Muhammad Ali at his best vs. Wladimir Klitschko at his best, who wins?

shame you aint closed mouthed.

no that's not an attack of fos, sheesh, you aint no freedom fighter.

 

.Elro., I skirted nothing you wrote. You do not seem to NOTICE some of what I claim, since you repeat the same case without addressing my argument. Mainly: I would accept good statistical evidence. Though I keep pointing to MANY factors that account for KOs, & power as only one of them. How effective your punches are, volume/work rate, accuracy, whether seen/speed combinations are often more telling. I keep saying this. hence how often a guy KOs someone is a very unscientific way to estimate power. It is not isolating any variables.

It DOES seem extreme bashing of other eras if you say no way should anyone possiby find Louis or Ali anywhere near #1. That is very diferent from just saying they were not, & does not seem balanced. It sounds dismissive & intolerant of reasonable differences, not just disagreeing, but nor respecting (the most common) ideas, nor the people who hold them. Which is just what you object to from those you call the name "nutbags".

Anyone should be free to make any case at length as long as sincere, not trolling, & relevant. It is just that your arguments, wording & tone sound just like Merchant's Ghost & allegedly others: I will not argue if it is you. If so, lying about it would be sad & wrong. If not, you can see why, especially after a month later the equivalent tone & content pops up, others would think so.

Size & hitting explosively are SOME ways to produce power. Williams was big enough in all ways but for YOU muscle mass to hit as hard as anyone, there is dininishing returns at best above a certain weight. Maybe he lacked snap, not overall mechanics, but that is ONE way to generate power. Shavers had plenty of snap, leverage, & huge NATURAL size in his lever (arms).

An analogy to baseball. A few years ago Billy Wagner had WAAAAY more pitches measured at over 100 MPH one year than anyone else-& likely other years. He is well under 6' & nowhere near a HW/not a lot of muscle. Randy Johnson was even better & 6' 10" & 228-lean-through very hard, but not as hard as teammate Wagner. Chapman throws the hardest due to body torque & arm speed. Some have more muscle, but nobody VERY bulky is amongst the fastest.

There are many ways to achieve great speed & power. Your observations are way off if you think Shavers does not have much grounding or explosiveness. All concede he was not a very good boxer, that is irrelevant. He was only "little" compared to ig modern HWs, & looked bigger than his weight. Anyway you overrate what size means above a certain point. I have no reason to believe he would have hit harder at, say, 225.

I never said that I only base my opinion on hw he hits on testimony. But it is FOLLY to dismiss what so many who fought him say. Regardless of whether they won or lost-they would not plausibly all have reason to lie, saying it out of "sympathy" is an absurd hypothesis. Again, it is NOT "Hearsay" when you experience it directly.

To dismiss the testimony of all-as far as I know-who EXPERIENCED his power as "nutbaggery" is extreme & illogical. It is a classical logical fallacy to say what is most popular must be right, buit this applies not to expert testimony or direct experience. As for your point about FUTURE (& it could be past) HWs, 1) I am not aware that most of those hit by Shavers said he hit the hardest ever, just at least the hardest they ever faced. 2) Anyone can venture an opinion on who likely hit the hardest ever, though it is very hard to know.

The Holmes case is an example of you not thinking something through well. Holmes was WINNING the Shavers fight when a single punch dropped him. Against Tyson, Holmes was both way past his prime-though still good-long retired, did not have adequate time to prepare but took the money: but mainly, Tyson took him out with an effective combination! Taking a few well placed punches in succession from any kind of hard hitter will have more impact than a single shot thrown with greater force!

Now I APPRECIATE your revision to theory/postulate from alleged fact. It is just that 1st hand testimony is far from hearsay, + many are looking at the films: they evaluate perceived force, & also the impact of single blows vis a vis whether they are SEEN, partly blocked, where they land, etc...

I would just like you to see that there IS some extreme bias on all sides, but not all who differ with you are examples of this, just as you are nut nutty for believing the more recent & bigger guys are overwhelmingly better, though we disagree. But you DO go to the other extreme.















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Wlad is stylistical nightmare for Ali. Ali was vulnerable to left hooks. Left hooks are Wlad's main weapon. He knocked out more opponents with the left hook than with his right.

 

But in Ali fanboy world Henry Cooper is an ATG.

