The Greatest

[BaggyTrousers]

George Foreman in '74 was viewed in a similar way to Tyson - meanest baddest man on the planet. Ali still found a way to beat him despite being well past his prime.

Indeed, he was widely expected to beat the living blue fu@k out of Ali having mercilessly whipped Joe Frazier not long before, literally lifting him off the canvass into the air with uppercuts on a few occasions.

The fights between Ali & Frazier sapped much of the fight out of both of them, Ali declaring after Manila that he felt that it had been as near to death as you could get without dying & even allowing for his hyperbole they were frighteningly intense fights. For him to do other remarkable things after those was just a stamp of his class. I wonder had he not been deprived of his prime by a vindictive campaign by "whitie" would any of the goons who beat him ever have laid a glove on him?

And by the way Snipe, I have it on good authority that the woman Tyson raped gave him a queer diggin'. You really shouldn't mention that scumbucket in the same sentence as Ali, he really really wasn't very good........ quite apart from his basterdliness.

[bazzaj]

[quote="BaggyTrousers]

Ali's place in boxing is irrelevant, it's what he did for those he described as "my people" that is his legacy, [/quote]
This quote from you Baggy is what I refer to.
I don't agree with you.

For me his place in boxing is the relevance and legacy when discussing Ali but that's just me.
Oh and all the other boxers that he influenced in terms of style and charisma.
If I was a young oppressed black man who grew up in the prejudice of the 1960s I would have no doubt seen him differently
But I'm not.

He is the greatest boxer of all time and the most charismatic sportsman in history in my view.
That's where it begins and ends in my opinion.
His draft refusal, conversion to Islam, black power,affairs with women only served as.footnotes to his career in my view.
Without boxing he would have been nothing.

Sorry to disappoint and if that makes me."poor" in your eyes so be it.

[Snipe Watson]

Ha now you are talking!
All I will say is this Snipe.
Name one fighter Tyson fought who had genuine class and fighting in their prime?
Holmes and Spinks were well past their sell by.

To answer the 2 class fighters he took on in his career were Lewis and Holyfield who dismantled him.
Also Smith and Tucker (scarcely legends) took Tyson the distance in his pomp whilst he was trying to knock them out.
We could safely assume that Ali could easily at least matched that.

Tyson went out to maim his opponents no matter how out of their depth they were he admitted he wanted to kill them regardless..
Ali could have done but didn't as he stated he wished his opponents no harm which is why he didn't go for knockouts over stoppages or points.

That's the difference in true class.

You cannot compare apples with oranges.
All the heavyweights before Ali were ponderous heavy handed big men. He was the first true athlete in the division as I said. A modern Heavyweight hit harder than a Heavyweight in Ali's day and they were fitter and quicker, with Tyson in his pomp bringing a level of savagery never seen before or since.
Tyson in his pomp would not have tired like Foreman did and Ali could not have soaked it up like he did in Zaire.
By the time Tyson fought Holyfield and Lewis, his life was in a tailspin and his best was way behind him. In fact it was a mess by mid 1988 when The gold digger had screwed him over. Cus D'Amato's death took away all of the stability in his life and although he achieved all of his notable victories afterwards, the lack of stability left him without the tools to handle the big time. Between 85 and early 88 he was the best I've ever seen.

Ali fought plenty of bead beats too. Joe Bugner took him the distance twice.

[Dave]

Tyson and Lewis are the same age. Tyson's personal life was always fecked up.

[Cap'n Grumpy]

The best boxer I have ever seen, in my lifetime was Sugar Ray Leonard, although Marvin Hagler was my favourite at the time.
Along with Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler formed the golden era for boxing.

Close - very close, but not quite the same assessment as myself. I too rated Sugar Ray Leonard very highly and would go so far as to say of my 3 favourite fights of all time, two featured Ali (The Rumble and the Thrilla), and the third would be Marvelous Marvin v SRL

[BaggyTrousers]

[quote="BaggyTrousers]

Ali's place in boxing is irrelevant, it's what he did for those he described as "my people" that is his legacy,

This quote from you Baggy is what I refer to.
I don't agree with you.

For me his place in boxing is the relevance and legacy when discussing Ali but that's just me.
Oh and all the other boxers that he influenced in terms of style and charisma.
If I was a young oppressed black man who grew up in the prejudice of the 1960s I would have no doubt seen him differently
But I'm not.

He is the greatest boxer of all time and the most charismatic sportsman in history in my view.
That's where it begins and ends in my opinion.
His draft refusal, conversion to Islam, black power,affairs with women only served as.footnotes to his career in my view.
Without boxing he would have been nothing.

Sorry to disappoint and if that makes me."poor" in your eyes so be it.[/quote][/quote]

Feel free to be wrong, I am not disappointed.

[bazzaj]

Best fight ever I saw was Hagler v Hearns go toe to toe for 4 rounds.
Especially when they predicted a cagey fight.
That was a golden era for boxing no argument there.

What I find funny is Snipe says you can't compare apples with oranges and goes on to do just that.
For the record apples are crunchy and oranges are soft and juicy.
Applying your logic we couldn't say those fighters couldn't beat today's middleweights?
Really?

I also find it laughable when George Foreman who was beaten up by Ali in his pomp came back in his 40s and reclaimed the heavyweight title in a division in Tysons era well over a decade after retiring..
Shows how bad the standard was in Tysons era by comparison.
Ali was considered too old at 32 to beat George!

