What is your opinion on Ali-era champions Jimmy Ellis and Ernie Terrell

Agreed. Very plausible outcomes. I like both of those fighters. They each had a reasonable level of success. Especially Ellis who turned pro as a middleweight and fought in such a brutally competitive heavyweight era.

 

Terrell was a nightmare to fight. If the referee lets him grab and hold and yank Ellis around, I think Ernie would win. Ali had the size and foot and hand speed to not get tangled up with Terrell. I just don't see a likely path to a victory for Jimmy.

 

Couldn't he follow a similar path as Spencer, i.e.: control Terrell w/ right hands?

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They’re just sort of “Okay” overall… Terrell is “Bad” and Ellis is H2H if you value that not a good pick against pretty much anyone in the 80s onwards and a lot of guys before him.

 

I remember the Ali fight my God was that droll Ernie just kept putting his gloves up grabbing Ali and rabbit punching from what I remember. It wasn’t “masterfully” outboxing Ernie like I was told, Ernie didn’t really do anything but a lot of people will say Ernie was among the best of the 60s maybe but what does that say?

 

I don't think Terrell was half the fighter after the Ali fight that he was beforehand, and I think this is borne out by the fact that he never defeated a top-ten fighter again.

Also, a lot would depend on how the referee would handle a Terrell-Ellis fight. If he could make Terrell adhere to the rules, Ellis chances would be much better, but the officials prior to the Ali fight seemed to have a tough time controlling Terrell. One of the he ugliest fights I've ever seen was the Terrell-Zech fight which is still available on a youtube kinescope. Poor Gerhard was making his American debut on a Gillette Friday night fight. MSG did him no favors in putting him in with Terrell. Referee Johnny Colan let Terrell manhandle Zech in the first round with holding and hitting him with rabbit punches while standing behind him. Ernie was warned a few times, but not until after he had knocked Zech down twice. And as far as I know Ernie didn't have the round taken away from him. Had Colan enforced the rules from the start, the outcome of the fight might have been different since even as it was the officials had the fight a relatively close 6-3, 6-3, 5-4. And Zech, though not that experienced with high-level competition, had an advantage that Ellis didn't. Gerhard was about the same height as Ernie and outweighed him by almost 8 pounds.

Another important factor would be whether the Terrell-Ellis fight would take place before or after the Terrell-Ali fight. I'm assuming when we talk about the Terrell-Ellis fight that both fighters would be in their "championship" forms. For Terrell that would mean he would not have fought Ali yet. So Ellis would not have had the advantage of seeing in advance the tactics Ali used when he defeated Ernie.

 

Jose Luis Garcia was top 10 rated (+ on a lengthy winning streak that included KOs of Ken Norton & Spencer) when Terrell KO'd him several years after the Ali/Spencer fights.

 

Nobody wanted to fight Terrell. He was the tallest heavyweight contender of his day and he made everyone look bad. He had a long punishing jab and a pretty good right hand, and he didn't mind if the fans booed the many ugly fights that resulted from his octopus tactics. Ernie would do anything to win and in his prime he almost always did. He came from a musical family; his sister Tammi, a Motown star, paired with Marvin Gaye for at least one huge hit. Ernie sang well, too. But his greatest talents were clutching, thumbing, rabbit punching and nut-crunching. I remember him as the heavyweight fans hated to watch. Half of his fights were stinkers. His manager Julie Isaacson, a garrulous race track addict and Frank Carbo associate, was like a character in "Guys and Dolls".

 

Underrated.

Ellis seems to get blamed for losing to the top 70s HWs more than anyone else including fighters he beat like Quarry.

Terrell falls into that Willard, Carnera, Valuev club where people ignore his feats because of his size.

 

I stand corrected.

 

Back in Sicily, my ex-grandmother-in-law used to work as a horse-sniffer. It was meant to ward off something akin to their people's "voodoo." She told me that even in all her years in Sicily, she still never saw a stud built quite like ol' Ernie.

 

With his height and style, and his flagrant disregard for ring niceties, Ernie would have been a frustrating opponent for fighters who came along before or after him. He had a knack for suffocating guys out of their game. History underrates him. Neither popularity nor approval seemed to interest him. Winning ugly never bothered him. Put him up against some of the best of any era -- Johnson, Dempsey, Sharkey, Baer, Louis, Charles, Walcott, Marciano, Patterson, Holmes, Tyson, Klitschko, Fury, Usyk -- and most would have problems because Terrell wouldn't let anyone fight their fight.

 

Looking at Jimmy Ellis's early boxing record as a middleweight it appears to me that his management threw him to the wolves. He started fighting 10-rounders almost immediately. He was matched with Holly Mims, a cagey veteran contender, in only his sixth pro fight and nearly won. It seemed as if nobody cared about him. I imagine after his one-sided loss to Ruben Carter that Jimmy felt unloved.

Angelo was an amateur psychologist. He knew how to build up a fighter's ego, and Ellis responded. And yes, Angie had the necessary connections, among them his brother Chris. Angie guided Jimmy onto the undercard of Ali-Liston in Lewiston and Ali-Folley in Madison Square Garden. He made a signature move putting him in the ring with Johnny Persol, a flashy light heavy who had won several televised fights against name fighters. Ellis's first-round kayo of Persol at the Garden earned him the attention and respect he'd never known. Angie knew how to move a fighter. He was clearly the force behind Jimmy's rise up the heavyweight rankings.