Ali's All Time Heavyweight Champions.

You see a common theme among champion’s lists.

They tend to favour fighters with a similar style to themselves.

 

But did Ali do that here? Only with half of his list. Aside from Jack Johnson, he personally knew all of them. After Johnson, you could say Tunney, Charles, Walcott and Holmes, with respect to skill set and a boxing orientation, but I think it's a pretty well balanced list from a fan's perspective.

He shared the ring for several rounds with the latter four names on that list (Marciano for a staged bout when Rocky was in his best physical condition since retirement, at a moment when Muhammad would have been at his athletic peak in competition), and actually the latter five names on that list if you want to include Walcott's botched partial round of refereeing in Lewiston.

Shouldn't have been in the ring with Holmes, but he was, and did experience the receiving end of Larry at his best, just as he had Frazier and Foreman.

After the way he'd been decked by Cooper, he certainly knew Dempsey wasn't too light to do the same thing to him Jack did to Willard in Toledo. And he didn't exactly dwarf Walcott in Lewiston (neither did Liston), or Louis standing beside him on camera in Miami Beach just after he won the title and was celebrating.

Thinking about it, there may be no other heavyweight champion better qualified to offer such a top ten list from the perspective of personal experience. His sparring with Marciano may be critical here. He never stopped marveling at how his arms hurt as a result of performing with Rocky for Murray Woroner's staged superfight. What Marciano did to LaStarza's arms in their title rematch is not an abstraction to Ali.

What's interesting is who he omits, and that's who he dethroned for his first title. Some might expect him to try elevating himself further by naming the guy he won that championship from, but although he cited that initial win over Liston as his biggest victory (more so than Foreman), he doesn't rank Sonny among his top ten champions. Chuck Wepner seems to be the biggest booster Liston's had for many years among Sonny's still living opponents.

Ken Norton is also left out. Since a past peak Ali went 2 for 3 over him, again I think this could be argued as a revealing omission, if one wants to consider Norton to have been a champion.

Discussing his historical predecessors with Howard Cosell in the mid 1970's, his highest praise as I recall was for Tunney and Marciano. Based on what he had to say about Gene, I think he'd have rated Holmes very highly if he'd never sparred with or competed against Larry, pretty much complementing Holmes with the same words he praised Tunney with.

Yet another consideration is Ali's experience with the difference between footage study and real world interaction as he had with Marciano. Also, the degree to which somebody can improve like Holmes did from sparring partner to champion.

Ulterior motives and a personal agenda seem to be missing from Ali's considerations here. Tunney savaged him for his posture on Vietnam and military service, but that antagonism appeared completely absent from Ali's mind in praising Gene as a boxing stylist during the mid 1970's.

Once again, ulterior motives and a personal agenda might have one expecting he'd favor other HW Title claimants he fought and defeated, but he doesn't do that. (Liston, Patterson, Terrell, Frazier, Norton, Leon Spinks, Berbick, Ellis, Holmes, was that the record for most other HW champions boxed against by a titlist before Tyson came along?)

 

You hit the nail on the head here.

He met and liked all the punchers on his list, and the rest were technicians.

 

Interesting he doesn't name anyone who came after his generation. No Tyson, Holyfield or Lewis.

Here's another Ali top 10, printed in a 1979 issue of Sports Illustrated:

1. Jack Johnson
2. Joe Louis
3. Muhammad Ali
4. Jack Dempsey
5. Rocky Marciano
6. Gene Tunney
7. Sam Langford
8. Jersey Joe Walcott
9. Floyd Patterson
10. Ezzard Charles

 

I'm impressed by Ali's objectivity.
He was on bad personal terms with Louis. They didn't like each other, yet he placed Louis high on his list.
There was a similar situation with Ali vs Dempsey and Tunney.
Dempsey and Tunney were vocal about the Liston fights being rigged and never showed much regard for Ali.

 

He apparently missed Liston vs Patterson.

I remember watching Ali, Archie Moore and Rocky Graziano on a game show pitting athletes from different sports against each other they asked them a hockey question and Ali laughed and said we don't even know our own sport, He was right they missed almost all of the boxing questions.

 

Taken with a pinch of salt...
No disrespect to 'the greatest', but Tunney, Charles and Walcott? How can they be greater than Tyson, Holyfield or Lewis?

 

They were fighter’s whose style he could identify with.

Joe Louis tended to rate the punchers for the same reason.

 

Yeah, I can buy into that.

 

Because Tyson and Lewis never proved themselves over the championship distance, while Holyfield juiced like crazy after proving himself over the championship distance in the CW unification with Qawi.

There is no possibility of any product of the post championship distance era ever being able to prove themselves as great as fighters who won over the championship distance. 15 rounds didn't just separate the men from the boys, but the clean competitors from the juicers.

POS Sulamain terminally infected the sport of professional boxing when he despotically used the outcome of Mancini-Kim to make Chacon-Limon IV the final championship bout in WBC history. When the final match scheduled for the championship distance, Tyson-Tucker was shortened to the gay, pussified 12 round fruit limit, boxing breathed it's last. (At least Santa Claus was still around.)

Ali was rating championship distance era men, not 12 round limit pretenders who came after. (Celebrity Boxing is the only fighting with gloves which has been worthy of viewing since.)

Concerning juicing, if you're gonna cheat w/out getting caught, then cheat like a man, the way Fritzie Zivic did over the championship distance against Jake LaMotta.

 

Maybe Tyson and Jose Torres would have done well at boxing questions. I saw one of those game shows with Ali, Norton and Archie on the panel, and Moore was astute enough to correctly guess a basketball question where the answer was Elgin Baylor. (Never know just how rigged these shows are though.)

 

Pretenders?

I think you're being more than a bit puritanical here. Try again.

 

Do you know for a fact he was rating them on that basis, or is it your own speculation?

 

Yes :good