Also nice question avoidance but I will ask Snipe again.
Who did Tyson beat who was a class act in their pomp?

Ali beat at least 4 and I don't recall mentioning that he didn't fight bums but more the point that he didn't set out to destroy them as Tyson did.

Something Larry Holmes learned from Ali BTW when he fought a 'punch drunk' Ali.
Holmes refused to knock him down saying "go down champ", which he stubbornly wouldn't do until Dundee threw in the towel.
Tyson needless to say did not extend Holmes the same courtesy and pulverised him in 4 rounds.

[bazzaj]

When Ali at 34 fought European champion Richard Dunne, he quickly overwhelmed him.
Ali urged a TV producer "get those commercials in quick, I can't hold this sucker up any longer".
Genius that sums up the great man.

[BR]

For the record Bush also refused the draft on principles which were that he was a cowardly hypocrite.
The difference was that Alis principles were of a higher moral value to most, particularly with hindsight.

Bush used the loopholes in the system to avoid combat service (he did not refuse it). Of course it helped that his connections made those loopholes navigable. He appeared to fulfill his service requirement and any assistance he received in maintaining that appearance without actually being fully committed slipped under the radar at the time.

Ali openly refused on moral grounds. In doing so, he lifted himself above the parapet to be shot at. And perhaps more importantly to be emulated.

Metaphorically and physically - undoubtedly Bush would have made the better fighter pilot, but if it came to hand-to-hand fighting, I know which one I'd want in my unit.

[Snipe Watson]

Best fight ever I saw was Hagler v Hearns go toe to toe for 4 rounds.

I have never seen the like of it before or since. It's hard to believe, but Hagler wasn't viewed as the more dangerous of the two. Iran Barkley vs Nigel Benn was another brutal fight. So was Lloyd Honeyghan vs Donald Curry.
My late father was a massive boxing fan and he always rated them 1. Sugar Ray Robinson, 2. Ali and 3. Leonard.
He also said that Hagler Hearns was the greatest fight he ever saw.

[bazzaj]

You can see it on utube so please I urge posters to watch it if you haven't seen it before.
I just watched it again and wrongly stated it was 4 rounds instead of 3 but the first in particular was like a highlights reel.

A lot of people say Ray Robinson was pound for pound the best.
In fact he took on the heavyweight champ from memory just to get a competitive fight which he eventually lost despite worrying the bigger man.

That's my point though heavyweights are the top fighters in the world and when Ali was on top no boxer in any division in the world could touch him.
Robinson could never say that.

That's just me though I don't really go in for the pound for pound stuff as that is snipes apples and oranges comparison that I don't really get.

In other words if he was bigger or he was was smaller he would win.
Well they'd be different fighters for a start.
A lot easier in my view to compare fighters from the same division even if they are from different eras.

[solidarity]

I've just been sent this by a friend, from an article by Matthew Syed (The Times, 2016, 6 June). I haven't seen the full article.

‘the greatest was a far more complicated figure that the sanitised version fed to the public in recent years … he could be ugly, vindictive and at times hypocritical … today, he would be looked upon as a contaminant, a chronic user of hate language’ and a serial womaniser...'

‘… drowned in a deluge of misleading sentimentality’

I suppose we all want to remember the best but the truth is rarely simple. Of course, following the glowing tributes and a raft of popular biographies in the immediate future, there'll be a batch of debunking, muck raking biographies in the next year or two.

[bazzaj]

And that Setanta my friend is exactly why I would rather focus on his boxing as his legacy.

[rorybestsbigbaldnoggin]

Ali threw that medal in the river when he encountered racism on his return from Rome.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/ ... ssius-clay

I also recall another moment between us that turned on Muhammad’s religious beliefs. One day, we were discussing Ali’s 1976 ‘autobiography’. The book contains numerous allegorical tales, including the claim that young Cassius Clay threw his Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River after being denied service at a segregated restaurant.

“You didn’t really do that, did you?” I queried.

“Yes, I did.”

“Swear to Allah.”

There was no response.

“Swear to Allah,” I pressed.

“Someone stole it,” Ali admitted. “Or I lost it.”

[BaggyTrousers]

Right, I am just about finished with this so one parting notion.

I hinted in a previous post that there are things that I didn't like with Ali - I mentioned his support of racial segregation - but here is the thing, like Mandela & like Martin Luther King there are things I wouldn't be so fond of, but I find that if you want to nitpick about any well known figure, you can & will find something to poke at the finest of individuals. Who would have guessed for example that our PM likes to fu@k pigs?

If I had the fame & opportunity as many famous figures, like our Geordie for example, to "womanise" I suspect my lanyard would be worn away to a bloody stump. If not all anecdotes are 100% factual, I can recognise the trait, who amongst us has not embellished a tale? You will also always find some gobshite happy to spread a bit of poison on the best of us.

Ali was a great boxer, more than that he was an extremely important figure in the acceptance of black athletes, in the UK just as much as America, for more than their athletic ability. For the dull of wit, that is why I believe the man was more important than the boxer, great sportsmen aren't exactly a rarity. People who have an impact on a generation, mainly for the better, are a different matter.

I shan't be fielding questions, you can shove them up your respective holes.