When I think of Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, all I picture is Eddie Gregory: the lanky, stone--cold executioner that iced most everybody as a '47-pounder in the New York Golden Gloves at the beginning of the '70s. He ran the gamut of emotions, from A to A-prime.
This is ownage: Going from "Johnson was a much much better fighter than Mwale" to "geez your right, in Mwale's 7th pro fight".
That would have been something to see. Obviously he was a murderous puncher, even then. How awesome would that sort of footage be.
That's a good way to put it. As an addendum, we all know that fighters have different shelf lives. Marvin Johnson was very unusual. He was involved in some of the most brutal light heavyweight championship fights of the 1970s and 1980s, but he really didn't "hit the wall", so to speak, until much, much later than all of his contemporaries except Michael Spinks. Even in defeat, he gave the very, very best of his division a horrific time, except Mustafa Muhammad. A lot of people forget how badly beat up Johnson was in that fight with cracked ribs and a broken nose......completely, insidiously taken apart. Even in his brutal loss to Spinks, he had shaken Spinks up, and the cards were pretty even until the hookercut. As usual, even after such a brutal defeat, Johnson went on to rack up a long winning streak, and win a title again. Lotte Mwale was a good fighter, however, his shelf life was different. When he fought EMM, his legs, timing, and resistance were diminished. His previous KO loss to Saad was extremely brutal (one of the most devastating KOs in the history of the division), and he just wasn't the same. He was not a completely shot fighter by any means, just a guy who wasn't going to be in that elite tier to seriously challenge for a world title belt again. Fighters are different.