Why didn’t Ali box at heavyweight in the Olympics?

Because he could make the amatuer LHW limit & perform to a high level. That's not speculation, it happened, it is the answer to your question.

At title level, boxers typically compete at the lowest weight division they can make. The only usual exceptions are when great fighters at their peak or the end of their careers, move up to secure a big money &/or legacy defining fights.

Once he turned pro the lower LHW limit was probably beyond him & he knew it would certainly be beyond him by the time he was ready to contest for titles a couple of years+ down the line. So why continue to cut? Instead why not transition from a likely calorie deficient diet to a calorie surplus diet, in an attempt to begin to fill out his frame into the HW division he was always going to compete at as a pro?

 

The point is he was cutting & once he stopped cutting he had a weight gain double that you described as "unheard of".

Archie Moore put on 12lbs in the 7 weeks that elapsed from his LHW title defence vs Pompey in June 1956 and his fight against Parker in July of the same year.

How many examples do I need to cite for you to realise the weight gain Ali made by his pro debut, after cutting to make 178.5 for Rome wasn't "unheard of" for the era?

 

Yes but this Archie example is another one of an already fully matured bigger guy making a lower weight whereas Ali was this kid growing up through the weights.

 

Cockell put on blubber. He was like the marshmallow guy from ghostbusters

 

Who are we gonna call? Andy Ruiz !

 

I said Ali put on 13.5lbs from Rome to his pro debut.

You quoted my post asking "In 3 weeks? unheard of at that time".

I responded advising 8-weeks had elapsed between Ali's Gold medal fight at Rome and gave examples of comparable weight gains.

I see that you have confirmed that you've eventually understood that Ali would have likely cut to make 178.5lbs, got back to his previous natural weight and then some, for his pro debut, after Bojak explained it to you more clearly and succinctly than I've managed to. What is the point you are trying to make?

 

So we have two possible scenarios:

1. Clay, who before the Olympics already had a walk around weight in the 180's despite alternating between HW and LHW during the year, regained the weight he had cut and added on maybe 8-9 lbs on top of that now that he had moved up to HW full time. 8-9 lbs of extra lean weight in 8 weeks is a bit no doubt, but it was also the first time he could eat knowing he wouldn't get back to LHW ever again.

2. He took steroids. Steroids had come into the American weight lifting team at the Olympics, so it is fully possible that he had heard about them. But even among the weight lifters there was scepticism because of the known medical risks with taking them and it seems to have taken some time before they spread into other sports. The first I have heard of is American Football, where it was pioneered in 1963 by one team and became more widespread after their success. So Clay, who didn't have a designated physio or doctor at the time, would have to have been using it for years before it spread to sports outside of weight lifting. And the increase in mass it gave him would have had to stop after only eight weeks, since he stayed at around 190 for a year after his pro debut.

 

Well put Bokaj.

Option 1 seems substantially more likely to me.

Either way, fighters around this period cutting weight to make a title limit and then weighing c.13 lbs more c.2months later, is demonstrably not "unheard of".

 

it took me a bit to catch on I admit. I now realise the pro weight limit being a little lower wasn’t going to be doable.

The point I make if he was only 8 weeks from making that kind of weight then there might be some credence to the avoiding De Picolli theory (who had beaten Price at heavyweight) and that the 13lb in 8 weeks is still a jump worth debating.

 

Ah right, I see.

I've not done the research into the avoiding De Picoli theory and the background that others clearly have, so won't speculate, other than to say it is typical for boxers to contest titles at the lowest weight they can safely make, as it gives them the highest chance of success. For Ali at Rome, that weight was clearly LHW.

 

There seems to be two different stories.

One is that Clay was supposed to represent the US at HW and Hudson (who Clay had beaten in the elimators) at LHW, but then Price did so well against Clay in sparring/exhibition/ND (despite Clay getting the better of the two first rounds according to the head trainer) that he got the HW spot and Clay the LHW spot.

The other is that Hudson had to withdraw due to a broken hand, and that Clay therefore moved down to LHW to take his spot and Price got the HW spot.

The theory that the Italian, who later won gold, handled Price so easily that it was decided that Price should face him instead of Clay in the Olympics is a bit contradictory on the face of it and first saw daylight in this thread, I think. It's not impossible that this was the case, though. They could have felt that this move gave them a better chance of at least one gold medal.

But if Hudson did indeed break his hand, and it seems strange that this would have been made up, then the simplest explanation, and therefore the most likely to be true, is that Clay went down to LHW to take his spot and Price took Clay's.

 

Thanks Bokaj, I wasn't aware of this background context prior to this thread and your post sums it up nicely for me.

Purely based on your explanation, I agree with your analysis of the most likely explanation.

Either way, an 18-year old competing at the Olympics in the lightest weight class he can safely make certainly doesn't constitute a duck so far as I'm concerned (I could be wrong, but I think that is what at least 1 poster in this thread is implying) and is completely irrelevant to how I appraise Ali's brilliant career.

 

I know that’s obvious, because physically, the lighter weight division a fighter can get a larger physical frame into the more height and reach he stands to have compared to the opposition.

But Ali in those days already had all the height and reach he needed to compete at HW anyway.

In fact, if you look at his career in the pros, his height and reach worked more successfully against those as big or bigger than he was anyway.

The trouble he had from smaller guys like Sonny Banks, Cooper, Jones and much later Leon Spinks showed that he found smaller guys that were closer to matching his speed gave him a harder time than better guys like Liston, Terrell, Williams and Foreman who were more his size or bigger.

 

So your assertion is that at 18, Ali would typically have had more success in the amateur's at HW than LHW, but went to great lengths to cut weight to make LHW for the Rome Olympics, because there was a competitor at HW he was ducking?

 

This whole thread seems to be based on the false conception that Clay got to choose which weight he competed at. If one reads the articles it's quite clear that the choice was the head coach's and not his, which also of course is perfectly logical.

But I agree with Choklad that it wasn't necessarily the big guys that gave Ali trouble. Speed and agility was what troubled him most if we look at how Cooper, Jones and Mildenberger gave him more trouble than several bigger and more powerful fighters.