Ali was at a disadvantage in the first fight. The first fight is a great fight, but has little bearing on how their fight would go if Ali was at his best. The rematches overrule the first fight, and Ali's TKO of Frazier means a lot more than Frazier's knockdown. Bonavena dropped Frazier twice, no one gives a shit about that.
Ali 2
Frazier 1... pictures and empty rhetoric don't change results.
Ali couldn't punch hard enough to keep Frazier off him
Ali couldn't defend himself against Frazier's left hook
Real Bottom line:
Ali punched way hard enough in Manilla to keep Frazier off him
Frazier couldn't defend himself against the attack of Ali in Manilla and was stopped
That's the line of The Religion of Ali.
In reality, the Manilla fight was between two downhill fighters, and Frazier was betrayed by his own cornerman.
The first was between two undefeated fighters,
and when the fight was over Ali was a beaten fighter.
Members of The Religion of Ali know that if Ali lost to Frazier, Ali can't possibly be the "greatest fighter of all time,"
so they try to sell their third fight as significant.
It wasn't.
Whenever I read granberry's bitter filth, I think of those immortal lines by Enoch:
"It is difficult to describe, without using terms derived from psychiatry, a notion having so few points of contact with reality".
I Feel Fine wrote:Ali was at a disadvantage in the first fight. The first fight is a great fight, but has little bearing on how their fight would go if Ali was at his best. The rematches overrule the first fight, and Ali's TKO of Frazier means a lot more than Frazier's knockdown. Bonavena dropped Frazier twice, no one gives a shit about that.
Ali 2
Frazier 1... pictures and empty rhetoric don't change results.
I see you're fond of facts. ..I wonder if granny knows just what Frazier was doing just as Oscar knocked Frazier down twice. Or what Bonavena was doing the three times Ali knocked Oscar down? ....Nah...I'm not even going to ask. That first fight was a split decision with Ringo WINNING the last round over Joe.
Ali was the only man to stop Oscar. Frazier could not do it in two attempts. That pitty pat arm punching got to him I guess.
I Feel Fine wrote:Ali was at a disadvantage in the first fight. The first fight is a great fight, but has little bearing on how their fight would go if Ali was at his best. The rematches overrule the first fight, and Ali's TKO of Frazier means a lot more than Frazier's knockdown.
Horsesh*t plucked straight from The Religion of Ali talking points.
Ali punched way hard enough in Manilla to keep Frazier off him
Frazier couldn't defend himself against the attack of Ali in Manilla and was stopped
That's the line of The Religion of Ali.
In reality, the Manilla fight was between two downhill fighters, and Frazier was betrayed by his own cornerman.
The first was between two undefeated fighters,
and when the fight was over Ali was a beaten fighter.
Members of The Religion of Ali know that if Ali lost to Frazier, Ali can't possibly be the "greatest fighter of all time,"
so they try to sell their third fight as significant.
It wasn't.
Whenever I read granberry's bitter filth, I think of those immortal lines by Enoch:
"It is difficult to describe, without using terms derived from psychiatry, a notion having so few points of contact with reality".
He's saying, "I stuck my finger in your eye, and I hacked at your arms in every clinch even though he was the one doing the holding, and I called a clear knockdown you scored in the 11th round a 'slip,' and now you still have the nerve to wreck all my efforts completely by knocking him flat on his back."
sad thing is, i think Granberry is serious with that comment
granberry wrote:
That's the line of The Religion of Ali.
In reality, the Manilla fight was between two downhill fighters, and Frazier was betrayed by his own cornerman.
The first was between two undefeated fighters,
and when the fight was over Ali was a beaten fighter.
Members of The Religion of Ali know that if Ali lost to Frazier, Ali can't possibly be the "greatest fighter of all time,"
so they try to sell their third fight as significant.
It wasn't.
Whenever I read granberry's bitter filth, I think of those immortal lines by Enoch:
"It is difficult to describe, without using terms derived from psychiatry, a notion having so few points of contact with reality".
collins, the poisonous feminine snake of boxrec.
Yawn, yeah right, mate. I see you are being ignored in "the greatest thread ever" again. Here's a tip. Try showing some respect to the boxers you mention and the guys might lift the ban on talking to you. Then again, as real boxing guys what would they have to say to a blowhard like you?
