Foreman vs Ali

I wasn't around during that time, but Foreman was a 3 to 1 favorite and had strong claims to be that: not only had he beaten the only two men who beat Ali, he destroyed them (Norton and Frazier), both in two one-sided rounds. Ali was considered old and having had his best time.

 

Some documentary said Foreman was a 5 to 1 favorite. :shock:

 

I saw the Foreman-Norton fight "live" on closed circuit. After Norton got blasted out, a lot of fans there in Houston were saying "Ali, don't get in the ring with this man".

The original Ali - Foreman fight was schedule for September, 1974 but was delayed a month due to George's cut eye in training.

From that point on, everything went wrong for George.

Foreman made the mistake of fallling into Ali's psychological & physical traps.

 

i heard Ali was 7 to 1 underdog. I think he was the same against Liston. But i don't know - that on the back of an old video tape of the fight. Not many gave him a chance against Foreman and the dressing room was like a morgue before the fight. Ali's crew were very worried for him.

 

The man Pontius is right (again). The odds were 3-1.

 

I've always read 5-1 or 7-1. I thought that was the American odds.

 

I'm not sure the 'nationality' of the odds, but the morning of the fight Foreman was listed at being 3-1. The odds were generally 4-1 before the cut.

 

No worries. If i come across any different i'll holler but knowing you it'll be right.

 

Hey, I'm just agreeing with Chris P.



PS. They were the odds the morning of the fight for sure. Maybe it could have been different at 'fight time' but I can't imagine it'd be anything other than 3 or 4-1.

 

Damn, i think i know (long shot still) which book i read em in but how the hell will i find it

 

Didn't 41 members in the press make pics and 5 chose Ali. Something stupid like that.

 

It is part of what made Ali great. His three big wins were him as an underdog. I think he was 10-1 v Liston and he must've been the underdog for Frazier II.

 

Exactly what makes Ali so great among other things, and also why many still picked him vs Holmes. A victim of his own success.

 

The odds don't necessarily reflect expert opinion on who was going to win the fight. At least in America, when we hear odds, they're the odds set by the major sports books. And they set those odds to try to get balanced betting on both sides. A flood of money on an underdog makes them cut his odds to slow down that betting.

Some competitors, for sentimental reasons, get way more money bet on them than expert analysis would recommend. Like in baseball, thousands of fans of the Chicago Cubs go to the Las Vegas sports books and bet ten or twenty or a hundred on the Cubs to win the World Series, no matter how crummy their real world chances are. Which means that the odds on the Cubs are never the longest on the major league baseball board, even in years when they have terrible teams.

Ali had lots of loyal emotional supporters. I'm sure he got more money bet on him for that reason than any reasonable opinion would have backed. Whatever his odds opened at (and I don't remember the number), they would have been less extravagant than the expert opinion would have said. There had to have been a ton of sentimental money on Ali, and I'm sure that would have made his odds lower than they would have been for a fighter with the same record and fewer fans.

I think the real feeling about his chances was reflected in the way some of his people felt. In "When We Were Kings," writer George Plimpton reported that the mood in Ali's dressing room before the fight was gloomy because they assumed Ali was going to take a beating. According to Plimpton, Ali had to cheer his people up.

In Thomas Hauser's 1989 biography of Ali, he reported that Herbert Muhammad, Ali's manager, gave somebody $5,000 to give to the referee, Zach Clayton, to entice him to be sure that if Ali got in trouble, he wasn't allowed to take too much punishment. Clayton denied that he ever got the money, and the person Muhammad paid may have just taken the cash and run, but I think the fact that he was thinking about saving Ali from damage was an extraordinary statement of just how hopeless Ali's situation was.

I was in high school at the time, and most of my friends were Ali fans. Nobody wanted to go and see the fight on closed circuit. We all thought he was going to get crushed.