BoxRec

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Ambling Alp wrote:
This is the problem with Youtube. People watch a couple of minutes of a fighter's career (without knowing the circumstances) and think they have a good idea about that fighter.

You're completely correct, and this thread is a great example of this.

Guys like 'TheOneIsHere' (worst name ever?) talking about great tough fighters being 'exposed' and seeming to judge their worth purely by YouTube clips and breezing over their records on Boxrec actually expose how little they know about the subjects they write endlessly about, in this less than believable 'historians tone' they have strangely adopted.

overhand_right wrote:

Ambling Alp wrote:
This is the problem with Youtube. People watch a couple of minutes of a fighter's career (without knowing the circumstances) and think they have a good idea about that fighter.

You're completely correct, and this thread is a great example of this.

Guys like 'TheOneIsHere' (worst name ever?) talking about great tough fighters being 'exposed' and seeming to judge their worth purely by YouTube clips and breezing over their records on Boxrec actually expose how little they know about the subjects they write endlessly about, in this less than believable 'historians tone' they have strangely adopted.

I saw all three Ali-Norton fights in real time as well as his fights with Earnie Shavers, Jimmy Young, Gerry Cooney, and Larry Holmes...I was the only one in a crowded bar to pick Jimmy Young by a decision... I had the wrong winner but I was much closer than everybody else who had Norton by a knock out, none later than the ninth round...

I watched the Holmes-Cooney fight in real time as well as Holmes-Norton...

I come from a family of boxers , have boxed, and have friends who have boxed. That can be verified.


TheOneIsHere2008

Yet you're implying Ken Norton couldn't handle punchers because at 35 and 37, so far past his best, he was blown out by Cooney and Shavers.

Obviously learned a lot in your years watching boxing.

overhand_right wrote:Yet you're implying Ken Norton couldn't handle punchers because at 35 and 37, so far past his best, he was blown out by Cooney and Shavers.

Obviously learned a lot in your years watching boxing.

Respectfully, if you read my posts, I admit that he was well past it for Cooney...

Three things:

1) I thought the last four punches when he was on his can were unnecessary...That's really what caught my eye...I have never seen a boxer so vulnerable...

2) Norton went fifty four rounds with Ali and Holmes and never seemed to be in serious trouble yet he appeared to struggle against big punchers even in his prime... I suspect you approach a fight with a certain mindset when you know your opponent can outpoint you but not hurt you...

3) I never questioned Norton's character or lack of heart ... It's hard to display character when you are literally knocked out... It would be like standing up after you were hit by a car...It's different than taking a hard punch and moving on...


4) I think there is a certain benefit to watching a fight or witnessing an historical event in real time...You get to formulate an opinion without formulating it through the lens of the countless others who witnessed it and who bring their own biases, prejudices, conceptions, and misconceptions to that endeavor...

5) I went back and re-read all my posts... I said Earnie Shavers exposed Jimmy Young...Some people here want to make Young into the Second Coming of Joe Louis Barrow because he allegedly exposed a fat (230 pound), old (34 years old) , and past it (this was after the FOTC, The Rumble In The Jungle, and Manilla) Muhammad Ali on his way to losing a unanimous decision against him, most likely prompted by the fact that Young literally stuck his head out the ring to avoid punishment...

TheOneIsHere2008 is just a handle and as Shakespeare said "what's in a name?..."

On the ESPN board there is a gentleman whose handle is Bush4Ever...So what...

PEACE

Fair play, but to suggest Young was exposed, a mere novice Jimmy Young getting blown out by a 40-1 Earnie Shavers, the all-time hitter, is obviously ridiculous.

With that logic, Young 'exposed' Shavers in their rematch, where he was jobbed of the decision.

Regardless of whatever condition Ali was in, Young handled himself very well with him, Foreman, Norton and a whole slew of world champions when past his best. He was a world class fighter and getting stopped one time in an early fight against one of the biggest one-punch hitters ever is no disgrace or expose job.

