Interesting Read on Joe Louis. (long)

Montrose's parody continued
---------------------

Jurgen Blin (31-11-6) One of Ali’s typical career opponents. Not as good as
journeyman such as Joe Bugner or Jimmy Young as Blin lost or drew almost a
third of his fights. He was knocked out in 2 of his next 5 fights after
going the distance with Muhammad Ali. Ali, as usual, did not have the punch
to knock out ham and eggers that other heavyweights toppled with no problem.

Jimmy Ellis (40-12-1) Another fighter with a shotty record. Ellis weighed
only 189 pounds for his fight with Ali. He was outweighed by over 31 pounds
and it still took Ali until the 12th round to squeak out a last minute
knockout.

Oscar Bonavena (58-9) had a reach of only 73 ½” Bonavena his stubby little
arms was scarcely more than a journeyman who lost every time he stepped up
in competition. He lost twice to Joe Frazier, and lost to Zora Folley, Jimmy
Ellis, Floyd Patterson and Ron Lyle among others. He never won a fight
against a highly rated top contender. Ali struggled and was in poor form
against Bonavena until finally catching him and knocking him out in the 15th
round. But this not before much of the audience decided to head to the exits
early so bored were they with the lack of action in the ring. It is
lackluster victories such as these over journeyman and stumblebums, where
Ali struggled that prove Ali’s record is a manufactured media myth.

Zora Folley (79-11-6) Folley was a former light-heavyweight once weighing as
low as 178 pounds for a professional fight. He had lost 7 times before
coming into this fight with Ali, 6 times by knockout. One of those losses
was to Alejandro Lavorante (career record 19-5), who only had 13 pro fights
at that time. Folley would only win half of his next 10 fights after losing
to Ali before retiring. Why are the great majority of Ali’s opponents of
this inferior quality? Why is this not talked about more? This was a title
defense for the heavyweight championship of the world. Folley was not a fit
title challenger. Ali feasted on journeyman such as this for most of his
career.

Ernie Terrell (45-9). Another highly over-rated opponent of Ali. Who did he
beat that was any good? Look at the career records of some of his opponents;
Tunney Hunsaker (15-15) failed to break the .500 mark, Amos Lincoln
(39-13-3) was hardly inspiring. Herb Siler was 15-12 this was Terrell’s 26th
pro fight and he was still fighting bums. He won a split decision over
Cleveland Williams but was also knocked out by Williams. His only
significant victories were decisions over Eddie Machen (50-11-3), George
Chuvalo (73-18-2), and Doug Jones (30-10-1) none who were much better than
journeymen themselves, except for Machen who was marginally better. But the
Machen that lost to Terrell was on his downswing in his last 2 years of
fighting. So we can see that Terrell really beat no one special in his
career.

But there is more to the story. Terrell managed to lose to a number of
journeymen and even fourth rate shoemakers in his career. He lost not once
but twice to Johnny Gray a 190 pounder with a career mark of 16-10-1. He was
beaten by Wayne Bethea (28-18-4). He also lost to Thad Spencer (32-13-1) and
Manuel Ramos (25-29-3) had a losing mark for his career. These fourth-raters
beat Terrell as easily as had Muhammad Ali who failed to score a knockdown
or stop this big bum. Terrell was also beaten by none other than the hapless
Chuck Wepner and stopped in the first round by Jeff Merritt. Ali’s win over
Terrell hardly makes him great. Once again we see that beating so called
contenders whose ability is far below that of their reputations is what
forges the Ali legend.

Cleveland Williams (78-13-1). Williams was a big, strong, powerful puncher
at one time, but alas not when Ali fought him as he had a bullet inside of
him as a victim in a shooting incident. Williams was physically not the
fighter he had been a few years previous and was given a title opportunity
as retirement pay. The win over Williams was simply not the real Cleve and
is therefore insignificant in making a case for Ali as being a great fighter
off this win.

