The Fix In The Jungle?

Ali was going to whup that ass, and deep down, George knew it.So he played to the media's wants and needs.

 

Ali's key fights all had "smells" about them:
Liston 1
Liston 2
Foreman 1 in Africa
No rematch for Foreman

Plus Ali loses to Frazier I, a shaky points win over Frazier 2, and a true low point in the points loss to an amateur with 7 pro fights, Leon Spinks

 

Liston 1 - Liston was confounded by the young Cassius Clay

Liston 2 - Liston was intimidated by Ali.

Foreman in Africa - George was outthought,outfoxed and outfought. Simples !!

No rematch for Foreman - Yes,George deserved a rematch,but after Norton III,Ali was nearly 35 and feeling it. He no longer wanted tough fights. He should have retired. In my opinion,Ali had nothing to fear from a second Foreman fight,though. He'd more than likely have beaten him again. Yes,Ali in 1976 wqs no longer the force he was in Zaire,but neither was Foreman.

 

No fix, foreman threw everything he had at Ali who fought a perfect gameplan. Ali waited, made his own straight shots count and eventually the accumulation was enough to fell the big man.

I think up until manilla Ali was quite clearly the best hw in the world.

He squeaked by Young and then received a gift against Norton. I can't find enough rounds to give Ali in that fight and I've watched it about 3 times.

 

I agree. Up to,and including, Manilla Ali was still the number one. How I wish that he'd retired straight afterwards.

 

George talks a lot of ****.


You want the real story? Just go talk to him, man. At one of his grill things, or whatever. He's an honest enough man when the camera's aren't rolling

"I got whupped. I punched myself out."

Claiming a fix with no concrete evidence(Frankly, all the Ali fights accused of being fixes have no evidence), demonstrates an agenda, and lessens credibility.

Oh the ropes were loose. Tough ****. The ropes are too loose on a fairly regular basis. It's boxing. We love it, but very often, it's not uniform, or even managed competently by the people in charge of events. I'd say the ropes have been laughably loose for me on ten different occasions. If you accuse Ali's camp of doing this on eyewitness testimony, then he gets the credit of knowing EXACTLY how to beat Foreman, and concocting the fight plan to do so. All OTHER testimony indicates he improvised and everyone in his corner was terrified in the second round.

I've never read anything convincing about the Liston fights. Even the accusations about Liston II don't make sense. That was an epic screw up by the referee, nothing more. Liston stood up, and continued to fight. Sonny was swinging to maim in the first fight. Doesn't make any sense.

Ali beat Frazier clearly in the second bout.

So, what do you have? I have been with enough lawyers to know that the claims of the guy who got his ass whipped aren't credible evidence. What have you ACTUALLY got?

 

I've just watched Ali v Norton 3 again. Very close fight and I think it isn't a huge stretch scoring it to Ali. It can easily be scored for either man imo.

Ali probably just about deserved his number 1 spot until.retirement because despite him fading, noone was really.doing any better than he was.

Holmes struggled with Norton and Shavers also, Young fell off the wagon and Foreman retired.

I hate to completely backtrack on things I've previously posted but I currently think that trying to rewrite history and whilst some will have thought Norton and Holmes were the best two fighters when they fought each other, pretty much everybody would have declared Ali as the man to beat still.

Did he have a series of hard fought close fights, absolutely. And he definitely got the benefit of the doubt in each of them but none of the decisions were particularly bad imo.

 

You are a good manager, man. I fought a fight on an undercard early in my career, and I thought the ring felt extremely funny.

Very next fight, it collapsed, a fighter broke his leg. Dodged that bullet. Was PISSED at my management.

People who embrace conspiracy crack me up. Reminds me of a quote, something like "Conspiracy theorists make the largest mistake of all; They assume the government is competent."

It's the same in boxing, people. If it was full of shadowy geniuses manipulating every outcome and predicting the future, boxing would run a damn sight better-See the WWE. As it stands, its a chaotic sport where strange **** happens every other week, managers are routinely dumb, and promoters make constant legal errors. We're fighters, sons of fighters, friends of fighters, and crooked lawyers, by and large. Some are fans who only want what is best for the sport. I laugh out loud when people insinuated that the people who run this sport could possibly be THIS good at manipulating outcomes when they can't even write an exclusive contract that is binding or properly set up a damn ring.

Sorry for the rant. I've given this many times before. Usually when Teddy Atlas says something stupid.

 

This is ridiculous. Ali, for all that he was and wasn't, was a cunning fighter. He was a master of mind games, and his tactics were often absolutely superb. He knew how to steal a round, and he knew how to spoil when he needed to in most circumstances.

For all the times I have watched this fight I have always thought Ali was both well ahead and well in control by the time Foreman got dropped. Foreman had leathered away on Ali with absolutely everything - with the ferocity of the blows declining steadily as the fight continued. Foreman would need to be superman to sustain that for the whole fight. The famous images of Ali hitting Foreman and the sweat spraying off his head tells it's own story.

Fight was not fixed.

 

That's a very sound argument against the fix.

I fully believe Walcott is more likely to be a **** ref than a corrupt ref.

The simple.answer is usually the correct one. In this case the simple answer is a mistake made by a man who should never have been Redding such an event.

 

Fighter's aren't often intelligent guys.

If Walcott was so cunning, he did an awful job. Count the man out when he went down; Had his count been a half a second fast, it'd have looked perfectly legitimate. Letting the man get up, keep fighting, looking at Nat Fleischer ringside, and going OH **** and stopping the fight isn't a fix.

If he was paid to throw that fight, and it's anything like the guys who tried to fix fights where I come from in the 80's, he'd have been knee-capped for even coming THAT close to screwing up the outcome.

 

Foreman hadn't been boxing for very long. He was still green, believe it or not; He'd have a good number of fights, but he was about as experienced then as Deontay Wilder is now.

He won fights with power, strength, and ferocity. A more vicious bomber at heavyweight we probably haven't seen.

But he wasn't composed, had no idea how to pace himself, and his defense was woefully undeveloped. Him gassing isn't only perfectly reasonable, it makes sense.

Fighters like Ali learn how to fight over the distance. It's not a matter of running enough. It's a matter of knowing how, and of staying calm. No way a fighter like George Foreman had 15 in him fighting like that. No way. You can hear his grunts when he is whaling away in the 7th. He's desperate, he's tired, and he's wild.

If he was drugged before the ring walk, we'd have seen it work in the 1st or 2nd round.

 

If you had been around in the 70's, when the fight occured, you will remember the Closed Circuit promotion stated no replay on home TV and the film of the fight will never be seen by the General Public.

So, on the very front end, typical shakiness about an upcoming Ali fight was in play to match the Cooper I, Liston 1, Liston 2, and Spinks 1 outcomes.

Clay actually told everyone the Liston 1 fix was in.....when his poem said:
"If you want to lose your money, then bet on Sonny".