Muhammad Ali Vs 6'7 Super heavy Clone Era?

Obviously everything becomes much harder. Ali was usually the bigger man in his fights and in his time HE was the "skilled big man".

Clearly Ali brought much more to the table than just size, so if this hypoothetical division is a collection of goofs off the basketball court then he rips a hole through them.

 

There are virtually no 6'5 heavyweights and above heavyweights who have elite conditioning.

Even guys like Lewis, Joshua, Fury etc. who had good endurance for big men tended to slow down and not maintain full pace for 12 rounds.

Ali's speed advantage would be much greater vs larger opponents. In 12 round fights, a 25 year old Ali is more than twice as quick as anything any of these big men have ever faced.

IMO Ali would have a far easier time handling bigger heavyweights than smaller ones. His speed advantage and work rate advantage is too good. There are some big men like Wlad who are stylistically a hard match up but most of the big men would get outboxed silly.

 

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Ali was incredibly smart and adaptable. This is Ali vs Bugner 1. Even though this wasn't peak 1967 Ali, he showed a different dimension to his game. He fought primarily on the front foot and not only showed a great right hand but also a terrific jolting left hook - a punch he rarely gets enough credit for.

The man was simply a brilliant fighter. He could dance and box on the back foot, he could retreat to the ropes and dominate the most dangerous two handed hitter in hw history in Foreman, and he could also adapt by being on the front foot and being aggressive.

 

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i said virtually. There are always going to be exceptions. Besides Briggs can't push the pace for 12 rounds, especially at that stage of his career. Smaller heavies like Ali and Holmes can push the pace, make the big men expend a lot more energy, and exhaust them late. Vitali may well come out with flying colours anyway. I am not denying exceptions. I am talking about the general rule.

 

OK fair enough.

So then the question is: does a smaller guy have an advantage over a bigger guy because his body might be more efficient size wise?

The very structure of boxing suggests: no. This is why we have weight classes, because smaller faster guys generally cannot compete that well against bigger, slower but significantly more powerful big dudes.

 

We have weight classes but not beyond 200 lbs because of the law of diminishing returns. We have seen many instances of talented smaller men beating bigger men, i.e. Haye beating Chisora despite being outweighed by 35 lbs, or Hunter beating Bakole despite a massive size disadvantage, or prime Tyson dominating 6'5 guys like Tucker, etc.

You will never see a 130 lb junior light weight beating a decent 175 lb light heavyweight because the size, strength and power differences are just too great. But that isn't the case at heavyweight. We have seen several instances of smaller heavyweights beating bigger ones who outweighed them by 20-40 lbs.

 

I buy that but only to a point. When you get guys like, say, Tyson Fury who have both size and skill, they become very hard to beat. And to be clear TF has massively underperformed because he is one lazy SOB. If he trained like a Klitschko they's be singing sagas about him.

 

In the 1960s, Ali was the bigger man in most of his fights. He was 6'3 210-215 pounds which was huge in those days.

 

We also saw SHWs dominating the division for close to 30 years until Usyk broke the stranglehold

 

Yes but with lots of rules and enforcement of rules that blatantly favour them, i.e. smaller fighters not being allowed to bend their heads low to avoid punches without being warned by refs, larger fighters leaning on smaller fighters with impunity etc.

There is a reason why Wlad spent a decade mostly refusing to fight out of Germany because he knew the refs would allow him to get away with anything and everything. He was stopped multiple times by smaller (though not small) men until he refined the jab and grab with favourable refs.

Besides that isn't the point i was making. Even during those 30 years, there have been lots of counter examples.

 

Hi Fergy

The likes of Lennox Lewis would give Muhammad a very hard fight even though I would be confident of Ali winning. Vitalli and Vladimir K were very strong but very slow in comparisson to The Greatest.

 

Most of the refs were American and he fought in America multiple times. Plus it wasn't only him: Lewis, Vitali, Joshua, Fury etc. I don't think all of them won because refs were lenient lol