Karl Mildenberger (56-6-3). Before facing Ali the German had previously been
knocked out in seven rounds by Helmut Ball for the German light-heavyweight
title, and in one round by Dick Richardson for the European heavyweight
title. Despite his lack of boxing ability and his rather fragile china chin
he went into the 12th round against the light-hitting Ali. This is so
typical; a fighter who would not last 3 rounds with Joe Louis extends Ali
and makes him look bad. Ali struggled to finish his opponent in this fight.
Mildenberger had his moments as in the 4th round when he landed two jolting
lefts to the liver and launched a two fisted attack that drove Ali to the
ropes. Ali won clearly but it took him far too long to accomplish the task
against a raw fighter of this low quality. Ali could not knock him out
quicker than a light-heavyweight could! This fight demonstrates clearly what
an abysmal puncher and finisher that Ali really was.

At 6’0” and 201 lbs, Brian London was barely a full sized heavyweight. He
was, however, not a legitimate contender. His record was 35-13 at the time
he faced Ali. He finished with a journeyman’s record of 37-20-1. London was
knocked out 11 times in his career. Every decent fighter he met in the ring
stopped him. He was even decisioned by light-heavyweight Willie Pastrano.
There’s not much more one can say about London. He was the typical Ali
opponent. Another bum, ho hum.

How good was Henry Cooper ? He has been elevated because of his performance
against Ali in their first fight. In truth, he was never a good fighter. He
was 27-8-1 when Ali first faced him, and he had been knocked out or stopped
five times. One of those knockout losses was to Peter Bates whose career
mark was 31-15-4; another was to Uber Bacilieri who achieved an abysmal
23-20-3 record. Clearly a fighter who lost to bums such as these can hardly
be classified as even a second rate fighter.

Henry Cooper is remember for one reason he nearly knocked out Muhammad Ali
in their first fight with a single left hook to the jaw. The NY Times
reported that the punch, “caught Clay on the side of the jaw and Cassius
went over backwards through the ropes. He rolled back into the ring, then
got dazedly to his feet. He was gazing off in the distance…starry-eyed. He
wobbled forward gloves low. He started to fall but his handlers caught him.”

But there is more to the story. Seeing that Clay/Ali was out in the corner
they used smelling salts to revive him. Then they cheated in order to
illegally give their fighter more than the legal one minute rest. The rules
state that if a fighter cannot answer the bell in the allotted one minute
rest period he is deemed the loser by technical knockout. Dundee took his
finger and ripped a tear into Ali’s glove. Angelo Dundee has told this story
many times. Since there were no extra gloves in the corner Ali was given up
to five minutes of rest time to recover from the knockout that he actually
suffered against a third tier heavyweight. Given enough time he was able to
recover and came back to win not by kayo but by a nasty cut.

But that is not all that can be said about Ali’s fights with Cooper. Even in
the second fight Cooper showed that a third tier heavyweight who was slow of
hand and foot could hit Ali with jabs without trouble. Because he never
learned how to block a jab he was always vulnerable against any fighter with
any semblance of boxing skill and not the bums, third tier heavyweights and
raw, wild amateur sluggers that he preferred to fight.

CONCLUSIONS

Consider the fights in which Ali was badly beaten or nearly beaten. Truth be
told he lost 2 out of 3 to Ken Norton, and his only real win was razor thin.
He was beaten soundly and made to look foolish by Jimmy Young who exposed
his lack of real boxing skills. He had the **** beat out of him (literally)
3 times by Joe Frazier (a boxer who knew how to slip Ali’s jab and get
inside). He was dominated by Larry Holmes, Ali not winning a single round or
landing one significant punch in the entire fight. He was even bested by one
of the rawest amateurs he faced in Leon Spinks, a fighter who had only 7 pro
fights and not all of those victories. And truthfully he knocked out by
Henry Cooper, a third tier bum who never beat a significant heavyweight in
his career. He was knocked down by Chuck Wepner, who was not much more than
a bar room brawler.