As for Norton, in his prime he was whacked by Big George yes, but i'm sure the majority of fighters from whatever era get blasted at some point against a peak George Foreman.

Ok, well we have talked about several fights regarding Norton and Young. What really needs to be done is look at the stage of both fighters career when they fought. If a fighter is old or too inexperienced that makes a huge difference and must be factored in. Almost every other excuse for a fighter losing and/or a bad perfromance is just that, an excuse.

Anyway,here are my take on them:

Young/Shavers I - I don't see how this "exposed" Young. Young was pretty inexperienced at the time. He only had 10 previous pro fights. Getting knocked out by Earnie Shavers in your 11th fight doesn't automatically mean that you weren't good. They fought again and it was a draw.

Young/Ali - This has been talked to death on other posts. Forget about the stage of Ali's career and whether Young should have got the decision for a moment. The big question (when rating Young) should be how well did he perform? I say good, but not great.

Young/Foreman- Combination of Foreman being "off" for much of the fight and Young fighting a very good fight.

Young/Norton- Great fight by both. Decision could have gone either way.

Norton/Foreman- Another awesome performance by Foreman. A few other guys would have done better than Norton, but not many. Joe Frazier didn't do any better.


Norton/Quarry- Don't buy the Quarry excuses at all. He had a lot of fights, but was only 29. Should be able to shake it off at that age. He was still seen as very good fighter going into the Norton fight. Many other fighters with far more fights hadn't slipped by that age. The "took the fight on short notice" excuse doesn't hold water either. He just had a 10 round fight a month earlier. He couldn't have been in that bad of shape that soon. This was a pretty good win for Norton.

Norton/Shavers - This fight is a bit of a gray area. Norton was old but hadn't shown signs of slipping yet. Still you have to consider the fact that Norton was 35 and had a brutal fight with Holmes. Yes there have been a very small % of fighters that were still great by then, but not many. As a rule of thumb, a heavyweight will start to gradually decline around the age of 30. By 35, he will have signifcantly declined since the age of 30. You just don't have the speed and reflexes that you once did. (Look at every heavyweight champion since Corbett, and you will see that is almost always the case.)
However, Shavers does deserve some credit, certainly more than Cooney who fought an even more washed up Norton. Doubtful that many other fighters would have blasted Norton out of there that quickly even at that stage of Norton's career.
Bottom line for this fight-Norton deserves more criticism than his loss to Cooney but less criticism than his loss to Foreman.
Shavers should get more credit for beating this version of Norton than Cooney should get for beating a shot Norton. However, he doesn't deserve as much credit as Foreman for beating a prime Norton.

Norton/Cooney- Completely irrelevant fight. Means absolutley nothing when rating either Cooney or Norton. I think most of us realize this.

Agreed. Scott LeDoux and Randall Cobb had showed us that Norton had reached the end of the road -- and thats when Cooneys people called.

overhand_right wrote:Fair play, but to suggest Young was exposed, a mere novice Jimmy Young getting blown out by a 40-1 Earnie Shavers, the all-time hitter, is obviously ridiculous.

With that logic, Young 'exposed' Shavers in their rematch, where he was jobbed of the decision.

Regardless of whatever condition Ali was in, Young handled himself very well with him, Foreman, Norton and a whole slew of world champions when past his best...He was a world class fighter and getting stopped one time in an early fight against one of the biggest one-punch hitters ever is no disgrace or expose job.

As for Norton, in his prime he was whacked by Big George yes, but i'm sure the majority of fighters from whatever era get blasted at some point against a peak George Foreman.

He was twenty nine years old for his bouts with Norton and Foreman...Ken Norton was already thirty four and a bit "past his best."

But you are correct "exposed" was a bit hyperbolic... That response was prompted by the response "that beating a shot fighter proves nothing"...If Cooney deserves no kudos or few kudos for beating a shot Ken Norton as a poster in this thread opined then Jimmy Young deseserves fewer kudos for losing a decision to a nearly shot and pitifully disinterested and out of shape Muhammad Ali...If it was a 24 year old 211 1/2 pound Cassius Clay and not a 34 year old, 230 pound Muhammad Ali I think we see a very different fight...If a person thinks otherwise I don't think I will ever be able to disabuse him or her of that notion...

