{"id":2120,"date":"2016-07-16T20:36:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T13:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphapro.com\/funhouse\/?p=2120"},"modified":"2025-01-16T17:43:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T10:43:00","slug":"greatest-boxer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphapro.com\/funhouse\/2016\/07\/16\/greatest-boxer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Boxer–of all time–Ali"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five\u00a0Reasons why Muhammad Ali<\/a> was the greatest boxer who ever held a championship title.<\/p>\n

by Jack Corbett<\/p>\n

\"Muhammad
In the return match after Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship Ali knocked out Liston in the 1st round. Here you see Ali taunting Liston by screaming, “Get up you bum.” In this controversial fight the knockout blow was notoriously called “The Phantom Punch.” Did Ali really knock Liston out or did Liston intentionally throw the fight by taking a dive? The cameras show that the punch was not hard enough to knock a man out, let alone a man as tough as Sonny Liston. But I beg\u00a0to differ. Although Muhammad Ali was not renowned for his \u00a0knockout punch, I think you will all agree when you see all the videos here that Ali oftentimes knocked out an opponent\u00a0in a seemingly effortless manner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Who was the greatest heavyweight champion of them all?<\/h3>\n

The verdict of the most respected boxing experts are pretty much evenly divided between Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But let’s forget for a moment that the BBC ranked Ali as the greatest sports personality of the century or that Sports Illustrated called him the sportsman of the century. \u00a0Forget the fact that during his championship years Ali’s face was the most recognizable face in the world. \u00a0Forget that he was more famous than the U.S. president or any dictator or king on the planet.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I’m focusing on one thing only, and that’s who was the greatest boxer of all time.<\/h3>\n

Was Ali greater than Joe Louis, or Jack Dempsey<\/a>. \u00a0Or how about Rocky Marciano <\/a>who retired undefeated as heavyweight champion after\u00a0winning 49\u00a0out of 49 of his fights–43 of them by knockout? \u00a0 Louis, Dempsey, Marciano, and Ali were all heavyweight champions. \u00a0How about Sugar Ray Robinson <\/a>who is generally acclaimed as the greatest boxer ever considering all the weight divisions altogether? \u00a0Well, I disagree, and I’m going to give you five reasons why Muhammad Ali was the greatest boxer of them all.<\/p>\n

First is superior speed.<\/h3>\n

Muhammad Ali’s hand speed has been timed as being even faster than Sugar Ray Robinson’s and here we are talking about a 215 pound heavyweight against a 165 pound Middleweight. \u00a0As the old saying goes, speed kills, and since Ali was even faster than Robinson this means his killing speed is even better.<\/p>\n

Second is the \u00a0Ability to take a punch. \u00a0 \u00a0Ken Norton<\/a> broke Ali’s jaw, yet Ali continued to fight until the bitter end. \u00a0Or ask George Foreman<\/a> about Ali’s ability to take a punch. \u00a0Prior to being knocked out by Ali, Foreman had won 40 out of 40 fights, \u00a037 of them by knockout.<\/p>\n

Third is personal courage.<\/h3>\n

Certainly Ali’s ability to stand up to the heaviest punches of a George Foreman or Joe Frazier is a huge part of such measurement. \u00a0But Ali’s personal courage went far deeper than the ability to withstand the heaviest punishment an opponent could deliver.<\/p>\n

In his prime years Ali took his stand against the Vietnam War by refusing to be inducted by the U.S. military. \u00a0As a consequence he was stripped of his heavyweight title while being deprived of his passport which meant that for three years he couldn’t fight anywhere in the world. \u00a0Had he allowed himself to be be inducted by the military, Ali would have had a soft and lucrative time of it fighting in exhibitions for the entertainment of U.S. servicemen, getting to tour the world, and making money endorsing various products from Wheaties cereal to fashionable cars. \u00a0He almost had to go to prison for standing up for his rights and his religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

Fourth is all around boxing skills.<\/h3>\n

This includes footwork, the ability to duck and slip punches and the ability to take an opponent out. \u00a0While I was an adolescent studying Ali’s fights I was firmly convinced that Ali could knock any opponent out, and that when he didn’t, it was simply because he was playing games. \u00a0Examples of this include both Floyd Patterson<\/a> and Ernie Terrell. \u00a0 Ali could have knocked out\u00a0\u00a0either man. \u00a0Instead he chose to humiliate both by dragging each fight out to the end as he toyed with each of them like a cat would with a mouse.<\/p>\n

Fifth is, it’s difficult to lose at anything when you are firmly convinced that you have God on your side. \u00a0Muhammad Ali was a devoted Muslim following the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.<\/p>\n