The only way to achieve ATG status in Ali fanboy land is to fight Ali or one of Ali's opponents and be competitive.

Perhaps if Wlad faced such esteemed competition as Wepner, Cooper and Banks and won so much as a round against any of them he could be considered for ATG status.

That would never happen though as everyone from the 60s and 70s was superhuman, and when they lose it just means they faced equally great opposition, not that they themselves are limited and beatable, how dare anyone suggest such a thing!

 

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:good

I prefer civil debate if I can help it. I was a bit snarky sometimes in the discusssion, so let me apologize for that.

While we may disagree on many things, we will probably find common ground on many topics as well. It's been an interesting discussion and it's good to have established thinking challenged now & then.

 

They were not superhuman at all. Hey, Ali fought a lot of guys that were of highly questionable caliber, this is true. Believe me, even defenders of the old-timers are not THAT biased.

But one has to realize that Ali is just a ******* of a guy to beat. It's not just the obvious like the speed of hand and foot and uncanny knack of timing, it's his supreme arrogance and belief in himself, his unwavering determination, his toughness physically and mentally, his totally underrated finishing ability etc. that makes him a nightmare for anyone.

I firmly believe that a guy around 210-220 with enough talent can beat anyone regardless of size. Ali is not a small man, please get that out of your heads. He stood 6'3" with an 80" reach.
He may not have the mass of many of today's guys, but that was his natural size, his natural weight. Fighters those days trained down to reach a certain weight.
They didn't lift weights to build themselves up to 230 or 240...that weight was natural.

If fighters like Byrd, Holyfield, Tyson etc. could be successful (sometimes extremely so) in the modern era, then why not Ali? He's arguably harder to beat than those guys.

 

Ali KO9

 

Where specifically has it moved on?

Earlier today I watched Thompson v Pulev. You know what was odd? Neither guy has a clue of how to counterpunch.
These are two of the better fighters in the heavyweight ranks today, and all it was, was a case of one fighter throwing a jab & right hand, the other moving back to avoid it, and then the situation reverses itself...to and fro. It was a fencing match. Neither guy finished off any combo with the left hook...once considered a staple among good fighters. Just a jab, a 1-2 here & there, a jab etc.

Neither had any clue as to how to catch a guy coming in. Don't you find that strange at this level?

Wlad v Povetkn...why the heck did Povetkin barely throw a jab? Half the time Wlad wasn't even throwing his jab, but still nothing but the odd straight right to the body or a lunging right hand from Povetkin.

Then he came in low only to by tied up by Wlad time after time for 12 rounds. Did it not sink in that just rushing forward wasn't going to work? Did Povetkin's corner do any studying of film at all?
Why didn't he change tack and let Wlad come to him? It was so frustrating to watch, because the guy had no jab...he didn't double up or triple up on the jab once.
And Wlad, c'mon here. A sloppy 1-2 here and there which usually sailed harmlessly over Povetkin's head. His jab was decent, but the amount of clean, scoring punches landed by either man was absurdly low for a 12 round fight.

I see many, many instances where even what one would term basics aren't applied. Slipping punches, parrying, counterpunching...many times uncommon sights among the heavyweights, even the elite fighters.

If the sport has moved on ,then why don't I see a triple left hook like Joe Louis used to throw? Why don't I see good lateral movement anymore? Counterpunching? Fighting off the ropes? Combinations?

It''s commonly said that the sport has moved on, but I see no evidence of it to be honest.

 

See, Ali being a nightmare for anyone? I'd buy that for a dollar. He would be a ***** of a matchup.

It just gets old seeing Ali fantasy matchups because it's not Ali "the man" people are matching the other guy up with, but Ali "the myth"- either because they just love Ali that much or they're using Ali as a tool to show how much they hate the current heavyweight scene for whatever reason. Overrating the rest of that era H2H stems directly from needing to support the Ali mythos. So, anyone who's had any success against Ali, must be an incredible, historical level fighter himself.

And that doesn't make Ali a fraud by any stretch- the man's still a legit ATG, no doubt in my mind. It just means he's not the myth - some unbeatable demi-god. For the people that rate him as such H2H, that's their issue, not his.

