Louis v. Ali opposition.

Honeslty, lennox lewis and larry holmes have the best chance of beating ali in a 3 fight series, i dont think louis would .

 

Yes but he also went on to loose to Brian London shortly after.

While this was a good win Folley had been fighting mainly second raters for the last few years and his best days were behind him. Ali himself said that Folley was past his best.

 

I would feel much more comfortable betting on Louis to win a three fight series than to win the first fight of the series to be honest.

Once Louis had fought you and knew how you moved you were fu**** in the rematch.

 

Ali fought the best left hooker ever at a time when his mobility was not what it once was. He also got caught by a couple of good ones early career. You would be envisaging the Ali of the Frazier fights i bet. Two Ton wouldn't exactly be the picture of succcess vs pre exile Ali, Liston's great left hook was handled very effectively by Clay. He' hit Tony 4 times and be out of range before the left hook even got off.

 

Sounds like Louis was very very slow to adapt during the course of a bout and tactically inept against a master boxer.

Personally i don't agree, but your statement does bring forth the issue.

 

Janitor's right, but he's forgetting that Ali was the fellow king of the rematch.

 

Janitor might be forgetting too that Conn at the very least might have been slightly damaged goods after the initial encounter. Guys like Joe and Rocky could really take something out of people at times.

 

But he wasnt.

When Ali rematched Frazier and Norton he had exactly the same stylistic problems second and third time round even if he managed to win. When Louis fought a rematch it was generaly a shutout.

 

There is an element of truth in this. It should be noted however that Louis fought in an era when there was not much footage of opponents available. He somtimes went into a title fight knowing nothing about an oponents style except what he had heard by word of mouth. I do not imagine that ali was ever at such a disadvantage.

 

Conn was a shell for the rematch.

Guys like Schmeling, Godoy, Baer Jr, Pastor etc were not however.

 

Depends how both fighters choose to play it.

If we get a Clay Chuvalo type fight then things could get verry interesting.

 

What I find interesting, is that you always seem to have to resort to picking out the worst performances of Ali, when drawing comparisons between him and Joe Louis. When comparing Louis to Foreman, the Lyle fight seems to be one of your favorites as well.

 

Is the Chuvalo fight one of his worst performences?

To my mind it is just a fight where he chose to mix it with a fighter who he was badly matched to stylisticaly.

 

BL: Having faced such great fighters such as Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, who would you say was the hardest puncher you ever faced in the ring?

GC: It was neither of those guys. Mike Dejohn was a real good wacker. Mike Dejohn knocked out a lot of guys in one round. Mike Dejohn was a good banger. Foreman was a good banger too, of course. Mel Turnbaugh was also. I guess they were about the three hardest punchers: George Foreman, Mel Turnbaugh and Mike Dejohn.

BL: During your great career, you fought Muhammad Ali twice and went the distance with him both times. You first fought him in 1966 just before his three year exile from the sport and then again in 1972 soon after his return to the ring. What differences did you notice in Ali in the two times that you fought him and did you alter your strategy between the first and second fights?

GC: You got it wrong. Ali went the distance with me both times (laughing). I threw more head punches in the second fight. In the first fight, I concentrated on maybe 75 - 80 % to the body.

I kinda switched it the other way around in the second fight. I fought a smarter fight the second time. I hit him with a lot of jabs in the second fight. Nobody ever talks about that but if you look at the film, you’ll notice I hit him with a lot of jabs. But I still think I should have worked the body more than I did. I worked the body too much in the first fight and not enough in the second fight. The second fight was still a very close, hard fought fight. Some sportswriters even thought I won the second fight. How was Ali different? He was just more energetic in the first fight. He threw more punches and had more verve in a sense. He was trying to get by in the second fight with a lot of guile. He didn’t have the same physical attributes as he had in the first fight. He had flashes of it but he couldn’t sustain it like he could in the first fight. In the first fight, he was a much better conditioned athlete. After his exile, he never really came back. He never came back to the fighter he was before he was put into exile. He was never that fighter ever, ever, ever again. Even though he fought some great fights after with Joe Frazier for instance, he was never the same fighter. When he beat George Foreman he beat him by using his brains. He sucked him in with the "rope - a - dope." He didn’t beat him on physical ability as much as a well planned fight plan. He used his intelligence and general boxing savvy and let Foreman punch himself out. Then he just took over. But he was not the same athlete ever again.

BL: Ali was famous for giving his opponents nicknames. Sonny Liston was the Bear, Joe Frazier was the Gorilla. He nicknamed you the "Washer Woman." Do you know what he meant by that?

GC: In September of 1963, I beat Mike Dejohn, knocked him colder than Missouri mule. I knocked him out with a left hook and pummeled him over the ropes. It didn’t occur to me until twenty five years later in 1988 why he called me the "Washer Woman." It was because in the fight with Dejohn, I had his back draped way over the ropes and I already had him knocked out. I had him pinned against the ropes and I started pummeling him, just beating on a knocked out guy. It looked like I was working on a scrub board. That’s why he called me the "Washer Woman." It sounds uncomplimentary but it really wasn’t. Ali said George Chuvalo fights rough and tough like a "Washer Woman." It was a kind of a cute term.

BL: Although you never won a world title during your career, what would you say was your greatest moment in your boxing career?

GC: There’s a few of them. I knocked out Doug Jones, something that Ali couldn’t do. In fact, a lot of people thought he actually beat Ali. I knocked out Jerry Quarry when a lot of people thought I would lose to Quarry. I knocked him out with a second to go in the seventh round. After the Frazier fight, my eyes had a propensity to swell up very rapidly so in the fight with Quarry, I fought like a one eyed cat peeping in a seafood store for about four rounds. The referee told me if the eye gets any worse he was gonna stop the fight so if I didn’t knock him out when I did, they would have stopped the fight. I also knocked out Manuel Ramos in five rounds. He was the Mexican champion who’d beaten Ernie Terrell and a few other guys and had Frazier down before Frazier eventually stopped him.

 

Mike Dejohn LOL