Much of the reason behind his taking his stand against the Vietnam War was<\/h3>\n

because of his religion which prohibited the killing of other human beings. \u00a0Undoubtedly whenever Muhammad Ali stepped into the ring he absolutely believed that Allah would not allow him to lose.<\/p>\n

Let me go one step further to say that Ali was in every sense of the word, Allah’s or God’s messenger. \u00a0His sacrifice of his heavyweight title and what would have been his most successful years as a boxer is in my opinion the same type of sacrifice that was made by Jesus Christ or Buddha who sacrificed all of his material wealth in order to teach the principles of Buddhism that he was bringing into the world. \u00a0I don’t think there is any doubt in anyone’s mind that Ali would have sacrificed his own life for his principles.<\/p>\n

I would classify Muhammad Ali’s career in four stages.<\/h3>\n

The first is one of establishing himself as being worthy of taking a run at the heavyweight title. \u00a0This stage of his career starts with his winning the gold medal for the U.S. in the 1960 world Olympics.\u00a0\u00a0When he turned professional soon afterwards he fought a number of fights that brought him so much attention that Sonny Liston<\/a>, who was then the Heavyweight champion could not ignore him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The second stage of his career are his prime years as Heavyweight Champion before he was robbed of his title.<\/h3>\n

This starts with his first Liston fight and ends with his last fight against Zora Folley<\/a>. \u00a0The World Boxing Association stripped him of his title soon after the Folley fight. \u00a0Over the next three years, as usually happens to a fighter after a long layoff, Ali’s boxing skills \u00a0seriously eroded. \u00a0He’d never be able to reclaim what he had lost in his prime years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The third stage of his career were his resurgence as Champion.<\/h3>\n

Keep in mind that even though the WBA had stripped him of his title, Ali never ceased to become world champion in the hearts and minds of his millions of fans across the world. \u00a0A new champion would arise in the form of Joe Frazier<\/a> after a series of elimination bouts were established. \u00a0And although Joe Frazier was certainly worthy of the world heavyweight title, the real champion had always been Muhammad Ali.<\/p>\n

In order to be recognized as the real champion by anyone or anything other than the WBA Frazier would have to defeat Ali in the ring.<\/h3>\n

Which he did. \u00a0Or did he really? \u00a0I suppose that Frazier actually did defeat Ali in the first Ali Frazier match up, but he did it by the narrowest of margins. \u00a0Ali Frazier 1 has been recognized as one of the toughest and best in heavyweight championship History. \u00a0And for many, Muhammad Ali was still the reigning heavyweight champion regardless of what the referees had to say about it.<\/p>\n

Later Ali would go on to defeat Frazier in their next \u00a0fight. \u00a0He then knocked out\u00a0the “invincible” George Foreman and then he finally settled his score with Frazier by scoring a TKO in the last round after another grueling battle.<\/p>\n

Ali’s supreme boxing skills never measured up to what they had once been during his prime years,<\/h3>\n

but during this third stage of his career, Ali showed that as a ring commander he was second to none, and that he could take a punch as well as any man who had ever stepped into a boxing ring.<\/p>\n

So in spite of his\u00a0 no longer being as fast or tireless as he had been in his prime,<\/p>\n

Muhammad Ali was now at the top of his game.<\/h3>\n

He had knocked out both Foreman and Frazier. \u00a0Both men were far more formidable than any of Joe Louis’s or Dempsey’s opponents, with the exception of Rocky Marciano who knocked an over the hill Joe Louis out. \u00a0Or possibly Gene Tunney<\/a> who twice defeated a past his prime Jack Dempsey. \u00a0I mentioned possibly because I’m not sure how well Gene Tunney would have fared against\u00a0a younger Dempsey or a Joe Frazier or Foreman, who were both extremely powerful punchers.<\/p>\n

This is when Muhammad Ali should have quit.<\/h3>\n

He should have ended his career while he was on top. \u00a0 By now he was simply getting too old. \u00a0He had absorbed far too much punishment in the ring and it is quite likely that Parkinson’s disease had already set in. \u00a0I will call stage 4 of Muhammad Ali’s career as “Eclipse”. \u00a0 \u00a0I will not contribute any videos that fall into this category for many reasons. \u00a0 \u00a0After all the subject of this piece is,\u00a0\u00a0“Five\u00a0Reasons why Muhammad Ali was the greatest boxer who ever held a championship title” rather than a complete history of Muhammad Ali.<\/p>\n

I’m \u00a0putting up a lot of you tube videos here both for my own personal enjoyment and for those who want to revisit the remarkable boxing careers of the greatest heavyweights of all time.<\/p>\n

Winning the Olympic Light Heavyweight Gold Medal \u00a08\/18\/1960<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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