Legacy of Muhammad Ali and Roy Jones

It was arguably the best ever faced overall by a heavy wt. Therefore comparisons to other weights is hardly revevant. Heavywts tend to be slower and more lumbering and throw fewer punches. They are sufficiently different from smaller fighters as to make cross-comparisons not vey useful or meaningful..

Remember the original thread question was:

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Note, the question asks about heavyweights.

when you post

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, You're already straying outside of the realm of the question. The only reason to do such a thing when it doesn't relate to the posed question is some kind of problem with Ali.

Assuming what you say was true (which it isn't: Ali's competition measures favourably against fighters at any weight) , that still makes him arguably the greatest of all time.

The division of fighters into weight categories is an arbitrary choice, devised to allow smaller men to compete at ALL.

We don't do it in tennis or golf or track and field. if we were to strictly seek the best man at any one time, we would usually only be considering heavyweights. The heavyweight champion is the overall champion in that he, presumably, can beat any other man alive in the ring. That we have other divisions is a concession to smaller guys to allow them to compete at all. This is made more evident by the arbitrariness of the divisions. At one time three, then seven, and now lots.

The concept of pound-for -pound is all very nice, but it cannot be measured directly in a head-to-head contest, only estimated and reached by consensus, which holds no firm basis, other than opinion.

The Ali of 64-67, IMO was the greatest exponent of heavywt boxing ever, and by extension of my foregoing points, therefore the greatest boxer ever. (If we define greatest boxer as the one most likely to win a head-to-head matchup with ANY other boxer.)


All that said, At the present time I am more entertained by fighters between light and middlwt and the skill level there seems generally higher.

Still, no-one has any doubts about the result of a Floyd /Wlad match-up.

 

That Ali ended Liston's career is almost self-evident. You state that it's obvious that both fights were fixed. (Again your English is letting you down. Recheck the definition of OBVIOUS) There is not a shred of solid evidence that the first fight was fixed. Watch it again. you see a champion trying hard until he becomes frustrated. When the liniament clears from Ali's eye and it becomes evident to Liston that Clay was much faster of hand and foot , that he can land nearly nothing and that Clay can land more or less at will, he begins to get embarrassed, and he decides to quit. ( there was probably **** all wrong with his shoulder.)

Second fight was a different story. liston wasn't in shape, it started out pretty much where the other one finished and this time he took a dive. Ali yelled at him to get up and quit faking. That is NOT a fix, anymore than Duran quitting indicated a fix.

Regarding your other inanity on the quality of Clays opposition,

Who SHOULD he have fought that he didn't?

 

i said you don't know what your talking about from your post regarding ali's resume.you later posted regarding the resumes of greb,canzaneri,leanord etc.dickhead.

 

and

Maybe you think it should be accepted, but it isn't.

In 2002, the writers of Ring Magazine (Boxing's Bible) published a ranking of the 80 best fighters of the previous 80 years. Now the writers of Ring are reputed to know a thing or two about boxing. Here's their list:


1. Sugar Ray Robinson
2. Henry Armstrong
3. Muhammad Ali
4. Joe Louis
5. Roberto Duran
6. Willie Pep
7. Harry Greb
8. Benny Leonard
9. Sugar Ray Leonard
10. Pernell Whitaker

Who's the highest ranked heavy and third highest of all weights?

In 2007, ESPN.com listed their 50 greatest boxers of all-time.

Their list:
1. Sugar Ray Robinson
2. Muhammad Ali
3. Henry Armstrong
4. Joe Louis
5. Willie Pep
6. Roberto Duran
7 Benny Leonard
8. Jack Johnson
9. Jack Dempsey
10. Sam Langford

Once again, the CONSENSUS of their boxing staff is that Ali was the greatest Heavywt ever and second only to SRR at ANY weught.

In fact, if you get any serious group of boxing writers or commentators together and poll them, Ali will usually end up at the top of the heavywt list (sometimes it's Louis) and usually in the top three or four at any weight.

 

Ali is over rated in pound for pound imo. He is behind Greb, Robinson, Armstrong, Canzi, Fitz Ross, Walker, and a few of thsos other weight jumpers.

 

Exactly, it's very argueable.

All discussions evolve with time. Now, my first post was about view of some of the achievements being overrated, in that they don't consider the details of what the situation was in this or that fight. Which was relevant to the original question of this thread. Argueably Tyson, Holyfield and Lewis faced better opposition between themselves, than Ali.

I didn't even get to discussion of head-to-head comparison, I compared only achievements (resumes of fighters), as the original question of the thread didn't ask for P4P comparison.

 

It's not evident at all. Liston fought 5 more years, gradually again climbing up to the status of top contender.

You have to look at the whole picture, not just at fight details. It's well known that Liston was connected with criminals, it's well known that this had kept him from fighting for the title for quite some time, it kept him from regaining his status of top contender sooner too. It had forced him to throw up the rematch with Ali. There's no other logical reason why he'd throw the 2nd fight like that. It's very obvious.

 

You quoted my post that you were answering to. If you were actually answering to a different point, you would have never quoted the post about comparison of ten other great resumes with Ali's. You can try to cover up all you want now.

 

Why not take rankings that were compiled in Ali's time or shortly after his finished his career, by people who had a better idea about him and his resume? 2002 and 2007 mean the historical revisionism has had a lot of time to do its work.

 

What you're suggesting here would lend credence to the notion that my opinion is more valuable in this issue than yours since I was there, so to speak, and would have had a better idea about him, while you were not.

I alluded to that concept in an earlier post.

And any arguments about revisionism have even stronger counter-arguments against making judgments in the heat of the moment without sufficient time for sober reflection and perspective.

At any rate, taking a poll right after his retirement would not have made a whole lot of difference. I don't recall there being much argument at the time regarding Ali's overall position in the boxing firmament.

The more recent poll had Holmes Lennox, and Tyson (possibly Holyfield and Bowe too) to add to the mix and still, Ali kept his standing.

Ali/Clay was Ring's fighter of the year in 1963, 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1978.

That's FIVE times spanning 15 years (He was denied the honour for political reasons in 1966 when no award was given out). No othe fighter was ever so honoured by this esteemed publication, and these accolades were bestowed when Ali was still fighting (no revisionism there ! )

 

You may have been there at the time, but your memory clearly fails you if you don't remember how little respect some of Ali's opponents had from experts, even by early 1980's. You don't check your memories against primary sources, and our memory fails us often about events that had taken place that far in the past. Give it another 10 years, and Tyson, Holyfield and Lewis, as well as some of their opponents will have their all-time status improved considerably too.

 

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You are not a primary source any longer. Check the definition of primary source - it's something that was done about the time the event took place, not something that is said or written long time after.

And you are again not reading what I said. I'm talking about Ali's opponents, not about Ali himself. Ali was a great fighter, I never expressed any doubts in that here.

And it's not about dementia or anything of that kind. If you studied psychology, you would know that human memory has certain mechanisms that affect our memories about the past.

 

Whatever your position has evolved to, your original posts conveyed the clear impression that Ali was hugely over-retaed and didn't merit his position near the pinnacle of heavyweight boxing.