What fight made Ali into a SHOT boxer???

The Frazier fight was the end of his ability to perform like an ATG in the ring. Everything after that was all about Ali pulling out patches of brilliance just when he needed it most, or outclassing opponents that couldn't hang with even a degraded Ali.

The Shavers fight was the beginning of the end of his health.

 

taking punches in training, the rope a dope, not training

 

i think ali said that he can't remember anything after the 2nd round of the shavers fight. that's not a good sign for your health but shows his great willpower to come through anything when he's out of it and well past his best. ofcourse it would be easy for louis or any fighter to ko an ali at his best in the ring

 

I'll say Inoki, because Ali didn't actually look shot against Cooperman & Dunn. However Ali did appear shot against Young, but that's because he was very seriously undertrained at a flabby overweight sluggish 230lbs.

 

Come to think of it,SHOT is a big word. Even the Ali who fought Spinks twice may not have been the best in the world anymore,but he would still have had enough left to be competitive against the best. It was the Holmes and Berbick fights that I consider him to have been totally shot.

After he came back in 1970 he may never have reverted to his 1966/67 best,but he did make up some lost ground. After a while though.like all fighters,he went into an irreversible decline.
If we give him a score of 10 for his form against the likes of Cleveland Williams and Ernie Terrel through 1966 and 1967,I will rate his seventies and (sadly) eighties years.

1970 7
1971 7.5
1972 8
1973 8.5
1974 8.5
1975 7.5
1976 6
1977 5
1978 4.5
1980 1
1981 2

 

The question is what fight made him a shot fighter ... the punishment he took in the Shavers fight basically blew out the candles ...

 

The amazing thing is, shavers was ready to go down in the final round, Ali took away everything he had in that round, despite being shot, facing a prime shivers. Truly the GOAT

 

Yep....!! That last sixty seconds or so,Ali had Earnie rocking all over the place. Superb.

 

Foreman.

Everything after that was a tough fight. Wepner. Lyle.Norton, you name it, not too many e Coopman type mismatches.

And the Frazier 3 bout when it happened was not considered a close fight. Nobody was picking Joe to win and thought he was washed up. Ali was a big favorite. And not everyone was sold on Norton either and when he went into that 3rd Ali bout, the consensus was he'd have a lot easier time with Ali than a Foreman rematch. And for Ali, it just got worse after 76.

 

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Shavers did win.

 

I would n't say the Wepner and Lyle bouts were particularly tough. I'm sure that Muhammad could have stopped Wepner a lot earlier than he did,if he'd really wanted to do so. With Lyle,Ali was being incredibly lazy for the first part of the fight,and Ron was building up points due to workrate.

 

It was a close one,but Ali deserved the verdict,imo. He was plainly no longer the man who beat Foreman and Frazier but still had enough left to turn back a difficult challenge from Shavers.

 

Yes. He took a terrible beating from foreman. Even though he won.:bbb
I don't think he was ever the same after that...:?
The only gr8 fighter he fought after that was Norton(1975 Frazier was not gr8 anymore).

 

Wow, Earnie Shavers is actually getting some credit in this post, negative credit though it may be.

Thanks Kalassin for speaking the truth about Ali-Shavers. I agree with you.