Is Ali still the best ever?

His only serious challenge for the #1 all-time heavyweight slot is Joe Louis, who of course preceded him.

 

Ali is the undisputed GOAT in my opinion, the opponents in his era were awesome - Foreman, Frazier, Norton, Shavers etc

 

Will any other boxer every get 24 hour back to back coverage on every major news station?

He surely was the greatest.

 

Frazier is often overlooked here. Who did best an undefeated Ali including putting his ass down in the 15th.

 

The more this all sits in, it is clear that he was the most loved man around the world. Perhaps in history, given a growing population.

 

As far as heavyweight, damn straight.

 

Modern Giants would trouble him & some would probably beat him. Ali was a warrior unlike any heavyweight today though. Just because modern fighters have the size & styles to beat him doesn't make them better in my book. Ali hadn't fought in 30 years & we still talk about them. What memorable heavyweight fight from the past 15 years will we talk about 20 years from now?

Many don't like him but Ali is top of my list.

 

heavyweight? yeah.

p4p? hard to rank a heavy as the best ever really. too many smaller guys have too many astounding achievements.

 

a heavyweight that moved like a welterweight? that's a dangerous proposition, isn't it?

 

Short answer, before TL;DR post...Yes, at heavyweight. (He always insisted that Sugar Ray Robinson was the very best regardless of weight, and literally bowed down very deeply to SRR during the prefight introductions at Miami Beach before dethroning Liston. On of Ray's final portraits shows him smiling for Howard Bingham's camera as Ali affectionately wraps him up in a warm embrace.)

The combination of foot speed, hand speed, stamina, height, reach and punch resistance (both to body and head, as well as damage resistance facial skin against swelling and cuts) means he'll always be big enough to decision any future HW over the Championship Distance. Take away his exile, we could be looking at an unbroken championship reign lasting from February 1964 to the early 1980's, and maybe over 35 title defenses total. 1966 was a fantastic year with five defenses, he had his third defense of 1967 scheduled for Tokyo on May 27 against Bonavena before his exile began, and Dunn on May 24, 1976 was his third title defense that year. Take away the disastrous Inoki farce, he likely gets in a fourth defense in 1976 before Norton III.

Eliminate his being reclassified from 4F to 1A for the draft, allow him to continue on to Tokyo and Bonavena unmolested by government authorities in 1967, he might pull off six or seven defenses in 1967, 1968 and 1969. For the first time since Ezzard Charles, there was a heavyweight champion who took the title out of moth***** and actually defended it. Better yet, unlike Louis, he left the States and traveled the World, a considerably larger place than the Caesar's Palace Holmes had so many of his title bouts confined to.

Watching Ali-Patterson I, two things become clear. Floyd's hand speed is indeed a match for his own, especially in the early going, and the very best version of Mike Tyson never could have done better against 1965-1967 Ali than a 15 round shutout decision loss. Doesn't matter how hard Mike punched, or how fast he was, he would have no chance against an opponent who did not allow him to connect to the body or head. Tyson simply didn't have the height or reach to deal with peak Ali's foot speed and mobility.

Once Ali was fully confident his hernia surgery from late 1964 was fully healed, he taunted Chuvalo by giving away body shots. But if he entered a bout with an injury to his body, or if somebody managed to dig in a shot which made him clinch or double over, he'd either finish them quickly (Mildenberger) or use his legs to keep his body away.

Zora Folley had some success in the first three rounds getting Ali off his toes to score from long range with singular body shots and a couple of successive right leads, but that was about the most earned success anybody had hitting Ali during his first reign.

Looking at Ali-Patterson I, it becomes hard for me to envision Frazier having much success landing his hook to the body prior to Ali's exile.

He didn't have any issues with opponents taller than he was. Terrell, Blue Lewis, Foreman, Bugner and Wepner were conclusively handled. One difference his bouts with tall boxing opponents showed (and here I'll throw in the upright Cleveland Williams and Holmes, although he was pretty much a George Romero extra for Larry) is that he would be going underneath and to the body against towering adversaries of the modern era he could get underneath. Aside from the short armed Wepner (who at 6'5" had the reach of a man 6'0" even) he would occasionally go downstairs if the body was a convenient target, and he dominated Blue Lewis easily with lefts to the body.

I think with current heavyweights possessing more of a stature expected of basketball forwards and centers, he'd be much more likely to use his speed and mobility to target the body like Jimmy Young did to George Foreman, and also going under, in and out. (He did this in mid ring to Terrell and Big Cat a few times.)

For beating him, Holmes would have been the best match for a peak Ali of the heavyweight champions since, but I'd want Futch working Larry's corner with ring cutting architects like Foreman's team of Moore and Sadler, or Qawi's developers Wesley Mouzon and Quenzell McCall. Holmes had a couple important differences from Ali. The big one is that Larry was very fast and fluid circling counterclockwise, extremely unusual for an orthodox HW. Improvising that same movement pattern is what enabled Tommy Morrison to become the only person to ever score a clean decision over Foreman by outmaneuvering George, something Ali could not do in Kinshasa. (Ali attempted that movement pattern with southpaw Mildenberger, and did not look as fluidly comfortable with it as Holmes did in Shavers I.)

