Did Ali have the easiest Heavyweight reign 65'-67'

Wepner, Coopman and Dunn were horrendous challengers, and all came before the Norton match.
Lyle was undeserving of his shot too.

 

A lot of champions beside Ali had a few easy ones in between the meaningful bouts. Names like Scott Frank,Lucien Rodriguez,Marvis Frazier,Joe Roman,Crawford Grimsley,Johnny Paycheck and Don Cockell all come to mind.

 

Yeah, I can see why Ali did it.
Europe was more money, less trouble.
Angelo Dundee himself said fighting Brian London fight was like "making money under false pretenses"

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRiZj4TwlrU&feature=related[/ame]

1:30 onwards

 

it was not easy ali just made it look easy:think

 

Frazier, Norton and Young was the best around, though, with Bugner and Lyle thereabouts, and he took them all on inside two years. A champion that takes on his best 3-5 challengers within two years can fill with a couple of softies for all I care. Has anyone since taken on the best within two years? Tyson, probably. Anyone else?

 

Yes,because Muhammad was THAT bloody good. Europe was a far better option for him at this point,as America was going through it's bout of moral hypocrisy regarding Ali.

 

He did it because he was persona non grata in the US at the time. No one would stage his fights there. So he went to Europe and came back to the US when things had calmed a bit, took an easy pay-day against Williams and then the top two challengers.

 

I'll ask the question again: Which reigns were clearly better than Ali's first?

If it was so shitty there must be several.

 

London was an "opponent" at that point, but Ali fought London and Mildenberger in the span of a month. It's not as if he fought once or twice a year, and picked London over the number 1 contender.

It's like when people complain about Patterson fighting London over Machen, Folley or whoever, let's not forget that he took the fight with Johansson a month later. It's called a tune-up fight.

 

ali faced the tough hard punching chuvalo and ali won a tough 15 round decision which was probably the hardest fight he had in that time frame:think

 

This seems to be a very hard point to get across. But obviously he was ducking a seriously sliding Machen, who lost to the very guys Ali beat instead, at this time...

Holmes was taking on no-hopers in the London-mould and at the same time refusing fights against Page et. al. That's another concept altogether.

 

Had Ali fought Machen, people would be here complaining that he took on a shot, washed up undeserving opponent who wasn't ranked.

 

I think Ali should have faced Spencer instead of Williams. But that's about it.