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

Here you have the Patterson fight in full. Watch it and then tell me injury decided this fight (tip, it's clear from the film that Floyd's corner didn't start working on his back until after rd. 7):

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq3a5_muhammad-ali-vs-floyd-patterson-i-p_sport

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq3oo_muhammad-ali-vs-floyd-patterson-i-p_sport

 

Indeed,

Fighting that many times with many of those bouts taking place in the opponent's back yard is bull****, especially considering how week his opposition was. Ali should be ashamed of himself for fighting Liston, Patterson, Terrell, Williams, Folley, Chuvalo, and Mildenberger...

The men he REALLY should have been defending his so called title against were Doug Jones, Eddie Machen, as well as even calling Ingo out of retirement.. Its all about the quality and it just wasn't there.

 

What Ali really needed to do was take a page out of Jack Dempsey's book, and defend his title maybe once every few years, forgetting about facing the top contenders to take on a few obscurities.

 

Not sure why you're being sarcastic.

As I've said many times here, Ali's reign cannot be faulted and the opposition was not that bad at all. And he fought everyone he should have.

I just don't think his reign was better for having 9 defences rather than, say, 4 or 5.

Terrell, and I suppose Liston and Patterson and maybe Folley, those 4, would have been very nearly as good as the 9. The 5 guys he fought in '66 were gravy, and gravy doesn't hold much weight with me.

 

While you have to have qualified challengers, I think there is also something to be said for activity, especially if you're traveling on the road to do it.. Would Joe Louis have had 25 title defenses, had he not stayed busy early in his reign with some of those second raters?

 

Then he'd have been complimented on his "active and quality filled resume"

 

No, and we probably put too much stock in that number (25) rather than how many real threats he faced, or how good the best ones really were. Most of his challengers count for something, but some only a little and a few were clear set-ups.

In years to come, now even, somebody might count Haye's win over Audley Harrison in a tally of title wins, a statistic.
Dempsey and Louis probably had tough guys beaten in exhibitions that don't even appear on the official record who were better than Harrison.

Ezzard Charles had 9 defences in 2 years too, and no one really even hears about it.

 

True.

 

On comical note.

Its a shame that Corrie the sniper Sanders wasn't fighting back in 1966. If Cooper's left could deck Ali, just imagine was Corrie would have done to him.

 

Sanders was a super-size hybrid of Cooper and Mildenberger and therefore a serious threat, and would have probably been filed under "Avoid at all costs", and would have suffered the same fate as Amos Johnson, who Ali was undoubtedly running scared of.