Larry Holmes could make Ali engage like Foreman did, by moving quickly to his right on offense, counterclockwise to intercept Ali's characteristic clockwise dancing pattern, utilizing the Foreman ring cutting pattern before exchanging with Futch's punching instructions. Eddie told Norton to disrupt Ali's rhythm by jabbing every time Ali jabbed, and for Ken not to key his hook, since Ali's lean was really geared towards slipping the hook. That would have been fine with Larry, since the hook was neither a prominent weapon for him, or a particularly useful one against him.

Round seven of Holmes-Ali was the only one in which Ali was really sticking and moving. Larry just followed him around, letting him expend himself, knowing from their sparring session history that Ali was too hopelessly weak and enervated to be competitive. (Holmes and everybody else probably initially thought he was too weight drained as well as rusty, but Ali at least showed with Berbick the following year how severely his Thyrolar overdose hampered him with Larry. Continuing to take his Thyrolar as prescribed, instead of ignorantly trying to deceptively cheat by using it as a PED cost Ali a guaranteed 15 completed rounds to the final bell on his feet, but he had no chance of winning.) Peak for peak, Holmes would not have been following him around as he did in round seven of their 1980 debacle, but move quickly to his right on offense to cut off the ring.

Again, although Ritchie Giachetti was a fine trainer who took Holmes to the Championship, his great strength according to Larry was as a master motivator. For peak Ali though. Holmes would require strategic mastery more than motivation. One thing Futch did for Larry was teach him to stop lifting his left leg before throwing his right. That improvement could be crucial for Holmes to get his right scoring on Ali. So far as Larry's jab is concerned, nobody ever really out jabbed him, but nobody had a jab so much faster which matched the reach of his jab either.

No money would ever be placed by me on peak Holmes against peak Ali. I do believe beating peak Ali would necessitate a decision over the 15 round Championship Distance, and Larry would have the best potential combination of skills and physical attributes with speed to pull what I would still consider to be the upset. Holmes would have less margin for error than Muhammad if Larry was going to prevail.


Does Norton beat 1967 Ali? No, because Ken did not pull the trigger when Ali was dancing, and Muhammad could do that for 15 rounds during the mid 1960's. Ali would have this sewn up on the cards by the double digit rounds. Replay the first five rounds of Ali-Norton II twice, and you'll see what 15 rounds between them would have looked like five and a half years earlier.

Joe Frazier? We saw a facsimile of what this would have looked like in 1968-1969 with their 12 rounder in 1974. Less holding behind the neck by Ali, more running with Smoke chasing and missing. For me, the great irony of Manila is that Ali stopped him precisely because he was no longer the same athlete he'd been a decade earlier. I believe peak Ali always would have gone the distance with peak Frazier.

George Foreman, by cutting off the ring effectively on a younger and less durable Ali than the 32 year old Kinshasa edition? No. The gulf in hand speed was ridiculous in Kinshasa, and George's face puffed up very quickly. Foreman never produced a knockdown beyond round five until his late 1980's comeback. He's not stopping peak Ali in single digit rounds.

Not Louis. Bob Pastor and Jersey Joe Walcott gave the Bomber the same issues a decade apart, and Ali was taller, faster and more durable than either of them. Following Manila, JJW stated on camera that Ali was indeed the GOAT HW (triggering a public debate between himself and Louis), and Jersey Joe shared the ring with peak Ali briefly as the third man before botching his management of the action at Lewiston. Louis would run out of rounds before the final bell to end 15.

Jack Dempsey? What I see on the film of Toldeo is my lightning in a bottle wild card candidate. He's big enough, fast enough and powerful enough to do what Cooper pulled off in 1963, and he didn't share Henry's susceptibility to cuts. The first five rounds of Ali-Cooper II (before Ali's right out of a neutral corner carved a fight ending cut over a charging Henry's left eye) probably shows the caution over Dempsey's hook which Ali would have applied. (It also shows he wouldn't have been using the same jab based strategy Tunney devised for the Mauler.)


"I never said I was the smartest. I said I was the greatest." - Muhammad Ali. " "All the time he was thinking, I was hitting him." - Jack Dempsey. Ali shows in Cooper II he won't be thinking while getting hit with Dempsey. He'll be ducking, dodging and clinching with full body speed.

 

H2h I think Ali is top 3-4. I have a hard time saying with any certainly who would beat who when you get into the Lewis, Ali, Holmes, Tyson, Foreman type of fighters.

Career, top 2, it's only between him and Louis.

Opponents, top 2, it's only between him and Holyfield.

But I think it's more what he did outside of the ring, rather than inside which made him a very special man.

 

I see Frazier more as a candidate for having the best win of all time, than for having the best resume of all time.

I don’t think that many could have stood against that version of Ali.

 

Great ****ysis....I still take Dempsey and Louis but Ali surely mat have been the best ever ...it not as if anyone knows or ever will know...great skills and tough dude what more would yo want

 

Frazier was all kinds of wrong for Ali. Rest in peace Ali but peak Frazier beats peak Ali every time. It's stylistically extremely terrible for Ali.