How Would Ali v Frazier Fight2 Have Looked Without Foreman?

Ali didn't beat Frazier in the FOTC, but he sure beat the PRIME out him. Ali wins via UD in a rematch. Almost identical in how the 2nd fight played out.

 

Then they will go on to remind us it’s a meaningless win as Ali had been in exile thirty years & was basically a disabled has-been.

 

“Slipping a bit,” is an awful, awful far cry from beating Ali & establishing yourself as an ATG to being turned into a Human yo-yo. There is no way known you can go from being an undefeated, undisputed Heavyweight champion of all-time standing, to losing your title in a beating as horrific & one-sided as that, & come away from it, “not too affected.”

Joe Frazier may sometimes be likened to a machine, but he was just a man…& no man goes through what he did in Kingston undamaged. Even if absolutely nothing else, your confidence would never be the same.

 

An equally wrong headed attitude.

 

Like I said, it simply didn't show in his performances. His best post-FOTC performance was Thrilla which was AFTER the beating he took from Foreman.

Quick KOs do far far less damage than long accumulative beatings.

For example the Liston losses didn't seem to take much out of Patterson given everything he went on to accomplish.

As for the "your confidence would never be the same.", Frazier was willing to quite literally die in Manila, and even as a shell of himself he sought out a rematch with Foreman, looked him dead in the eye, without a hint of fear.

 

Have a magazine from 1972 before the first fight after FOTC, and there were serious questions about whether he would fight, and if he did, would he win? Also Yancy Duram said that he would like that Joe retired after the Ali fight due to health problems. (I think it was his kidney)

 

All annoyingly accurate. I cant think of a good rebuttal off-hand but I’ll be back, Jack.

 

Perhaps the real question is: "How would it have been perceived?"

In this scenario Ali is not fighting some invincible alien, he is just fighting the man who beat him previously, and winning by a narrow margin.

That might be enough to push him below Louis in most peoples estimations.

 

cheers mate.

 

Agree with this 100%--Ali beats ANYBODY else that night except Frazier. Joe in many ways sacrificed the remainder of his career to win the FOTC.