He's saying, "I stuck my finger in your eye, and I hacked at your arms in every clinch even though he was the one doing the holding, and I called a clear knockdown you scored in the 11th round a 'slip,' and now you still have the nerve to wreck all my efforts completely by knocking him flat on his back."
sad thing is, i think Granberry is serious with that comment
-----
*invisions Granberry's Head explode*
observor, I'll let you in on a little secret. The photo is of a FAKE fight.
George Chuvalo, who was sitting ten feet away, said "It was a phoney."
In his very next fight Ali showed he had no punching power as his fight with sore-backed Floyd Patterson dragged on and on and on.
I am sure you have your poster photo of the fake fight on the wall right next to your Che Guevara poster.
.
Collins2000 wrote:
Whenever I read granberry's bitter filth, I think of those immortal lines by Enoch:
"It is difficult to describe, without using terms derived from psychiatry, a notion having so few points of contact with reality".
collins, the poisonous feminine snake of boxrec.
Yawn, yeah right, mate. I see you are being ignored in "the greatest thread ever" again. Here's a tip. Try showing some respect to the boxers you mention and the guys might lift the ban on talking to you. Then again, as real boxing guys what would they have to say to a blowhard like you?
collins, the poisonous feminine snake of boxrec
shows the woman's viewpoint he/she views the world with.
Robinson wrote,"Is say a Cobb or Chuvalo better than a Patterson or Ali because they were never dropped or KO'd ?"
Cobb was dropped multiplle times and stopped in the first by Dee Collier.
The Collier fight was a fix, straight up dive by Cobb who made a large sum of money off the long odds that Collier, who was more or less a tomato can, couldn't knock out Cobb let alone win. Cobb made more off the 'loss' than he would if he won.
Yeah, this has come up a couple of times now. People are looking at Ali now as a popular all time fighter and are trying to impose that on 1971, where things were a little more divided. It may come as a surprise to some, but public opinion changes, as George Foreman or O.J. Simpson might tell you... Ali in the '60s and probably to a lesser extent in 1971 was, next to Jack Johnson, the most hated fighter in boxing history. He had a lot of fans, but he had large and passionate contingents of haters, as we see in this thread. The idea that the boxing establishment that kicked Ali out of boxing for three 1/2 years was on his side, or the idea that the boxing media which castigated Ali for every move was on his side, is the kind of distortion that we keep getting about Ali on this forum. Granberry and dave's game is that Ali was the "media darling" ala Oscar De La Hoya, and that because of this Ali's career was "manufactured" and that the reason why he survived and thrived was because of "breaks" that he got because of this. This of course ignores that for at least half of his career he was despised, that even when he was champion he had to go on tours in Canada in Europe because he was boycotted in the U.S., that the media pounded on him for everything he did or said, and of course the obvious example of him being exiled. I don't think Leonard or De La Hoya ever went through that, nor did Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano. Ali may have been the establishment fighter in 1976, but this wasn't 1976. In '74 Ali got to visit the White House, in '71 the White House wanted Ali in prison.
That said, that has nothing to do with what is being discussed. Everyone in the world could have loved Ali and they could have erected a statue of him in front of MSG, that doesn't change a 43 month layoff. Robinson was off for a couple of years and he looked like a dead man in the ring with Tiger Jones, and Tiger Jones wasn't Joe Frazier. Ali had a couple of tune ups, and he looked like absolute shit against Bonavena, it was his worst performance to date and if it looks good in hindsight its because he managed to score a knock out... if you remember, he landed an amateurish left "slap" on Bonavena, as granberry might put it... and while he was much better against Frazier the rust was still there, and when you have an evenly matched fight the smallest advantages benefit a fighter, and Frazier had more than a small advantage.
And while we're on the subject, we keep hearing about how Ali couldn't lose a decision... what happened here, exactly? Did the Ali conspiracy drop the ball? How did Joe get the decision?
