Muhammad Ali: Washed Up At 34

Such ****. Go home noob.

 

What's the point? Boxing is brutal. By '77 or sooner, Ali already had the onset of his debilitating disease.

 

Yes, please explain your point.

Washed up is an exaggeration, but Ali should have retired after Manila. The Evangelista was painful, you knew the end was near,

 

YOU MISSED THE FREAKIN' BOAT YOU NEWBIE CLOWN!!!!! DON'T POST THAT WEAK SHIZZZZ IN HERE!!!

OK, I am joking. Being a blowhard jerk is fashionable among with some and i wanted to try it.

However, no one who watched the fight thought Shavers won. ABC was experimenting, due to a spate of bad decisions, with showing each judges score after the round. Yes, the fight was shown for free on network tv. Only the tv audience was supposed to be privy to the scores. Ali's team had a tv in dressing room and worked out signals, in this pre-cellphone era, to relay the scores to the corner.

 

Ali had certainly slipped from his 1974 title victory over George Foreman. Most signifigantly from Manila onwards. The version of Ali who fought in Zaire would have easily beaten Shavers and there's no way that Evangelista would have lasted fifteen.


Yes...it would have been marvelous had Muhammad packed it in after 'The Thrilla'

 

Why didn't you jus title the thread "I hate Ali"?

 

I'll zero in on this one point. Going in to the Ali fight, Young was ranked only behind Norton and Foreman, and depending on the ratings source, Frazier and Bobick. He was a top three to five contender. He might have been unknown by the general public but that's irrelevant.

Ali did struggle with guys whom years before would've been easy for him. But the Jimmy Young of 74 - 77 would give any heavyweight in history trouble.

 

Ali and everyone else was expecting an easy night. Ali was in poor condition and it showed. Young did better than expected but his complete safety first approach, refusal to engage the champion and two knockdowns were enough to seal victory for Ali.

 

I watched all these bout live as they occurred. The Ali Shavers bout was shown on NBC not ABC. Scoring was revealed after each round to the tv audience. This was due to the Ali Norton 3 decision backlash. Scoring really was not disputed by any of the commentators. Not many called this a bad decision. Close but not bad. Shavers spent too much time conserving energy for the last 3-4 rounds. By the time he turned on the juice Ali had won eight rounds and the decision.

 

realisticaslly if you are fighting at world level, you will usually be conceding the title around the age of 35. since you are giving away so many physical advantages to young men by then you are on borrowed time - champions who didn't its obvious there are signs of "treading water".

nothing wrong with being past it at 35, its the NORM!

 

Very true.

 

Even 'washed up' he was competitive with any of the top guys in the division at the time.

That just highlights how good he was in his prime.

In retrospect, Shavers should have been able to dethrone him, but couldn't.

 

Yeah, I don't really understand this thread. Is the meaning to discredit Ali because he managed to hang with Young, Norton and Shavers when "washed up"? If so, it's a pretty poor try.

 

Yeah, it's illustrative of how having a long career can be misused by the uninformed. Someone, somewhere made an excellent point that Ali benefit when traits he had at different times in his career are combined to create a fictional version.