it was only ali that i remember all the champs used to fight about 4 times a year so as soon as one fight was over it was quickly on to the next opponent in the early 80s macho camacho was outspoken /and cooney v holmes had the long huge build up and race angle but the fights happened thick and fast unlike the 1 to 2 fights a year of today just remembered alan minter being rascist against hagler /but hagler played it down trying to think of 70s fighters and monzon/foster/ were dominant but not braggarts/napoles again quiet salvador sanchez again quiet duran in fact they were mostly spanish speakers looking back on it so ali had the limelight
Yeah, Ali was really the main self promoter back then, and guys were really civil to each other. Even Ali was really only really rude to Frazier. I remember the Hager-Minter buildup and the bottle shower, and Cooney-Holmes. Greg Haugen trashtalked Paz and JCC a bit. I think he was the one who came up with "Mexican Cab drivers.", but boxers really rarely used profanity and Frazier and Ali were the only ones pre-Tyson that I remember fighting before the fight.
I was just thinking something like that the other day. The top boxers of the 60s and 70s mostly weren't American. 1960s 1. Eder Jofre 2. Muhammad Ali 3. Carlos Ortiz 4. Emile Griffith 5. Fighting Harada 6. Nino Benvenuti 7. Vicente Saldivar 8. Ruben Olivares 9. **** Tiger 10. Flash Elorde 1970s 1. Roberto Duran 2. Carlos Monzon 3. Jose Napoles 4. Alexis Arguello 5. Miguel Canto 6. Wilfredo Gomez 7. Carlos Zarate 8. Muhammad Ali 9. Bob Foster 10. Yoko Gushiken Do you think that's why Ali looms so large in that time and why most of the fights people remember from that time are all American heavyweight bouts? Also, the decades before and after are mostly American dominated as far as the pound for pound rankings. I have to wonder what kind of socio-political groundswell launched so many Latin fighters into the stratosphere in this era. I try to think of like the color wall coming down leading to more black champions in the forties and fifties. Then there's all of the Eastern European's running things in the sport this decade. I can't explain that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and boxing becoming professional in those countries, because that should have happened in the 90s. There's probably something in the culture and politics to explain it which I'm just not a good enough student of history to ferret out. Oh, he pulled that **** with Liston too. This content is protected
Watching that clip, I'm just glad that Sonny landed on his feet and got that cushy job as Magnum PI's sidekick.
