Fighters that Ali sparred with........

Yeah Holmes claim that he was beating up Ali in sparring so Ali got rid of him after the Foreman fight.

 

That’s a tape I’d like to c

 

Oddly I think many don’t understand the purpose of sparring. U should be working on ur craft and ur weaknesses. Only morons brag about “I got him in sparring”. If ur not getting beat up occasionally and challenging ur self ur doing it wrong

 

Yeah no doubt lol!

Whatever Ali did to prepare himself, it obviously worked remarkably well!

 

Ali sparred with Solomon McTier who boxed a buddy of mine.

 

Hope springs eternal.

Apparently for a while they were almost inseparable. Johnson's manager asked Ali to stick with him as a kind of bodyguard, just to keep him from getting pestered by strangers. Must have been one of the last times Ali ever hung out with someone more famous than he was.

 

Not even remotely true.

 

I think ali treated it as a fitness/conditioning thing more than anything else most of the time. Of course at one point he had the absurd idea taking punched acclimatised you to, well, taking punches.

 

Until a certain point (whenever that was) up near the end, Ali spent a lot of time on the ropes in sparring working on how to ride with and deflect punches so he didn’t take the full brunt … which served him well when he used it as a tactic in fights — not so much absorbing punishment but how to avoid taking as much when he was on the defensive.

And according to Dundee and many others, in those sparring sessions he would also pick spots to counter and then really cut loose with flurries. He might ‘lose’ 2 1/2 minutes of a sparring round but in those 30 seconds he’d show his superiority. It’s not like most of his sparring sessions were Ali laying on the ropes getting pummeled like in the Holmes fight.

 

There’s this excellent site (see below). It takes some sifting (half the fun) but you will find less often seen clips of Ali dishing it back to Larry in sparring - not long in duration but still worth it.


https://youtube.com/@muhammadali-iu9ml

 

Yeah i also remember reading recently in here (somewhere) that at one point he thought taking such punches helped. Hopefully that was overstated.

 

When he’s moving and punching here, Ali couldn’t have looked more fine. Perfect. I wished he boxed thusly throughout the clip.

But then we see even here (back in 1965, training for the Liston rematch) Ali prepping for the defensive contingency of covering up and laying on the ropes a bit.

I think during the session he also says he’s “wrastlin’ to tire his opponent - his sparring partner being Cody Jones in this instance I believe.

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Described as Ali's last real sparring in 1984, 3 years after his last fight and apparently prior to Ali's official Parkinson's diagnosis - though it was already obviously clear that there was something badly wrong. Not a comfortable watch IMO. Still able to fight in better than ordinary terms but looking like Superman stripped of all his powers. The other guy is a goose, going too hard IMO. Ali appears a bit angry and going hard - note Ali, at 42, is still a very strong guy, shoving the sparring partner guy away. How in the hell the people around him even let him get in the ring for this God only knows. Verry sad to hear Ali's clearly slurred speech.

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I never understood the deal of pointing the finger at ‘people around’ a fighter ‘allowing’ the fighter to do something.

How exactly were they going to stop Ali from sparring. Were they to follow him everywhere and physically restrain him from getting in the ring if that’s what he wanted to do?

People do what they do. They have free will and make choices, not all of them good. Since when was Ali not a headstrong person who did what he wanted, when he wanted and how he wanted? He didn’t ask for nor need permission.

This is on Ali, not ‘the people around him.’

 

Yes, of course they can do their utmost to discourage him.

You asked what are they supposed to - follow him around everywhere - well they did follow, with their hands out, didn’t they?

They could refuse to assist/participate - very easy.

I anticipate the next thing that will be said is that someone else will just jump in and support - and the obvious answer to that is - yeah, and they would also be in the wrong in doing so.

It was only to open a gym - and there was clearly already something wrong with Ali - no one had to be convinced of same by an “official” diagnosis. The dude he was boxing was a goose - totally unnecessary for him to go as hard as he did.

Let’s not pretend that parasites and yes man don’t exist - and further pretend that it’s not also “on them” in these type of situations.