Ali wouldn't have absorbed the beating he did from holmes and perhaps he would be in better health today. Although he was showing signs of illness a few years before that fight i believe that absorbing such a head beating at his advanced age certainly aggravated his condition.
- I am confident Earnie Shavers would be a world champion. - The title changes hands several times, until Tyson. - Excellent heavyweight boxing technique, which Holmes learned from Ali and became an all-time great master of, becomes a disappearing art, the province of old-time technicians such as Ali, Tunney and Johnson. With the advent of Tyson, punching power becomes an even more dominant heavyweight quality. Lennox Lewis is a tad less technically proficient, suffering a second kayo before the Rahman debacle and never attaining his eventual greatness. - The heavyweight division would be deprived of one of its very classiest champions ever.