Dundee on Ali's slipping of punches

I'm looking for a word, or a term, for that gift some have in abundance. Ring presence? I don't know if that quite covers it. Isn't that more of a general know how? I'm talking about the split-second, moment by moment freakish sensory awareness the great ones had.

Saw the 1972 Lewis/Ali fight from Ireland for the first time last night. Watched a slim, cat-like Ali able to venture into the mouth of the lion, crouched within the danger zone, bombs flying and whizzing past his face from both directions. His unmatched ability to make an opponent miss, his heroic coolness under fire, less due to his physical than his mental, spiritual gifts. Courageous, because Ali, though faster, more limber and athletic than most if not all, and who could hit harder than most give him credit for, the guy was almost always out-gunned. And Lewis, an ex-Ali sparring partner and a current journeyman who was once fired from the Ali camp when he broke one of the Great One's ribs; Angelo didn't want his boy to contend with any avoidable malicious intent! What I saw last night was classic Ali superiority. Lewis was the perfect foil, not overly proficient technically, chopped his right hand like he's bringing an axe or a sledgehammer, conspicuosly lacking what I tried to find a term for, with an obvious few more inches at the end of his gloves than was natural but did him no good when matched against Ali's speed.

Classic Ali, not long after his return, with as much movement as Clay, with the power of Ali, I thought I saw a glimpse of what we might have seen in that three year lay-off. Jab, jab, jab, jab, jab.......CRUSHING RIGHT HAND!

A tune-up fight, alotta people might say. Not much of a challenge for a guy like Ali. But from the safety of my easy chair, thousands of miles and thirty some years away, I could swear I felt the whisk of some of those misses by Lewis as they flew an inch to the left or right of my own cheekbone or chin. If anybody's ever had a puncher's chance and not much more, that seemed to be Lewis in 1972 Ireland with Ali. And with the luxury of hindsight, and knowing just how the fight would turn out, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see one of those shots knock Muhummad clear into the year 2008.

 

Ali was a special talent, his speed and reflexes enabled him to do things other fighters couldnt. Basically because he was able to use his physical assets,
and the corollary was unothodox moves. If he had faults in his style, it was
that a plethora of lesser fighters have tryed to mimic his style and not reached there potential bacause of it.

 

Is there a term for that tension you feel in the ring, the almost tangible energy that exists between fighters in the lulls between shots thrown?

 

I think he'd have to be stupid to not know he was breaking the rules, and we all know he wasn't that. I'd say, "savant," is a good word to describe him.

 

Ali could parry, slip and weave under punches, roll with punches, turning his head just on impact and many more. In the first Liston fight, Ali shows that he could parry and counter jabs to head and parry to the body efficiently. He showed throughout his prime a proficiency for the pull counter, even making noted jabbers like Liston and Terrell overbalance when reaching for a fighter that took away their excellent jabs with his own excellent headmovement.

Many people mistakenly claim that Ali couldn't slip or duck punches and only pulled back. After extensive review of my footage of Ali, I find that to be false. Ali can be found slipping, ducking and weaving under blows, however, pulling away from punches going backwards in a straight line was his preferred manoeuvre. When he had the legs to do, it was extremely successful, despite being a massive technical "no-no". However, when his leg speed and stamina diminished, it was a sure fire way of his putting himself at the end of punches that would do him no good. Ali would have been better served slipping and parrying, but the way he boxed reflected traits of his character. He had great physical gifts and sought to demonstrate his athletic superiority and what better way than to pull away from someone who's swinging their whole body weight at a man that isn't there?

To the untrained eye, Ali pulling away from a Frazier hook is jaw dropping ... to be blunt, "**** me, that's incredible!". However, despite the great image of Frazier missing by a mile and Ali leaning back, whilst Ali may get points for defence, he is unable to take direct and instant advantage of Frazier's momentary vulnerability. He is unable in that instant to "make him miss and make him pay" because his bodyweight is on the backfoot and leanining backwards with hands by his waist means that by the time he redistributes his weight to throw effective punches, Frazier has recovered.

Conclusively, pulling away is more akin to the technique of a showman than a master technician who takes advantage of every mistake. That's not to say that it doesn't have its place - it can be used to gain a psychological advantage ... that is to put doubt into their immediate psyche, which would make them tense and impact upon their stamina. However, the purist would much rather see him blocking the hook and countering with one of his own. Even with the pull counter, although a liability if you haven't got the reflexes, timing and speed to pull it off, you can still make em miss and make em pay, as Ali often did when utilising the pull counter.

One of the things that Ali did very well was the jab to the body. He should've used it a lot more during his career, IMO. Now a lot of people will marvel at the footspeed, cos he gets in and out of range quickly. What many might miss is the sound technique behind it. When he throws the jab to the body, he gets low, covers his chin with his shoulder and rotates his torso. Not only is he offering virtually no target in terms of his body, his chin is completely hidden, so he's hard to counter and with the speed at which he throws it, he's not the easiest to defend against. This would be a prime example of Ali showing good defence while being on the offensive, using good technique.