Also, as I said earlier, if Ali had the option of waiting he might have fought Frazier a little later than he did. He had only been back in boxing for about five months when he fought Frazier, he had to rush the fight because that summer the Supreme Court was going to decide whether or not he should go to prison. Frazier didn't have that kind of pressure on him. Ali was fighter of the year in 1972, if he had fought Frazier then, or in late '71, his chances would have been much better.
As to your question about Ali training during his layoff... well, it may come as a surprise, but Ali, the "establishment fighter" had to work for a living in between that time, and so he was out of shape and overweight for most of his layoff. He had to make appearances, go on lecture tours, make plays, make computer fighters... anything he could to make money. And even if he had been in a more comfortable position where he could have kept himself in shape; he never thought he was going to fight again, so there wasn't much cause for him staying in shape. He couldn't get fights in America, he wasn't allowed to leave the country to get fights, they wouldn't let him fight at Indian Casino's; why stay in shape? When he came back, he had to rush himself back into condition. He was even knocked down in sparring for the Quarry fight.
Either way, Ali won the rematches, so all of this is null. I don't see anyone posting pictures of DeJesus' knockdowns of Duran, claiming that this makes DeJesus a better fighter after Duran beat him in two rematches.
I Feel Fine wrote:Yeah, this has come up a couple of times now. People are looking at Ali now as a popular all time fighter and are trying to impose that on 1971, where things were a little more divided. It may come as a surprise to some, but public opinion changes, as George Foreman or O.J. Simpson might tell you... Ali in the '60s and probably to a lesser extent in 1971 was, next to Jack Johnson, the most hated fighter in boxing history. He had a lot of fans, but he had large and passionate contingents of haters, as we see in this thread. The idea that the boxing establishment that kicked Ali out of boxing for three 1/2 years was on his side, or the idea that the boxing media which castigated Ali for every move was on his side, is the kind of distortion that we keep getting about Ali on this forum. Granberry and dave's game is that Ali was the "media darling" ala Oscar De La Hoya, and that because of this Ali's career was "manufactured" and that the reason why he survived and thrived was because of "breaks" that he got because of this. This of course ignores that for at least half of his career he was despised, that even when he was champion he had to go on tours in Canada in Europe because he was boycotted in the U.S., that the media pounded on him for everything he did or said, and of course the obvious example of him being exiled. I don't think Leonard or De La Hoya ever went through that, nor did Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano. Ali may have been the establishment fighter in 1976, but this wasn't 1976. In '74 Ali got to visit the White House, in '71 the White House wanted Ali in prison.
That said, that has nothing to do with what is being discussed. Everyone in the world could have loved Ali and they could have erected a statue of him in front of MSG, that doesn't change a 43 month layoff. Robinson was off for a couple of years and he looked like a dead man in the ring with Tiger Jones, and Tiger Jones wasn't Joe Frazier. Ali had a couple of tune ups, and he looked like absolute shit against Bonavena, it was his worst performance to date and if it looks good in hindsight its because he managed to score a knock out... if you remember, he landed an amateurish left "slap" on Bonavena, as granberry might put it... and while he was much better against Frazier the rust was still there, and when you have an evenly matched fight the smallest advantages benefit a fighter, and Frazier had more than a small advantage.
And while we're on the subject, we keep hearing about how Ali couldn't lose a decision... what happened here, exactly? Did the Ali conspiracy drop the ball? How did Joe get the decision?
Also, as I said earlier, if Ali had the option of waiting he might have fought Frazier a little later than he did. He had only been back in boxing for about five months when he fought Frazier, he had to rush the fight because that summer the Supreme Court was going to decide whether or not he should go to prison. Frazier didn't have that kind of pressure on him. Ali was fighter of the year in 1972, if he had fought Frazier then, or in late '71, his chances would have been much better.
As to your question about Ali training during his layoff... well, it may come as a surprise, but Ali, the "establishment fighter" had to work for a living in between that time, and so he was out of shape and overweight for most of his layoff. He had to make appearances, go on lecture tours, make plays, make computer fighters... anything he could to make money. And even if he had been in a more comfortable position where he could have kept himself in shape; he never thought he was going to fight again, so there wasn't much cause for him staying in shape. He couldn't get fights in America, he wasn't allowed to leave the country to get fights, they wouldn't let him fight at Indian Casino's; why stay in shape? When he came back, he had to rush himself back into condition. He was even knocked down in sparring for the Quarry fight.
