How is Usyk still the top HW at 38 when Ali was completely done at 38

He was 32 which is on the old side for a reflex fighter.

 

Lol, that's right, that proves my point more so. Today, 32 is considered well within an athletes prime, unless they suffered some significant injury.

 

Usyk is a far more skilled defensive fighter than Ali whose outstanding gift was speed which was never the same post exile. He was hit more vs Bonavena than in his previous entire career ….

 

Same with Roy Jones. He was so fast opponents couldn't put a glove on him. When his reflexes slowed down, the parry was over.

 

Ali had an incredible chin that never failed him, even when he was cooked. Roy for all his gifts never had that.

 

Interesting “take”. I’ll need to cogitate on this further.

Owners of dogs are supposed to “take”’dumps, not their own of course, rather those of their dogs.

That’s assuming the owners haven’t “taken”/“left” an open air dump themselves - then of course they have to “take” those dumps also.

I think I’ve given this subject too much thought already.

 

I'll add against most of the competition Ali faced.
Hell Jerry Quarry would beat most of these " contenders" today.
A few yrs back when Lomo was on his roll, some on this very site were screaming how he'd beat all the legends of the past including Roberto Duràn.
Well, it's Usyk turn to be the golden child of the fan boys.
And Usyk is Lomo, just a heavyweight version.
But unlike Lomo where there were some decent fighters, that actually showed the world he was more style than real substance.
Usyk is in a much better position to look like an ATG. And it's not because he's special, it's because of the lack of talent that's parading around the heavyweight division of the last 15 yrs.
Beating Joshua, Dubois, or Fury for that matter doesn't make a fighter ATG.
Those 3 heavyweights are just indications of how bad the division is today.
A Jeff Simms could win a version of a heavyweight title in this era.

 

Fair to say that athletes possibly invest more time in their general upkeep - though there are still more than a few fatties at HW - Andy Ruiz Jr for one, clearly treats his body like a temple - lol.

However, fighters of today do have more time to do same (upkeep themselves) between fights and that also includes more than generous periods afforded for preparing for just the one fight anyway.

Less frequent schedules also return to the valid point of less wear/tear.

As to PEDs, not saying you were necessarily referencing my comments on same - and no drama if you were - but PEDs were highlighted as being a factor to be duly considered.

Having said that, the advantages of PEDs cannot be watered down - those advantages are multi faceted - not least being faster repair while in training.

Legit prep/conditioning shouldn’t be ignored but the fact that PEDs are in wide spread use attests to just how important they are to the boxers of today as a significant supplement to and promotion of their prep/conditioning otherwise.

 

Competition competition competition. If Usuk fought Liston, Foreman, Frazier x3, Lyle, Shavers, Patterson x2, Bonavena, Quarry etc he would have had a lot more wear and tear. As great as I think Usyk is I don’t think his completion was a quarter as good. Ali had as many ranked fights against top ten as Usyk has fights.

 

A poster mentioned Usyk had hundreds more amateur fights. Ali had around 180. Usyk had around 350. He didn’t mention amateurs wear headguards and fight three rounds.

 

Amateur fights don’t mean anything to me. As far as wear and tear. Ali was prob sparring a lot more than Usyk as well. I am a big Usyk fan though love watching him. Wish we could have seen Povetkin v Usyk ten years ago.

 

Mark Kram said Ali likely fought 20,000 rounds if you include sparring. Two observations- I don't know he arrived at that figure and it sounds like a lot.

 

38 then is not 38 now