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

I believe the goal was to win Gold and not to impress posters sixty three years later on a medium that didn't even exist at the time.

 

I agree with both of your paragraphs, though I wouldn't extend the underlying logic of the 2nd to suggest that either Ali or the US Olympic team's head coach, considered Ali a better HW than LHW at that stage (I appreciate you aren't suggesting that, Bokaj), and therefore only entered him at LHW because there was a specific competitor at HW they favoured over Ali. Your previous explanation seems far more plausible to me, Bokaj.

Making the lowest weight a fighter is capable of safely making when contesting a title, doesn't just make sense because of height and reach, but because of strength, punch power and capacity to absorb punches, too. When Frazier beat Ali, he slipped plenty of punches, but he also walked through many of them too. Frazier's punches also troubled Ali, most notably the left hook in the 15th. I doubt either of those two statements would apply to the same degree if that same version of Ali fought any 175lber in history. i.e. Ali would have beaten any substantially smaller fighter in history that night, no matter how fast they were.

 

I believe so too. Specifically, when it comes to choosing what weight Ali competed at, the goal was to maximise the number of US gold medals. Nothing else.

 

There's a "b" in numbnuts, traditionally, FYI. Your expression as written essentially means "mm, delicious, nuts!"

 

Yeah, you want a fighter at the lowest weight he can make without compromising himself. The conundrum for the US team was seemingly that Clay was both the best LHW and HW, and that Hudson probably was a better LHW than Price was a HW. But it seems that Hudson's injury solved that for them.

 

indeed. Franco De Picolli, like Mildenburger, was a southpaw too.

That in itself proves absolutely nothing by the way. I think the southpaw angle is an interesting tid bit for those that might not know all the same.

 

And Clay ended up against a southpaw anyway.

 

You don’t know how Olympic selection works do you?

He competed at his best weight, the one he had mostly competed in as an amateur (I think there are some fights where he was a 180-pound ‘heavyweight’ 2 pounds above the light heavyweight limit but those weren’t the events at the highest level with the top competition).

So he competed at his best weight because that’s where he had the best chance to make the Olympic team through the trials process. And there’s often some ‘management’ in putting together the best team by the governing bodies (at that time AAU) where maybe they said ‘we’ve got a good heavyweight already and if you fight light heavyweight you’ve got the best chance to not only make the team but to medal.’

Floyd Patterson fought at middleweight in the Olympics didn’t he? Why didn’t he beef up? Because that was his best weight.

I don’t understand this: why WOULD he have fought at heavyweight if he was a light heavyweight? What he was going to weigh some months later doesn’t really matter.

 

Exactly. 5 pages of "debate" (admittedly including multiple posts of my own) and I suspect all anyone needs to know in response to the OP is contained with the 3 lines you've posted here.

 

He did! They were all the rage then.

 

Lashing out at others because you're bad at coming up with novel, interesting and well thought-through concepts for a forum thread is... certainly a choice. (as is allowing oneself to believe that page count ≅ topic quality)

The right choice? Wouldn't be for me to say... I am but a humble servant.

 

Your OP did sound a bit agenda driven with his weight increase becoming 20 lbs when it was less than 15, and the time before he turned pro became 1 month instad of close to 2. But, with that said, it turned into a very interesting thread and I got to learn some new things, thanks in part to @JohnThomas1 who posted a link to a very good earlier thread on a similar subject.

 

I think it's quite possible that Muhammad Ali grew another half inch in his 20's I think 6 feet 3 inches is a pretty good estimate of his height at that time. I met Muhammad in Philadelphia once. If I hadn't known his height at all, I would have guessed he was 6 feet 4 inches.