Either way, Ali won the rematches, so all of this is null. I don't see anyone posting pictures of DeJesus' knockdowns of Duran, claiming that this makes DeJesus a better fighter after Duran beat him in two rematches.
Poor. mistreated Ali.
He couldn't get a break.
Please pardon me while I sob uncontrollably for the poor, mistreated Ali.
This is like having a conversation with a couple of six year olds.
Ali was not on a pension during his layoff, he had to pay legal bills and needed to make money. I did not suggest that he was off doing construction; he was making appearances, going on college lecture tours, making a play, making a computer fight. He was not training. If you're trying to claim that Ali was in shape before he signed to fight Quarry, then you're uninformed. Don't take my word for it, do some research. The only real physical activity he did in that time was help Ellis train for his own fight with Quarry; outside of that, Ali was out of shape for the 43 months that he was off, and he had to lose a lot of weight to get into shape for Jerry.
Ali was more active, eh? Frazier fought ten fights from the time Ali left to the time of the first fight. Ali had a 43 month layoff, had been back for five months and fought only two fights. Between fights with Quarry and Bonavena, Frazier also fought Foster, which was a short fight but which he doubtless had a training camp for. I don't know whose leg you're trying to pull, but its not mine.
And, as was said twice now, Ali was no in a position to decide when he could fight Frazier. He had to fight Joe ASAP. He was going to prison that summer, or so he thought.
I'm going to let you guys in on a secret; the reason why Ali didn't get the first decision was because... Frazier won the fight. And the reason why Ali won the second decision was because... Ali won the fight. No conspiracy, simple facts, only a small minority of boxing fans would disagree with those decisions, and those that do usually have a chip on their shoulder.
Claiming that Ali was an establishment fighter in '71 is simply a baseless claim. And while he probably had more fans, I'm not even sure that Ali was overwhelmingly more popular going into the first fight. There were lots of people going for Frazier. Ali may have had more black fans, which I think is what Frazier might have resented, but I would imagine among white fans it was probably something like 50-50. Even in Manila, Frazier had as many fans in the arena as Ali did. Joe Frazier wasn't a hated fighter; this is a myth. I suppose all those cheers in the arenas for Frazier in those and other fights were... what? Boo's that sounded like applause? Some black fans may have disliked him, but for the most part he was a popular and famous champion, especially when he was put up against Ali, and he was certainly not hated by the media. Joe made millions while Ali was in exile; Ali was not exactly the one who the "boxing establishment" was looking out for. Again, this was not 1976.
As for "sobbing" for Ali; I'm not. He made 2.5 million dollars to fight Frazier in an era where athletes were lucky to make 100 grand a year. But the idea that Ali was not disadvantaged going into their first fight is simply an uninformed opinion. More importantly, Ali reversed the first fight with two rematches. Sorry guys, these are just the facts. :(
Last edited by I Feel Fine on 11 Mar 2008, 20:03, edited 2 times in total.
DaveV17 wrote:Irene,
Ali WAS the Establishment hero. Frazier was the guy who most people opposed. How could one be a "non-conformist" and take a popular postion. Ali opposed a war that almost everyone opposed. That makes him establishment.
Joe Frazier was the guy who the collective "non-conformist" opposed. Does anyone think that it took courage to be an Ali fan? If it makes you feel better, you can still be a non-conformist like everybody else. LOL.
Davey,
I'd say 119-109 Norton is about as non-conformist as you could get. The irony is you & your chum are quick to point to anyone who disagrees with you as being part of the, "Ali Movement" when I'm not enamoured with Ali at all. More often than not, I am siding with caution against his (over-inflated) reputation, however, you & your buddy here are so extremist, you amount to nothing better than the Ali-ites for whom you have such contempt. Sorry, but you will not get me to argue over whether or not Ali was the, "Establishment fighter" in 1971 as though it were a credible, arguable subject. It ain't
Not Making a Joke, or Making an Insult... But Granberry, Did Ali Beat you up on the streets or do something bad ? Because your Arguments are almost Childish seriously :P
