This content is protected Footage is from 1974 before the fight in Zaire. A lot of this stuff was not on YouTube before. The quality and audio is pretty good despite being more than 40 years old in black and white. We have lots of awesome gems like. -the building of the deer lake training camp and Ali brainstorming the design plan. -speed bag and jump rope work -Ali and Holmes sparring for a couple of rounds (big surprise happens that I won't spoil). -powerful poetry from the champ. Interesting that we see Ali practicing both fighting off the ropes and dancing within the same sparring session, full of confidence that he'd beat Foreman and claiming he did not have the stamina to go past the 5th round. It's long but worth it if you've got the time.
He should have quit after Frazier 2 and went into movies,he would have his health and make a $$$$$$ of money
Who were the two other sparring partners after Holmes? Was the smaller one Eddie "Bossman" Jones and the big one Roy Williams? Holmes looked like he was ready for anybody by that time, he was 23, 24 years old and from just watching the sparring he wasn't as left jab oriented as he would become later. I think he said that after breaking his right hand in the Roy Williams fight he could only work on the jab while the right hand healed so that might be when the jab became dominant. That was a nice right hand that he caught Ali with, might be the first time I've seen Ali knocked down by a right?
I have that footage. It was shot by a small-time ice cream company that Ali agreed to endorse. I didn't watch that whole clip so I don't know if the whole version is included. I watched the beginning so I think a lot of the earlier stuff is missing. There are a lot of interesting bits. * Aaron Snowell, who trained multiple heavyweight champions (including Witherspoon and Tyson) and Frankie Randall when he beat Chavez, is the kid with the the afro reciting a poem he wrote about Ali about an hour and a half in that clip. Snowell would return to Deer Lake with his friend Tim Witherspoon when Witherspoon sparred with Ali before the Holmes fight six years later. * The footage includes Cassius Clay Sr. painting the names of the former heavyweight champs on the boulders at Deer Lake. * The whole video documents a bus trip a bunch of inner-city kids took to Deer Lake to film this ice cream footage for ads or whatever (I don't believe the footage or the Ice Cream company amounted to anything). All the kids are given the ice cream while they watch the exhibition. * There are multiple scenes of Ali snuggling little girls visiting his training camp, and tells the mother of one that the little girl looks like his kids, and is he sure he doesn't know her? (Everyone laughs). Then, later, there is a clip of him snuggling another girl with a ribbon in her hair who clearly doesn't like it. It's weird because at that time, there was a 13-year-old who was an orphan (who had come to the camp on a similar bus trip) living at Deer Lake in Ali's cook's (Lana Shabazz's) cabin. The girl claimed in court Ali had gotten her pregnant. She had the child. Apparently, Ali initially claimed the boy was his. Ali's third wife demanded the girl leave camp and not live there anymore. The young girl sued Ali when she was in her later teens and homeless for child payments and statutory **** (I believe) but the judge said she was no longer a minor so she couldn't sue him for the **** charge (which wouldn't be the case today). Then the girl disappeared and later died. Her son wanted to visit Ali before Ali died, but Ali's last wife said he couldn't unless he signed a document stating he was not Ali's son. He refused to sign, so the visit wasn't allowed. All kind of sordid, and also masked within a black and white video of a bunch of people visiting the camp smiling and laughing. * The fighters he's sparring with in the exhibition in the video are Larry Holmes, Eddie 'Bossman' Jones and Roy 'Tiger' Williams.
Not sure who the other guys are, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had Roy Williams in camp. He was a big fearless dude who could crack and it would make sense to spar him to prepare for Foreman. He had been in and out of Ali's camp for a while. Holmes surprised me with how often he was letting his hands go. 3, 4, 5+ combinations, not what you'd expect from the much more slow paced Holmes of the late 80's and 90's. He also threw some good body shots which not enough outside fighters do. Now that I think about, where the heck is the footage of younger Holmes? There is hardly anything from before the first Shavers bout when he started gaining recognition and footage from his amateur days is even more scarce.
Before Shavers I, that I know of there’s: Holmes vs. Roy Tiger Williams Holmes vs. Tom Prater Holmes vs. Horace Robinson (only one round far as I know) Holmes vs. Rodney Bobick Not a ton but not long before this he’s fighting small-time bouts in Scranton and such. Holmes vs. Ibar Arrington should exist — it was on the Young-Norton undercard — but I haven’t ever seen it or heard of it being out there.
It's still odd that a consensus top 5 or top 10 ATG has so few bouts of their prime available. Just goes to show how much people underestimated Holmes. And he showed up when color footage and VHS recording was widely available fairly close to the modern era which makes it even weirder.
