Was Ali really still a great fighter when he beat Earnie Shavers?

He wasn’t great anymore. No one who struggled that much with Shavers could be called a great HW. He was however still tough, Ali isn’t going anywhere and this fight pretty much solidified his claim to the greatest chin. Flush shot after flush shot from the bullet train Shavers and totally shot he was still clowning. Ali was a freak.

 

How about Shavers himself?

He actually posted a very good performance in his own right. He didn’t come out balls to the wall for a signature early round KO - he knew this was iron chinned Ali he was fighting.

Without deference to his stamina, there was a good chance that Shavers would shoot his wad without yielding definitive success and fold by the mid to late rounds - conversely, that was the signature complexion for several of Shavers’ defeats.

Though, Earnie might’ve taken his new found disciplined approach a bit too far in round 2 after he badly staggered Muhammad. He held off for a moment, not sure if Ali was foxing him which some believe Ali was, thereby delaying a potentially more devastating follow up from Earnie. Anybody else, Earnie might’ve jumped on them and swung for all he was worth for better or worse.

Aside from that , Shavers was very nicely paced throughout, throwing and landing several power shots each and every round and taking his power all the way to the end - though obviously hurt by Muhammad himself in the latter stages of the 15th.

So there was that too thrown into the mix, we had Ali on the decline, facing a murderous puncher and that puncher fighting one of his smartest fights while still maintaining a steady, considerate, brutal punch output from go to whoa.

I don’t know that Ali was expecting that type of fight from Earnie. He might’ve thought he’d have Shavers gassing by the mid to 3/4 mark of the fight.

 

Good post. Says it all really.

 

The leeches who lived on Ali's payroll should have retired him after his 3rd fight with Joe Frazier, if not sooner.
The Ali who took Earnie Shaver's bombs was a shadow of the man who upset George Foreman

 

Well, that's tough to sell because Shavers fought 15 rounders only twice in his career if I remember correctly. If we simplify it to "goes distance", then you'd have to call Bob Stallings and Henry Clark great as well.

I think Shavers was a bit too limited to work as a limitus test for the greatness.

 

True. The great man ceased to be a "Great fighter" in Manila 1975. As you said,he was till a "Very good" one against Earnie two years later.

 

Spot on mate. Manila would have been a great time for Muhammad to bring down the curtain. In fact he really had nothing to prove after Zaire one year earlier.

 

Ali's manager and Ferdie Pacheco don't come out of it very well and neither does Angelo Dundee.Neither does Don King.
It was Ali that took Foremam, Frazier, Shavers, Lyle, Liston, Mac Foster, Jerry Quarry's bombs not them.
The comeback vs Holmes and Berbick was ******* sick.

 

Even after all these years I still can't bring myself to watch the Holmes fight. Only seen snippets from it. I watched the Berbick bout once and that was enough. Yeah it was definitely sick as you say. It was so obvious that Muhammad had something badly wrong in the lead up to the Holmes fight. He should have been barred from taking those last two fights.

 

I've got even more hatred for boxing promoters and the sports leeches than I have for tory politicians.
It must have been obvious to Ali's manager, trainer, the promoter and his sparring partners, how bad his condition was.
I saw him on different strokes around that time and he didn't look well.

 

I first noticed something wrong in 1979 when he came over for a "Retirement tour" He was in front of a crowd of celebs and talking. I thought he had a sore throat. Some say that they noticed this sort of thing a few years earlier but I had n't. And yes It was apparent on Different Strokes too. Yeah some of Muhammad's leeches deserved a right hand from the great man instead of handouts.

 

He was no longer great in terms of his prime skill set but what he had was an amazing durability, punch resistance and a will to win using whatever he had in the tank. It was almost a given that he would hear the final bell, because you’d need a sledgehammer on top of a sledgehammer on top of an axe…no not to knock him down…but to keep him down. Shavers’ sledgehammer alone was obviously not enough to do the job.

Ali would then use his ring craft and intelligence and whatever physical skills he still possessed, and it was just about enough to get the job done.

He was incredibly tough,both physically and mentally and that remained top level even when his other gifts were diminishing.

 

Well that is over simplification.

Shavers was in terrific shape for Ali and likely not any near so for at least Stallings if not Clark also. He was likely not strategised for distance fights either.

He cleaned Clark’s clock in the rematch and otherwise had an excellent run going into his shot at Ali, including his later round 10th KO/stoppage of Roy Williams - a fight proving his retention of power.

If you just watch Earnie’s performance vs Ali in its own right, his performance was excellent.

You could nominate a number of dud performances from Buster Douglas’ career also but they’re not going to necessarily inform on his conditioning and the overall quality of his performance in Tokyo.

 

Ali was gifted a win he didn't deserve

 

Beautiful ?!
That's what you call a gifted win
Shavers won that fight