http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ3aUmSBSbY Watching this fight and knowing the magnitude I could see where the REF let it go on but there were a couple of times in the 15th that this fight could have been stopped and awarded to Frazier by TKO......If it was what would your reaction be....but watch it again Thoughts
My reaction would be that Frazier is truly the man in the division and that nobody in the division can beat him. He would build a sense of invincibility. Assuming everything happens the same that it did after this fight; then this accomplishment would be greater than a UD. He would be one of two fighters to stop Ali. The only fighter to stop a young and a near prime Ali.
Ali was hurt and very tired, but also holding on. But Joe was tired too, and i don't think Ali got tagged fast enough to justify a stoppage. But he was decisively beaten.
Ali showed his Champion qualities in surviving the 15 rounds.... the first 15 rounds he'd been taken in years... the most punishing rounds any heavyweight had absorbed.... and he boxed for another 10 years!!!!
Mercante did a great job in letting a champ like Ali grit through a beating like that. A stoppage would have been bull****. Ali popped right back up and both guys were dead. If it would have been stopped, Frazier would have people claiming he benefited from a bull**** stoppage...
Agree with this. A stoppage was not justified. As a Frazier fan, the only thing that disappointed me about round 15 was Joe's failure to follow up immediately after he Ali with another hard left almost exactly at the halfway point of the round. Ali was momentarily out on his feet and Frazier simply didn't follow up. Don Dunphy saw the same failure and commented on it. Had Frazier followed up and put Ali down again for a second knockdown then the three knockdown rule would definitely have come into play.
