Larry was the better brawler when the jab was extracted. But neither of them were real body punchers. Larry's better on the inside, though.
Holmes actually threw a good left hook to the body. But the inside game did not make him comfortable. It would actually be interesting to see a battle of the jabs become a wash between the two. Ali would get on his bicycle with that beautiful footwork, and Holmes would probably try to go get it like he did against the younger Spinks and Marvis. Who wins at the point? I don't know!
Holmes on the strength of Poirier alone. At :49 of the following youtube clip, with 1:23 left in round four, Larry nails Paul with a thudding right uppercut to the left short ribs which can be heard but is totally concealed by the live camera angle. At :55 on youtube and 1:19 remaining in the round, you can see Poirier step back, and his shoulders rise and fall with the convulsive deep breath he takes in response to sustaining the resulting injury which has separated his rib cartilage. Ten full seconds after taking the hit, his right leg buckles and he drops to the floor. The slow motion replay of the punch from a better angle is shown between rounds at 2:47 of the clip. If you look closely, you can actually see the opposite right hand side of Paul's body ripple from the impact. Poirier had recently been stopped by Tony Tucker and Alex Stewart, but this was the blow he described as the hardest single shot he was ever hit by. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9O03Qe8mxY[/ame] Other instances of Larry doing damage downstairs were against Carl Williams, and when he doubled Ali over. Take a look at him folding "The Lie" in half with a right to the body to close round nine (at 2:59 of both the round and youtube clip synchronized): [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xms8Xv-R4X8[/ame] Larry's style as a stand up boxer didn't usually lend itself to Frazier type body work, but he was perfectly capable of producing some very good fight changing production in this department when dealing with suitable opposition. (Of course exposing one's head to try going downstairs on Shavers is stupid, and few who attempted it would live to tell the tail. As we know, Holmes is alive and well.) For Ali, there actually are a few instances where he went downstairs. Blue Lewis is probably the best example of consistent body work by Muhammad, particularly with his left. He went to the body against Bugner, and in fact opened round four of their rematch in Kuala Lumpur with a three punch combination downstairs that Don Dunphy described as, "Solid thumps!" 0:12: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwEtLgY4VKg[/ame] Now here's another rare example of Ali pummeling the body of Cleveland Williams. At 2:25 of the following clip, he produces his first of four double shuffles in the match, then unloads a five punch combination left-right-left-right to the body, followed by a concluding left to the head: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJUzl0aFHZw[/ame] Muhammad was so fast at this stage that he body punches were often missed, but Big Cat was considered by many experts to be his first significant production of body punching. Unfortunately, we don't get to hear the impact of those punches as we did with Bugner in Malaysia. Early in his rematch with Leon Spinks, he spontaneously unloaded a left hook to the rib cage, then they were reported as stepping back and staring at each other in amazement. But it's been speculated that this shot may have hurt Leon and been the key moment in New Orleans. (I haven't looked for it in many years.) Bugner, Blue Lewis, Big Cat, Terrell and Foreman were all taller upright opponents whose bodies were available to be hit with relatively little risk of exposing the head, so Ali would take advantage as a diversionary tactic or easy way to score. He also hit southpaw Mildenberger with a few light hooks to the body, but later dispensed with this in favor of the lead right for Dunn. There is some evidence that he'd apply more body punching with the upright skyscrapers of the post championship round era for point scoring purposes. However, he didn't double over people or slow them down with body blows like Holmes was capable of doing.