 

Conclusion of Montrose's Parody

---------------


An objective clear eyed look at Ali’s record and that of his opponents
proves beyond a doubt that Ali was not a great fighter and has been vastly
overrated by the media hyping machine who needed to build Ali into something
he wasn’t at a time when the sport lacked a visible star. That is the truth.

There is only one more fighter on Ali’s record worth mentioning and that is
the one that made his reputation, Sonny Liston (50-4). Liston was a great
fighter who could box and punch. The problem with basing Ali’s asserted
greatness on his fights with Liston is that they were both fixed.

Liston was owned by the mob this is a well known and established fact.
Charles Farrell, wrote,

http://www.boxingranks.com/Articles/Article646.htm

“After the second Patterson fight, there were no viable opponents for
Liston. Aside from Ali, he had thoroughly destroyed every possible title
aspirant. No one thought he could be beaten and, more importantly, no one
was willing to pay to see him beat up anyone else.

Sonny was getting old…and he had no great love for fighting. It didn’t make
economic sense to have him fight an endless series of low paying title
defenses for another ten years. The guys who controlled his career decided
that it was better to make two huge, quick scores.

They fixed the fight in Miami. Ali never knew about it. Liston’s people bet
huge amounts, getting almost eight to one odds, on Ali. Because the
conclusion of the first fight was so ambiguous, Liston remained a betting
favorite—at about seven to five—in the rematch. The wiseguys got to clean up
twice with the same play. It’s clear that, in the second fight, Ali spotted
what was going on the moment Liston went down from a non-punch. But Ali was
a very quick study, and made his press release adjustments by the time he
was out of the ring.”

This historical journey has erased whatever remaining myths I still harbored
about Muhammad Ali. I recognize that he is historically important that he
revitalized boxing at a time when it was in the depths of despair. He
brought in the big money purses that fighters have today and we should thank
him for it. But he was jeered and criticized at the time for all his
terrible performances such as those against Doug Jones, Henry Cooper, Karl
Mildenberger, Ruddi Lubbers, Chuck Wepner, Jimmy Young and Leon Spinks among
others. Reading through the articles you see repeated how the myth is being
shattered, how the idol is being toppled from his pedestal. Nat Fleischer,
founder of Ring Magazine, who saw every heavyweight champion ringside from
Jeffries to Ali, refused to rate him in his top 10 all time heavyweights. It
should now be clear even to the most ardent Ali worshipper as to the reasons
why.

Muhammad Ali was not a great fighter. He was fundamentally unsound and a
flawed fighter. He won the title on a fixed fight, he was rescued from a
knockout through cheating against Cooper, he fought nothing but bums and
third stringers and some of those actually beat him in the ring. The only
decent fighters he fought Joe Frazier and Ken Norton both beat him 2 of 3
times in the ring, while Larry Holmes thoroughly dominated him. He went 1-1
with amateur Leon Spinks who had fewer than 8 pro fights. No other fighter
who was called great had such a dismal record.

And this truth needs to be repeated until people clear their heads of the
Ali fable. The very idea that he could beat a fighter like Joe Louis is
ludicrous. One can only make such a ridiculous claim because they are
ignorant of the facts. If Henry Cooper could knock out Ali in four rounds
Joe Louis would do it in one. If Leon Spinks could beat Ali imagine what
Rocky Marciano would do. Muhammad Ali lost in the ring to Jimmy Young
because he had only a semblance of defensive skill. Imagine what Jersey Joe
Walcott and Jack Johnson would do to him. They would embarrass him.

 

Revolver's text is hard to critisize whilst remaining objective.

 

The first article makes the classic error in thinking that a fighter with more than 3 losses on his record has a bad record. 8 losses against 50 wins is not a bad record. 50 losses against 8 wins is a bad record.

 

:barf How I had hoped never to see such Revolver-spawned idiocy grace the pages of this forum again.