fast, very hard and a terrific set up punch. But I have noticed that from mid (thereabouts) to end of career, Joe didn’t always utilise his jab to its full potential.

So, though a great jab in its own right, it’s frequency of use wasn’t on par with that of Ali, Holmes or even Liston. Definitely early career it was (see vs Max Baer) but not so much later.

One fight in his first career when Ali really sat down on his jab was during his fight vs Zora Folley. Some very hard, head snapping jabs in the fight imo.

 

And Rocco is better than Frazier everyone said that including Louis,Foreman,Ali,Shavers...I think that Frazier was only better at handspeed.
But If I gotta decide who would be tougher for Ali, It would be Marciano.
Hating Frazier is not argument, Ali jist trash talked Frazier but he really liked the guy.