A certain poster here uses the Young fight to illustrate Muhammad Ali's fecklessness as a boxer...My attempt to undermine that claim led me to hyperbole...

Oh, I never claimed to be a boxing historian or some great boxing expert though some here claim to be, and some with more experience to lay a claim to that position than others...I have done post-grad work in Political Science though...I am a fan of boxing as I am a fan of basketball and American football...I like to talk about it...

I don't think any reasonable and knowledgable person thinks that the version of Ali that Young fought was remotely close to Ali at his best.

However, the version of Ali that Young fought did have something left. He was still a good fighter, though far from what he had once been.

The version of Norton that Cooney fought had almost nothing left at all as evidenced in his prior fights against Cobb and LeDoux. In fact LeDoux almost knocked Norton out.

Youngs opponent (the 34 year old, out of shape Ali) had more left than Cooney's (A shot 37 year old Ken Norton).

Ambling Alp wrote:I don't think any reasonable and knowledgable person thinks that the version of Ali that Young fought was remotely close to Ali at his best.

However, the version of Ali that Young fought did have something left. He was still a good fighter, though far from what he had once been.

The version of Norton that Cooney fought had almost nothing left at all as evidenced in his prior fights against Cobb and LeDoux. In fact LeDoux almost knocked Norton out.

Youngs opponent (the 34 year old, out of shape Ali) had more left than Cooney's (A shot 37 year old Ken Norton).

What distinguished Muhammad Ali was his incredibly quick hands and feet, his reflexes, and his indomitable will to win...By the time he fought Jimmy Young in Landover, Maryland it seemed as if everything but his indomitable will to win had all but betrayed him...If he was at his best against Zora Folley in 1967 and his worst against Leon Spinks* in 1978 then he was certainly closer to his worst than his best when he fought Jimmy Young... He weighed 230 pounds...He never weighed that much as a pro except as a forty year old boxer fighting Trevor Berbick...I think he did weight 227 1/2 in his fight against Buster Mathis which SI said it looked like two blimps in the ring...

And I'm not convinced Young won that fight...It was on a point system...One wonders if there were 10-8 rounds when he stuck his head out the ring on at least four occasions... Why didn't he try to fight out of it? It's fair to assume Ali might have KOed him he didn't stick his head out the ring..The refs might have seen that way...

*I don't know how to measure his performances against Holmes and Berbick...That's why I use Folley and Spinks as the pinnacle and the nadir...Like another poster said , Ali should have retired after The Thrilla In Manilla or the Coopman fight when he was 49-2 or 50-2 then his detractors couldn't bray about all the gift decisions he got and Ali would probably be a lot healthier...The problem was people loved to watch him, even when he was a shell of himself...

Ambling Alp wrote:Ok, well we have talked about several fights regarding Norton and Young. What really needs to be done is look at the stage of both fighters career when they fought. If a fighter is old or too inexperienced that makes a huge difference and must be factored in. Almost every other excuse for a fighter losing and/or a bad perfromance is just that, an excuse.

Anyway,here are my take on them:

Young/Shavers I - I don't see how this "exposed" Young. Young was pretty inexperienced at the time. He only had 10 previous pro fights. Getting knocked out by Earnie Shavers in your 11th fight doesn't automatically mean that you weren't good. They fought again and it was a draw.

Young/Ali - This has been talked to death on other posts. Forget about the stage of Ali's career and whether Young should have got the decision for a moment. The big question (when rating Young) should be how well did he perform? I say good, but not great.

Young/Foreman- Combination of Foreman being "off" for much of the fight and Young fighting a very good fight.

Young/Norton- Great fight by both. Decision could have gone either way.

Norton/Foreman- Another awesome performance by Foreman. A few other guys would have done better than Norton, but not many. Joe Frazier didn't do any better.