Ali showed that he could fight with a higher guard, parrying punches and countering wider or slower punches with fast, well leveraged, straight punches e.g. the Foreman fight. More interestingly, he showed the ability to block shots with his shoulder. The way that he closed his body off and hid his chin with his shoulder can be seen when he's dancing. He'd pivot with shoulder rolls to create a new angle; to get a different look at his opponent, feinting and drawing them into making mistakes that he could counter.

He threw the jab and right with sound technique, but seldom threw good uppercuts and hooks, often armpunching sloppy, slapping punches that have no place in an ATG's arsenal. However, when he wanted to throw these punches well, he could. In the 2nd Quarry, Ali finishes the fight with a well thrown uppercut and hook combination.

For me, Ali showed the ability to do things with sound technique throughout his career - things that many didn't believe he did, let alone with good technique. However, whilst demonstrating that he could perform the manoeuvres of a technician, a technician he wasn't. A room full of monkeys with typewriters could write a masterpiece - that doesn't make them geniuses. I thoroughly believe that with his ring IQ, he could've learnt and routinely performed all the technical rudiments of the sweet science. With his athletic gifts, he would've still been an ATG, just had a much different style. However, it is his exact athletic gifts and personality that made him such a technically unorthodox fighter. Ali rejected convention when it transgressed his beliefs, as seen with Vietnam, and someone so cocksure of himself wouldn't take kindly to the likes of an Archie Moore trying to reform him into a technician, when he believed that he could beat anyone he faced, using his own style. Rather than follow the rule book, he ripped it up and openly defied. Despite knowing the right way, he did it the wrong way, often deliberately, IMO. His unorthodox style had its advantages cos with his athletic prowess, he could do things other fighters his size just couldn't and more relatively, other fighters hadn't experienced, weren't trained for and didn't know how to defend against. Of course, a master technician would find ways of making Ali pay for technical mistakes, but Ali's gifts make me rate him top of the tree H2H and no. 1 HW ATG cos of his in-ring prowess and resumé.

Ali was a savant ... much like RJJ, he showed he was more than capable of performing technical moves, but he didn't fight as a technician, instead demonstrating his athletic prowess as much as possible. Athletic gifts, I'd have to give Ali a 10 out of 10, as a technician, he'd get a 5, cos I believe that he was competently skilled. For intangiables, I'd give him a 9 or 10. He had great judgment of distance, willpower, indomitable spirit, ability to bounce back from defeat, an amazing amount of confidence e.g. 1st Liston, Foreman, amongst other things. In these three key areas, Ali does well, SRR does excellently, as does Ray Leonard for a lot of people, arguably PBF (question mark over intangiables) too, but Ali, a technician? Nope, not if Stonehands89 has his say! Did Ali need to be a technician? He's a consensus top tier HW ATG ... obviously he didn't need to be, but it would have saved him a lot of punishment and would've won him matches that he shouldn't have lost/woulda won if he was able to solve certain problems by applying the right technique.

 

I do believe Ali could fight inside. In a lot of fights, even as early as Liston, he would get leverage on short little uppercuts for when his opponent would crouch down low to try and avoid getting hit. He does beautifully in Quarry 2 and Patterson 2, for when his opponents try and hide there head, he would come underneath and land punches. This indicates to me that Ali was more than capable of mixing up effective quick punchers in close.

In addition, Ali was more than capable of punching to the body, but he himself didn't feel it to be an effective weapon. He went to the body on a few occasions in his career, I recollect him doing it a few times against Williams, but it was never a weapon of his. He "chose" not to use it a lot, because he felt it would be more effective for him to stay on the outside, and use his long length jab, and one-two. This is the same reason he didn't fight inside, why would he fight to his opponents strength rather than his own. He had long arms and a great jab so he used it, I think that's as simple as it gets.

 

A+ post META5. One of the best I've ever seen.

 

Another excellent post Meta 5, please post more often.

 

:happy:happy:happy:happy:happy

 

THANKS, Meta. Discussions such as this one are a great reason to be around.

 

Post #7 in this thread is surely a contender for post of the year on ESB. Well done, Meta. :good

 

There's not too much to add after Meta's post, but I do want to say that Ali did slip and duck punches as well as pull back, especially early in his career. Before being stripped of the title and banned, Ali typically spent nearly the entire first round of a fight moving, dancing, slipping and ducking punches, even against fighters that he was far superior to. I remember hearing him say once that it was both a way to get rid of any nerves and butterflies he might have had for the bout and also to get his timing used to his opponent's rhythm.

Also, Ali's true genius lay in how he moved his head both to avoid punches or lessen their impact, (the avoiding was probably most famously displayed in this sequence against Ernie Terell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2YCU2tAFt8 ), and in how he would use his arms to deflect and parry blows at time, mostly displayed when he began slowing down and didn't always have the speed to just step back. Check out how he completely frustrates Quarry in their second fight or how he blocked, deflected and parried so many shots from Foreman to see good examples of that.