If Ali Was Back In The 1890's ?

Well, Ali isn't going to be trained by Dundee. He's likely lighter and had some tough fights as it was vs sub 200-pound men in the timeline he fought in.

Ali could not in-flight, but could clinch well. I think he would have been one of the greats in 1890's, just very different in terms of how he looked. Maybe a bit more like Corbett looked.

 

Muhammad Ali would've been the same size in the 1890s.

His "genes" wouldn't be any different.

He wouldn't magically shrink. He didn't lift weights, or have some special diet. He was skinny as a teen, filled out in his 20s and got heavy as he aged - like normal people.

 

The general population has grown larger since the 1890s despite having exactly the same gene pool as their ancestors. This suggests that nutrition does indeed play a large role.

Ali would also suffer from the "starve, weight-drain, overwork, and dehydrate" school of training that heavyweights used during the 1890s.

Based upon the increase in average height and the aforementioned nightmare training, Ali would probably be around Corbett's size and weight.

 

They aren't the royal family marrying sisters.

Different families came together and had children. The gene pool widens dramatically with each generation. Nutrition played some role. Genes played a huge role. If you want to pretend Ali fought in 1890s, he had to have had the same parents, they had to have had the same parents, and so on. So he would've been the same size.

And the answer to the question is Muhammad Ali in the 1890s would've whipped everyone, until he died at 22 when his hernia ruptured.

He'd have been dead in hours.

 

He'd be fighting guys like peter Jackson

 

And Ali would be the white guy against Peter Jackson ... considering his maternal great grandfather was a white man who moved to the U.S. from Ireland in the 1860s.

If his ancestors hadn't procreated with black Americans, Ali would've looked more like a shorter version of Tyson Fury in 1890. atsch:roll:

This thread is doomed.

 

The genes in circulation then and now would have been the same, though. (Barring the occasional -- usually deleterious -- mutation). It's not like the US suddenly experienced massive immigration from giants starting in 1890.

There's no reason to assume that the average male height increase of a couple inches comes from genes. That leaves environment as the only possibility.

Genes for greater height haven't become more prevalent in the population since the 1890s.

This is an interesting point. :think

Makes you wonder how many other boxing talents have disappeared from history.

 

Ali's white Irish great grandfather moved to the U.S. in 1860.

He had children with a freed black slave. Their children had children with the children of other freed black slaves.

One of the children of those children was Ali's mother, who, in turn, made Ali after having *** with a very black, loquacious ladies man from Louisville.

So, you either take all those people into account when discussing Ali ... which means he would've been the same size and had the same features and tools he had when he fought ...

OR ... you take what a 1890s Ali would've looked like .... and that guy would've been the SON OF AN IRISH IMMIGRANT.

And that son of an Irish immigrant would not have remotely resembled the Muhammad Ali we know in any way, shape or form.

Take your pick.

But he wouldn't have just magically SHRUNK to Jim Corbett's size if he was around in 1890.

He'd either be the man he was (height, reach, weight, etc.) based on the genes he inherited, or he'd be a white guy whose dad came from Ireland..:hi:

 

Put it another way: the gene pool now has the same genes as the gene pool back then. But people today are taller. The generally accepted explanation among historians is that the environment (mostly nutrition) improved, not the genes.

So if Ali is born with his modern genetic profile sometime in the 1860s or 70s, he'd still be shorter because of the environmental influences that made everybody else back then shorter.

EDIT: Support for what I'm talking about -

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-we-getting-taller/
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1820836,00.html

 

Thanks, interesting article.

When time travel is a reality this will be a matchmaking consideration.