The Ali vs. Holmes Sparring Myth

He weighed 212 1/2 for both of those fights. He weighed 216 1/2 for the Rumble In The Jungle. I don't believe he ever saw <220 again.

 

Great share, thanks a lot.

 

Yes,Gene Kilroy offered to put some ice on the wounded eye but Holmes refused because he wanted to show "the black eye I got from Muhammad Ali"

 

Who are the other sparring partners?

 

Just admit that in your incredible haste to disparage Ali you didn't even ****ing know what was actually asked or certainly couldn't comprehend it

 

Ali let his sparring partners pound him. Cus D'Amato who loved Ali was watching him spar with Angelo Dundee. Cus remarked he was getting hit a lot to which Angie said I know but he likes getting hit to stay in shape. However at the end in the runup to the Holmes fight his sparring partner Tim Witherspoon sadly said Ali had nothing left and didn't believe the fight should go forward. Ali told him to hit him in the head and he couldn't. He said he just "slapped" his head.

 

Yes it's well documented Ali usually cruised in sparring.

 

this was part of a film, that is/was out there on youtube.
the interesting thing is that this talk right at ringside during one of ali´s sparring sessions happened as early as 1970/71.
d´amato sounded very worried about muhammad´s "full contact" training methods, while dundee tried to rationalize it and obviously didn´t take cus´ concerns seriously.

as a first hand witness cus d´amato knew back then already.
for all others it took 10 more years to learn that he was right.

 

I will admit that I misunderstood that post. I though he was referring to 60s Ali, not to his title reign in the 60s.

 

I like the YouTube where Ali is in dress clothes and he's exhibiting his moves for Cus. You could see the genuine affection they had for one another.

 

72 Holmes as mentioned was stopped by Duane Bobick. So 74 version was still a long way from his prime. Holmes kept working to get better and improved. By 80 in the Ali fight you had the best version and much beyond the 74 or 75 version. The 70s Ali would have had a very tall order beating that version.
Holmes claims at the end he was better than Ali. Had the 2 fought in 75 at time of Wepner fight my money would have been on Ali but if Ali not in top shape could lose.

 

I know the guys banned but how do countless people agree with stuff like this?… I see it all day, He met one guy at his level, that guy whooped his @ss when it mattered most then he clinched him to death… right, Norton was not great and he didn’t make him look ordinary, same as freakin Chuvalo and fighters like Lyle… seriously he was a great fighter, loads of guts and he had to be tough with his way of fighting… but fighting rarely is dominant, dominant fighters are usually well managed and if they’re not they’re an aberration like Louis… Ali was not a “dominant” fighter who just toyed with everybody… he didn’t “dominate” fighters like Bonavena FFS lol the only guys any good he made look “ordinary” is probably Liston? And Foreman? Mix in some “little” guys, C listers -and shot fighters of course and that’s it…he’s more like Marciano, he had adversity it’s exactly why he’s compelling to me to watch he wasn’t like Wlad who just won for a long time in a straight up and down boring way, he was flawed, got dragged into messy situations and toughed it out, he may have performed magic tricks but he wasn’t, it was all his humanity that made him worth watching similar to Hearns, his flaws made him, him - he would beat pretty much everybody at HW but the other guys who were the top of the heap in there times are just as likely to beat him.

 

I’d do the same thing, what it must be like to spar a THE champ, the most famous man of your era and get to tell people about it. I’d consider that enough to die happy with.

 

You nominated two fights that were just Ali’s 2nd and 3rd fights back in AFTER a 3.5 years exile.

At that time, Ali clearly was no longer the fighter he once was and he was yet to become the fighter he could be (full potential) during his second career.

Chuvalo?

For anyone not named Frazier or Foreman, Chuvalo was literally the immovable object.

Otherwise Ali most certainly did dominate him in their first fight.

Their second fight? A bit more competitive which was actual proof that Ali wasn’t what he once used to be - even Chuvalo attested to same after the fight. Still, Ali took the fight 8-4 IIRC.

Lyle? Ali was doing sweet **** all until he actually decided to apply some pedal to the metal - BOOM, a single right hand saw Ronnie Lyle well on his way.

60s Ali DID dominate and he would’ve dominated anyone who gave him measures of trouble in his second career - a second career when he no longer had the all important legs and stamina that he possessed at his peak.