I dunno about ass kicked, but I think he'd have fallen even further behind early, and would have run out of rounds catching up late. A fresh Ali, with his superhuman legs, is going to be incredibly hard to pin down until Joe REALLY put the body work in, and Muhammad worked Joe over on his toes in all three fights.
Agree. Joe Frazier was still perfecting his bob and weave at that point in his career. He wasnt there yet.
Ali was rusty due to inactivity.Dyna. He'd only had two fights in three and a half years when he laced them up with Joe the first time.
Age is a number. Look at me. There are fighters who can't even form words at my age. I've been fighting, and I'm still a rather erudite conversationalist. I got hurt near the end of my amateur career, and had to take some serious time off. Not three years, mind, more like 18 months. I returned to the gym, and I was absolutely off. I was getting hit more, having a harder time hitting my training partner...It's horrible. Ring rust is real. If you are fighting people who can't keep up with you on their best day and your worst, it's obviously not going to effect the outcome of a bout, but I would HATE to fight a peak Joe Frazier, who harbors a rather hot hatred of me, with less than a year back after three years off. Getting back into true shape would take a large portion of that, much less re-conditioning your body to recover from fights... Three years is a long ass time for an athlete.
Oh, not at all. Rusty or not, he's still the greatest heavyweight of all time with his best accomplishments in front of him, and Joe walked through hell to beat him. One of the better, more inspirational wins ever.
