Rocky Marciano has a very good case for #1...

This fight was ,as you say difficult to judge ,due to Terrell's injury ,but it must be remembered Ernie did not fight "tall" he fought behind a high guard bent forward ,in a slight crouch from the waist up ,his legs straight,he did not maximise his height advantages in fights,though he made good use of his reach,with his long jab,and in close he was a clutcher,not physically given to bulling his opponents ,not " fan friendly" ,but certainly effective.

 

Norton never conceded more than 11 lbs in the three fights with Ali.
1 Ali 221 Norton 210
2 212 205
3 221 2171/2

 

Outside of Terrells's own excuses there's no reason to believe that he had any other trouble with his eye except Ali punching on it. I think Ali's superiority is easy to see.

That Terrell claimed he had been thumbed and had his face rubbed against the ropes just sounds like something you would say if you'd been humiliated like he was.

 

I never meant to imply otherwise,Ali skated it, Terrell showed little but gameness,still I have seen him a lot better ,so the eye injury was a factor however it was caused.imo.

 

True.

But Terrell looked to be set for damage control from the onset. He started with a peek-a-boo-guard, so I wonder how much he believed he could actually win. For me he looks like a defeated man from the first second.

There's just looks to be no way he could get to Ali. That famous sequence where Ali slips a couple of fast jabs and then a right by just moving his head, says it all I think. Those punches weren't inaccurate, it was just that the target moved so perfectly.

 

Also Dundee claimed that Ali could counter the right over a jab as well as anyone he'd seen, so he thought that was the way the fight was going to go down until he saw Terrell start in a peek-a-boo.

But Ali got an excellent opportunity to show this skill against Lyle. You can see that he figures out early that he can counter over Lyle's jab and does so a lot in esspecially the 8th round.

 

I never thought much of Terrell, he was not fast, not powerfull,not a great boxer, just big....he was ordinary and would no doubt be stopped in a few rds by Lewis or Vlad....Lyle was another guy that lost the Big ones and was almost shut out by Quarry...Big Cat was shot but even at his best was not a world beater...Foley? Mildenburger, Mathis and Liston was either exposed as a quitter or had a glass jaw in the 2nd fight (I think we all know the answer) or took a dive...Taking Liston out Ali's tougest opponents are when he came back, he handled Quarry and Bonevena but Frazier was a step above and lets face it Ali's toughest opponent at that point

 

He was treated by a physician for an eye injury and wore a bandage when interviewed. An elaborate hoax? That is going a long way, I think, and Terrell did fight very tentatively. Impaired vision would be a reasonable explanation.

I agree with those who think Terrell was a very limited fighter. Also, and I don't know the reason, but he never looked particularly good after the Ali fight, blowing fights to Spencer and Ramos and looking so-so when he launched his comeback.

Terrell beating Ali, or even giving him a particularly difficult fight, is something I find hard to imagine.

On your list of big opponents, you left off Chuvalo. And the size argument is relative. Bugner did fairly well in 1973, certainly better than Quarry, for example, or Bonavena, in my judgement.

Even Ali's biggest opponents would be smallish today. In fairness, they were bigger than the opponents of earlier champions, except for the freakish giants such as Willard, Carnera, Simon, and Buddy Baer.

 

Who here has seen Terrel fight before the Ali bout?

I've read Mendoza and a few others say he looked very good against Bob Foster. Any others?


My impression is that Terrel's eye got injured early in the fight, which made Ernie very tentative and unable to establish much of an offense, let alone taking control by using his jab or height advantage. He didn't jab much at all in fact. Perhaps he was intimidated by Ali's speed and his borderline sadistic taunting, "What's my name mother****er!"

 

He did look a lot better against Foster, but Foster got to him quite a bit. Terrell seemed much quicker when he weighed in the 190's. He was very tall for that weight and beanpole thin, but so was Foster.

 

I didn't say that there wasn't something wrong with his eye, just that it was caused by Ali's punching, and not any foul tactics.

For me, he looked tentative from the off. That he started in a peek-a-boo guard points to that.

 

I think many do the same error when judging Ali opponents as they do when they judge RJJ opponents. Their freakish speed and unorthodox style made good fighters seem worse than they were.

But people seem to have a hard time accepting and instead say that Liston was over the hill (which NO ONE DREAMED OF SUGGESTING BEFORE THE FIGHT), that Hopkins was green (even though he was older than Jones and had a similar amount of fights) and that Toney was weight drained, when in fact he always shed a lot of weight before fights.

The truth is that Ali's and Jones's speed and style was just too much to deal with for these men, and that this made them look bad.

 

Cus D'Amato and Jack Dempsey did suggest that Liston was ready to be taken. So did Ingemar Johansson.

 

What?! Before the first fight with Clay? Where have you seen this?

 

You can get Johansson's opinion in the Sport's Illustrated archive on the internet. There was a thread a few months ago in which I quoted some highlights of that article which had Johansson analyzing film of Liston.

D'Amato was quoted, along with some other boxing experts, by Ted Carroll in the Ring shortly before the Ali fight. Carroll also did a preview of the fight replete with drawings in which he obviously gave Ali a good chance.

Dempsey wrote an article in Sport Magazine in which he said the first fighter brave enough to not be intimidated by Liston would beat him.