Was Ali's level of athleticism for a HW boxer unprecedented at the time?

Ali showed against Chuvalo (second fight) and others that he could sit in the pocket, evade and pick off shots and counter with strong combination punching.

Realistically Ali was taller and faster than most of his opponents and he was an outboxer. Coming inside to lessen his physical advantages made no sense - that said, his employ of overhook and underhook in the clinch at times leads me to suspect that he could have been proficient in moving his opponent into short hooks and uppercuts had he tightened his short punches consistently rather than slapped with them. Ironically, for a guy who could throw ugly uppercuts, I always liked the combo that he finished Quarry with.

 

Just because someone can run real fast doesn't mean he or she is fleet of foot in a boxing ring.

 

Still is

 

Pull counter, jab to the body, archer jab (drawing back his right elbow somewhat when jabbing on the move to anchor himself for balance, much like a cat with its tail) - all things done that temporarily exposed him to feint and counter, timed uppercut or parry and counter (think Norton) but all rooted in deep fundamental soundness/understanding of body mechanics and physics.

Many would be surprised with how many times Ali is hiding his chin with his shoulder.

 

Yes, and an example of a very tight, effective hook was the one Ali laid on Bonavena just prior to sending Oscar crashing with the full range hook.

 

The shot that rocked Bonavena was beautiful and he also threw a lovely digging hook when finishing Lyle too.

I wonder how fighters like himself and Floyd Mayweather's punching would've held up if not for the brittle hand issues. I'm pretty certain that Ali would have maintained a higher KO rate with better hands and better conditioning in the 70s.

For a fighter that people say had no power, he certainly did things to fighters that others just didn't do ala Foreman and Bonavena.

 

Totally agree re Ali’s brittle hands. More KOs for sure.

I think it was telling that Ali said he had no problems with his hands going into the Foreman fight - best they’d ever been.

Ali was hitting with bad intentions from go to whoa in Zaire - a fantastic power punching display imo. Maybe the perception of that display was not fully appreciated due to the steel in Foreman’s chin also not being fully appreciated as at that time.

Of course Ali’s vulnerable hands didn’t just affect him during real time combat, they also impacted on/impaired his preparations.

Ali had to be careful with those hands and also, in some instances, having to lay off heavy bag work altogether in less than ideal time before an actual fight.

I’ve always liked the vision of Ali seriously smacking the heavy bag whilst in training for the second Henry Cooper match (at 3:08 in the clip below).

Ali had terrific snap on his punches and the vid below is actually a very nice montage of various clips of Ali hitting the heavy bag.

Possibly the aesthetics of Ali’s deliveries sometimes belied the actual power behind his shots also.

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and the opposite is true. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I saw some times of a young Ali trying olympic style sprints. He wasn’t good at all, iirc. Like, couldn’t even win a high school track meet. Yet, look at him gliding around the ring like that. And… Ken Norton, who shuffled around the ring like a crab with a broken leg, was a one man track team in high school. He was so fast, they changed the rules in the state to stop him from showing up and winning every event for his school. Go figure how that all works. (It’s funny, Norton would probably have had an Usain Bolt level of success if he’d stuck with track).