Ali provides a detailed analysis of his destruction of Cleveland Williams & others

Don't look at Williams, look at Muhammad. He never delivered fast combination's like that and glided around the ring so effectively after his exile.

That version was the greatest Heavyweight that ever lived, in my opinion.

 

I agree that this was a beautiful performance by Ali. Hindsight does indeed tell us that Williams was no match for the champion.

But going into the fight, rightly or wrongly, Williams was given a decent chance. The Ring ranked him 3rd going in (Terrell and Foley were 1 & 2, respectively) and Sports Illustrated reported that no one in Ali's camp, except Ali himself, wanted the fight because they considered Williams to be too powerful and dangerous. Sports Illustrated also said that while Ali was favored as much as 5 to 1 by oddsmakers, Williams stood a better chance at defeating Ali than any of Ali's previous challengers.

 

Well, wrongly of course. His rating was purely based on his performances before he was shot (Thad Spencer was 3rd anyway). He was given no chance by anyone to win this fight. Both the Ring and BI called it part of his "bum of the month tour". Williams had not even beaten a fighter rated in the top 50 by BI in 1966 (I said '30' earlier but I checked and Herring had moved out of the top 50 before the fight). Turnbow had barely recovered from a 1 minute pasting by Frazier and still managed to floor Williams, whose hometown crowd even booed his decision over Sonny Moore (another not rated Top 50 even). The only chance he was given was by Ali's camp, but fighters will always over-evaluate the chances of someone so obviously mismatched.


Boxing Illustrated laughed at the contest so much, they hyped a fight with "Fahed Tambour" the heavyweight champion of the Middle East, who'd won the crown from a 52-year-old man. By the way, this was 'before' the fight. :yep

 

Interesting. I guess strange things happen sometimes when hyping a fight, like an undeservedly high ranking by an otherwise respected boxing magazine and glowing portraits by general interest sports publications. It wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.