I know this topic has been discussed on here in the past but be Intresting to see how today's posters view it. So the famous Kd of Ali by Henry Cooper. How Badly was he stunned, I'd ask.. If the kd had occurred maybe two minutes before, is Ali making it through the round? Knowing what we know about his heart and chin, id say even then Muhammad gets thru the round. Anyone thinking differently?
Wouldn't have been easy, mate either. We know what Cooper was like if he had someone hurt. Old Angelo would have been screaming. Lol
Ali had already determined that he was going to be champion, Cooper was the second to last step, the knockdown was irrelevant all things considered, could have been a journeyman or prime Holyfield in there the result would be the same
Badly hurt Ali didn't know where he was and he was fortunate with the smelling salts which revived him because they were banned in UK at that time I believe.
This 100% Ali was gone, look at the footage of him in the corner he was gone, if it was as you say 2 mins earlier i believe our enry stops him. As well as dundee ripping the glove to buy Ali more time says it all.
He got the s*** knocked out of him I'll say that!!! That left hook was hard and accurate, and exacerbated by Ali's clowning and stalling for his predicted 5th rd ko of Cooper. Which he did get btw. Though Ali was clearly hurt, more than likely he would've survived the round and won.
The real interesting point is that there were no mandatory 8 count in England at that time. Clay rose at about 4 and Cooper were in his to knock out Clay with one more left hooks, but the bell rang before Cooper could do anything. Forget about the smelling salts, no one have ever found out if smelling salts were illegal in England, and from what date! By the way Mildenberger were threated with smelling salts after Cooper knocked him down with an illegal punch in their fight in Londen several yeats later.
“smelling salts have been banned in competitive boxing, first in Britain (in the late 1950s) and then in America (in the 1960s). This isn’t due to the inherent dangers of ammonia gas, but rather that it potentially hides a more serious injury. The reasonable assumption goes that if someone needs to be revived by the use of smelling salts, then there is a much larger medical issue (head trauma, concussions, neck issues) at stake and they should not be going back into the ring.” http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/01/smelling-salts/
Crazy how we can see infractions like Dundee with the smelling salts, or Panama Lewis asking for the "other bottle" plain as day on TV, but the commissions either somehow fail to see it, or fail to act on it. Smelling salts were banned at that time, and I always wondered what the penalty would have been if they were caught doing that, and how a DQ for Ali would have changed his career path, if at all.
Is there any copy of a BBBC rulebook or other source FROM THE TIME that makes it clear smelling salts were illegal? Because someone writing it decades later for the Daily Mail could be repeating urban legend or just what they had read or heard … without it being a verifiable source. Wikipedia? LOL. Is there any evidence that if smelling salts were illegal at the time, that what Angelo Dundee used actually fit that definition? Because Dundee said it was something he called ‘poppers’ and that it wasn’t ammonia … which is what smelling salts are. If he used something similar but not specifically banned, then there’s no fuss except saying the rulebook should have been expanded to include the other substance, whatever that was. Finally on that topic, does the BBBC rulebook (if there is indeed one from the time that spells out that smelling salts or whatever are banned) actually specifiy that it’s a DQ penalty? Because the fighter isn’t ‘cheating’ if his cornerman breaks a rule. I know of cases where corners used banned cut medicines and the penalty was NOT a DQ, but rather that the cornerman was fined and lost his license. There’s a lot of gray area in the ‘Ali used smelling salts (if that’s what they were) and thus should have been DQ’d’ line of thinking: Was there a rule someone can cite with a contemporary source banning smelling salts? Did the rule spell out EXACTLY what was meant by smelling salts and thus banned? Did Dundee use smelling salts per se or something similar? And if he did, does that automatically mean DQ or was it a fine and license suspension for the cornerman? (I mean, what’s to stop some cornerback/cutman picked up for a night’s work from placing a huge wager against the person whose corner he’s working, then use smelling salts to get his guy DQ’d and collecting on the bet?) Beyond that, it’s nice to speculate on the ‘what if’ the punch landed early in the round or in the middle rather than at the end, but that’s a fairly useless exercise. You can ‘what if’ about any situation in any fight but it ultimately doesn’t matter because the answer here is ‘we’ll never know.’ As for Ali’s career, I expect had he lost he would have rematched Cooper forthwith and demolished him in the rematch and gone about his career pretty much the same way.