That cult of personality and how it's led to others getting overhyped also means that I can't take it seriously when people talk about how Joe Frazier would tear through this era because he fought Ali. The man fought 13 opponents who weighed 210 or more on fight night, and went 8-4-1 against them. He was stopped as many times in 13 true heavyweight fights as Wlad has been in 62 (only two of Wlad's opponents were less than 210). Or that Ali would blow out Wlad when he couldn't blow out a lesser version of Wlad in Ken Norton, who was also a big, athletic, orthodox boxer with skill and a vulnerable chin.

Is that because I hate Joe or Ali? Absolutely not. Joe Frazier is a legit HOF caliber heavyweight who's earned his spot in history. So has Ali. That doesn't mean they're destroying everyone in the present or future.

 

Likewise if the long string of 60s cannon fodder bums could take Ali to the brink then it's obvious Wlad would've been dominant or at the very least extremely competitive in the Ali era.

I'm of the same belief as you, any good big man has a chance against another, so to write off a highly skilled, powerful giant like Wlad against ANYONE is absolutely ridiculous. Hence my previous post!

It's just so mindless to assume Ali would beat anyone just because he is known as 'the greatest' mainly for his character. He was a great fighter but he was not unbeatable, many bums came close, and he never faced anyone remotely like Wlad so there is every likelihood he would lose to Wlad.

Of course I wouldn't write Ali off, but people who go on like no one on Earth could even come close to beating Ali really get on my nerves, it's just absolute bull****.

 

Fighters today generally don't try to add on unnecessary bulk, it isn't smart for any athlete to do. Keep in mind that when Wladimir turned pro he was 19 or 20 years old and weighed about 225 pounds, he's only really gone up 20 pounds in the span of nearly 20 years, which isn't abnormal. Ali was 192 when he turned pro, he was 215 when he fought Frazier 11 years later, which means he added 23 pounds. In fact Ali fought at 178 as an amateur, which means his weight gain from his amateur days till the time he was 30 was about 37 pounds.

I really don't like comparing eras in any sport. It isn't a knock on the previous era, but over the span of 20 to 40 years a lot changes. Contemporary athletes are generally stronger and faster and on average better conditioned, there is no real way around that.

Ali predicated his style on being the taller and rangier man in the ring, because during his day he often was. Simply put that style would have incredibly diminished effectiveness against guys like Lewis and Wladimir. It also doesn't help that despite often being the bigger man, his KO percentage is markedly lower than that of Wladimir and Lennox. Now one can argue that he fought better opposition, but I find this to be a pretty hard position to support. Every era has its good, bad and mediocre fighters, and every dominant fighter in any era probably fought a pretty even mix of those types.

 

I think Ken Norton is somewhat closest to Klitschko in terms of style and physical ability and Ali had plenty of trouble against him.

 

Thanks for the good words Elroy. I am not at all angry with you, & you sound very reasonable here. Folks do not need to either agree all the time, nor find an most opposing positions absurd. Any long term champion COULD be better than either of us expect! And too many utterly dismiss the modern guys too. Though as described above sometimes skills regress while athleticism increases, & which sport gets the best athletes & technicians varies over time.

Only a few extremist claim that anyone who, say, gave Ali trouble is an ATG. So that is a Straw Man argument above. The Klitchkos LOST to only 1/2 way decent fighters, & virtually all fighters are given trouble by only decent fighters. It is DISTORTED to not consider if a fighter was in his prime, if he still won while being "troubled", & his total record. I do not see Norton being as difficult for Ali in his '60's prime.

Also, Ali managed to fight very well against rangier guys, like torturing the 6' 6" Terrell over a long fight. He would adjust as he did against Foreman when well past his prime-could the K-bros adjust to skilled guys taller than them? At least in the '60's he could easily move in & out. Now sometimes like then Ali did NOT finish a guy when he could, as vs. Patterson (he came to regret his cruelty), other times he showed mercy. But nobody said Ali was the best KO artist either. Just that he found a way to win.

 

I feel the same way, and that's why this is one of the toughest style matchups possible out there for Ali. Wlad is bigger, stronger, and faster (and took a better punch)-just all around better- than Norton was. His cautious style doesn't provide Ali the plentiful countering opportunities and open defense he thrives on.

Also, speed hasn't bothered Wlad in the slightest in his pro career- he's the best big man in history at picking off smaller, slicker, more mobile fighters. And while Ali would be the best man by a margin to fit that criteria, the fact that Wlad never even drops rounds to that style of fighter is an important factor.