Really neat rare footage of prime Ali sparring.

Nice footage

 

I have this footage on my computer.

 

Thats awesome. Especially picture quality.

Any ali experts want to have a dig at when this was?

 

I get a feeling it was either before Liston I or II.

Really interesting to see how he trained his inside game. In the first round he's exclusively intent on clinching, but in the second he gives it a go. Trains for both options.

Great clips! Thanks.

 

He does. But pretty small. A LHW perhaps? His style is similar to Liston's, though.

 

Beautiful on the back foot, countering is unreal.
And once he gets the timing of the guy his speed and accuracy are fantastic.

 

I think it is Harvey Jones a heavyweight around in the early to mid 60s, he went by the name Cody Jones which would explain the "Cody" embroidered on his trunks. He worked a lot with Ali, and is not the light heavy Eddie "Bossman" Jones who worked with Ali later on in his career

 

No if it is Cody Jones as i suspect he was definately a heavyweight

 

Brilliant. An artist at work,indeed !

 

It is Cody Jones, he seems to be giving Ali a good workout.Jones was around 200lbs when prime.

 

I'd bet that this is before the originally-planned rematch with Liston. It was set to take place at Boston Garden on November 16, 1964. Liston was training hard down in South Plymouth, MA. He got down to something like 208 lbs and was more motivated than he'd been in years. Then came friday the 13th. Ali was rushed to Boston City Hospital for an emergency hernia operation. The fight was called off.

Liston lost momentum. In December he was in Denver, CO drunk driving and fighting ten cops who were only trying to get him into a cell. Liston spent that Christmas in jail. He dissipated further over the next 6 months, and headed up to Maine for another meeting with fate, emerging with another shiner.

 

Bingo! This is why Ali was The Greatest. You rarely saw him smothering an opponent like this at this stage of his career. But, as you say, his game was multidimensional and -layered. He knew exactly what he was doing: he worked over and over on the basics of his particular style and was perfectly honed to respond successfully to whatever he encountered in the ring.

Had Foreman had something to fall back on in Zaire, he might not have been embarrassed. Had Tyson been thinking about making his fighting transcend mere moneymaking and partying, he might have found the right ideals to fulfill his true potential.

Nobody attains greatness without sweating it out as we see in this extraordinary window into the Master's prime.