Best Heavyweight Ring General Aside From Ali and Johnson?

Sonny Liston. He dictated how the fight was going to be fought. If he wanted to come forward, you either moved or went to sleep. He wasn't going to be outbulled.

 

Good choice.

 

Then you have made a good case for him as the answer to this thread.

 

It was a masterpiece, but Ali was also behaving as though he'd overdosed on Vivarin. I counted no less than four double shuffles in that brief outing, an obscene display of surplus energy. During his second career, he spouted something about taking on Foreman and Frazier in the same night. As wired as he was against Williams, he might have been able to pull off this trick on that date in the Astrodome.

Muhammad pulled out many rounds in the closing seconds, leaving those scoring the round with a positive final impression. This is in large part due to the sense of timing garnered by sparring three minute rounds in training. Some boxers spar longer rounds to try developing greater stamina, but I think it's more useful for purposes of competition to employ interval training according to contest timing. For boxing, that would mean going all out for three minutes, then letting up for 60 seconds, before going full bore again, whether it's in sparring, doing roadwork, skipping rope, or punching bags, to develop an acutely ingrained sense of how far along a round has progressed in the heat of battle. Ali had tuned that sense, and few scorers besides Arthur Mercante were able to evolve a counter strategy for superceding the illusion of having won a round with a few final seconds of flurrying.

Ali was in no way, shape, or form, a mediocre ring general. Against opponents like Quarry, he could be riveting in his surgical dissection. But no, I don't quite rate Muhammad at the very top of the HW list. (I realize this probably places me firmly in a tiny minority.)

 

That must the most beautiful sentence i've read here. What exactly do Vivarin and PCP do?

And i think Ali has always been like that.


The comments about the Folley fights are interesting, i watched that fight a few weeks ago and Folley did get the better of the first three rounds, even managed to land some good right hands despite being old and slow as **** and extremelly chinny. I think Ali choose to go easy in the first rounds, measure his opponent a bit etc. But three rounds is a pretty long time. This is why i think Frazier would always beat him the first time; you cannot afford to lose the first three rounds to Frazier.

 

Roy Jones Jr

 

Well Chris, Vivarin is a non-prescription caffeine tablet sold over-the-counter in the States, and manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, which is used to induce alertness when experiencing fatigue or drowsiness. Vivarin contains 200 mg of caffeine per tablet, approximately the same amount contained in 16 oz of coffee. It was originally popularized by truckers driving on long overnight trips, and quickly adopted by students cramming for tests. It's also misused as a metabolic accelerative for inducing weight loss. (In individuals suffering a high level of nervousness, it can trigger anxiety attacks.)

PCP is an acronym for phencyclidine (itself a contraction of the chemical name phenylcyclohexylpiperidine). It is commonly known as "Ashy Larry," or "Angel Dust." PCP was originally developed for use as a surgical anesthetic, but quickly withdrawn because of unacceptably adverse side-effects. Mostly consumed in the States as an illegal street drug, the anesthetic properties of PCP can induce violent individuals to feel less pain at the time, and consequently persist in violent or injurious acts as a result (such as taking all of George Foreman's hardest right hands to the entirely unprotected left side of one's body without feeling it, or reacting to it at all).

Subduing a violent suspect believed to be using PCP is one of the most dreaded hazards of police duty. Some have even speculated that Panama Lewis administered PCP to Aaron Pryor before the winning round of his initial match with Arguello. (That allegation is, of course, pure sensationalistic rubbish. The tireless performances he produced in the ring were a product of his inherent nature.) PCP causes a type of brain damage called Olney's lesions, vacuolization in the cortex. Nasty stuff which kills.


Regarding the Folley match, Ali was a tactician, but he was also a known fast starter at his peak in the ring, not the sort of boxer who tended to feel out an opponent cautiously to begin a match. Muhammad usually had an abundance of pent up nervous energy to dispel once the bell rang, and he generally discharged that surplus burst in winning his opening rounds. Therefore, the manner in which he slowly undertook his defense against Folley was extremely uncharacteristic, and may have had more to do with Zora's boxing intelligence and skill.

Ali clearly peaked against Cleveland Williams, but if Folley or Eddie Machen had been with Ali in the Astrodome, instead of Williams, I believe Ali would have had no choice but to proceed more cautiously. (Eddie Machen selected the most wretched time to go on a losing streak. While he could never have beaten Ali, he may have been the most competitive challenger Muhammad faced at his peak. It would have been interesting to see how successful Machen could be against him, and whether or not Ali could have taken the tough Machen out.)

 

:good

 

Larry Holmes, possibly Lennox Lewis.

 

Rocky Marciano, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran.

Ring General just means good fighter.