I said he sat down more on his punches thus punching harder, not that he came back stronger. As for him sitting around eating for 3 1/2 years, it's really not relevant unless he came back fat and out of shape which he clearly did not.
My point was that many people, not you specifically, make the argument that Ali came back stronger. I agree that he spent more time trading, and so to that extent "sat down on his punches more" when he returned in the 1970s but I attribute that to necessity rather than preference. Ali would always stay away and spear from long distance given the chance. And of course what he did during his lay-off is relevant to the broader discussion, whether you raise the point or not, of whether Ali did/could possibly have become stronger during the lay-off.
See this is were I fail to take you seriously. Certainly the Ali of 1967 could have beaten Frazier but to suggest that '67 Ali wins 10 out of 10 is imo ludicrous. Do you not agree that Frazier (and Norton for that matter) had the style to trouble Ali ? What would the superhuman Ali of 1967 have done differently from the decrepit wreck of '71 to shut out Frazier ?
"The" style to trouble Ali is an interesting way to put it as it seems to assume that there was only one. Frazier was a great great fighter and he would always have given Ali, and pretty nearly everyone else, "trouble". Saying I think Ali of 1967 would always have beaten him is a long way from saying I think Ali would have had no trouble with him, n'cest pas?
But more to the point, or more to what I take your point to be, yes, Frazier's ability to come forward, low and quickly, and to keep punching through Ali's own punches would always cause Ali problems. However, don't lose sight of the fact that the trouble went both ways. Frazier was always vulnerable to both the straight right and the right uppercut because of the way he cocked his left and also because he was so aggressive and those were Ali's 2 best punches. He was also vulnerable to using up his energy before the end of the fight when he lost his head, as happened in the Bonavena rematch, the 2nd and 3rd Ali fights, and even the Bugner fight. IMO, Frazier would never have knocked Ali out and, as long as Ali was standing, at least the 67 version of Ali would always have won more rounds than Frazier would have won, due to his sizzling handspeed and ability to wrestle Frazier in close and push him back out. That's more or less how he won the 2nd and 3rd fights and I believe very strongly he was not nearly as good by then.
It seems like any attempt to convey a balanced view of Ali as a fighter is met with shouts of "Ali hater"
Are you suggesting that Frazier never walked Ali down ? Chuvalo, like Frazier, was a pressure fighter and he was at times able to back Ali up and trap him on the ropes. He could do this only because of his chin you suggest while as Frazier I assume would have been knocked out by the pre-layoff Ali if he had ever tried to force the fight like he did in 1971 ?
Ali-hater was a poor choice of words here because I did not mean to imply that you were one of them. I was speaking more broadly at that point.
Beyond that, though, geez louise, I really hate the Chuvalo-Frazier comparison. They fought almost nothing alike except in the broadest, most general sense that some might I guess call them both pressure fighters. Chuvalo stood up walked in and winged punches for a while until he ran out of gas and then he would catch a 2nd wind and go do the same thing again. Every once in a while, he lumbered past Ali and landed a couple. Since he was indestructible, he could last 15 or 50 rounds doing this -- and losing nearly every one of them in the process.
The argument that, well, golly, Frazier was just like Chuvalo except better, and Chuvalo did land a few in 66, so Frazier would probably knock Ali out or beat him or however you see the comparison working is, to use your own word, "ludicrous." Frazier was faster, hit harder, was much harder to hit cleanly, had better stamina, was more coordinated, athletic, and talented in every respect -- except that he didn't take nearly as good a punch. Frazier could make Ali miss, which Chuvalo couldn't do, but Ali could hurt Frazier, which he could not really do to Chuvalo. There is no analogy to be drawn between the two fighters.
I never said that Chuvalo fought Ali close or that he ever could have. My point was that Ali at times was not able to get away from him, even the infallible pre-layoff version of Ali.
Again, Chuvalo's ability to hit the Ali of 1966 occassionally has no bearing on the likely outcome of a match between '67 Ali and '71 Frazier. And, who said Ali was infallible?
Finally, I never said that Ali was not in the best shape into which he could then get, and was not still a great heavyweight, during the first Frazier fight -- indeed through and including the 3rd Frazier fight, Ali was still a great fighter. My point is that Ali was not AS great as he had been, not that he was washed up or a bum. Putting it another way, my view is that, if the 85-90% version of Ali in the 1970s beat Frazier 2 out of 3, the 100% version of Ali in 1967 would have beaten him 3 out of 3.
[And, yes, I also think Dempsey was past his best, though still great, when he lost to Tunney, and that prime Dempsey would have planted prime Tunney into the mat.]
But, Hell, this is all speculation. Anyone here, me included, who doesn't allow for the possibility that he could be wrong needs to check his ego at the door.