Norton/Quarry- Don't buy the Quarry excuses at all. He had a lot of fights, but was only 29. Should be able to shake it off at that age. He was still seen as very good fighter going into the Norton fight. Many other fighters with far more fights hadn't slipped by that age. The "took the fight on short notice" excuse doesn't hold water either. He just had a 10 round fight a month earlier. He couldn't have been in that bad of shape that soon. This was a pretty good win for Norton.

Norton/Shavers - This fight is a bit of a gray area. Norton was old but hadn't shown signs of slipping yet. Still you have to consider the fact that Norton was 35 and had a brutal fight with Holmes. Yes there have been a very small % of fighters that were still great by then, but not many. As a rule of thumb, a heavyweight will start to gradually decline around the age of 30. By 35, he will have signifcantly declined since the age of 30. You just don't have the speed and reflexes that you once did. (Look at every heavyweight champion since Corbett, and you will see that is almost always the case.)
However, Shavers does deserve some credit, certainly more than Cooney who fought an even more washed up Norton. Doubtful that many other fighters would have blasted Norton out of there that quickly even at that stage of Norton's career.
Bottom line for this fight-Norton deserves more criticism than his loss to Cooney but less criticism than his loss to Foreman.
Shavers should get more credit for beating this version of Norton than Cooney should get for beating a shot Norton. However, he doesn't deserve as much credit as Foreman for beating a prime Norton.

Norton/Cooney- Completely irrelevant fight. Means absolutley nothing when rating either Cooney or Norton. I think most of us realize this.

All pretty sound arguments, but there is one that I take issue with:

Norton/Quarry- Don't buy the Quarry excuses at all. He had a lot of fights, but was only 29. Should be able to shake it off at that age.

It's never too young to become a shot fighter. Fighters like Meldrick Taylor, Fernando Vargas, and Gil Turner were all considered past it or shot by their early or mid 20s, Freddie Steele was done by the age of 25/26, and even a fighter as legendary as Kid Gavilan was clearly spent by the age of 29 as well, among countless other examples.

As I pointed out earlier, Quarry had been stopped at least five times before fighting Norton. In at least three of those, he took terrific beatings that left his face smashed to pieces, and in another (vs. George Chuvalo) he was cleanly KO'd. Many a fighter has been ruined by far less than that and at a younger age. After the Chuvalo fight, he was consistently used as a possible stepping stone for rising prospects (ie: Ron Lyle, Mac Foster, Earnie Shavers) and usually came in as the underdog for those fights. Heck, he was even chosen by Ali to be a comeback opponent for his first fight back in four years. Personally, I think it was clear that he was past his peak by the time of the 2nd Ali fight, and I don't think there's any question that he was a shell of himself by the time of his rematch with Frazier (who was himself past his prime). IMO, his performance in that fight is equivalent to Norton's against LeDoux and Cobb. It just had "old man" written all over it. His toughness, energy, and reflexes were all clearly gone, against an opponent who had lost quite a bit of that himself. Watch that fight and the first fight between Frazier and Quarry side by side, and I think it's obvious how much both men (but especially Quarry) have faded. It's possible he still held some kind of ranking going into the Norton fight, but I wouldn't be surprised if Norton had one too going into the Cooney fight.

Yes, Quarry had been stopped 5 times, but that is a little decieiving.

-He didn't take a lot of punishment in the first Ali fight. He got cut and the fight was stopped in the 3rd round.

-He got got ko's by Chuvalo, but that's a little decieiving. He was winning the fight comfortably, got knocked down, misunderstood the count, and was "knocked out."

Quarry wasn't considered washed up nearly that early.
He fought foster in 1970, and was considered the #3 contender.
When he fought Ali in 1972, he was the #2 contender, behind only the champion Frazier and Ali.
It's not surprisng at all that Quarry got beaten easily by Frazier in 1974. Frazier was a lot better than him. There would have been a similar result the same 9 times out out of 10. Frazier had a lot more left than some people seem to think. He proved it against Ali the next year.

Perhaps most importantly, Quarry still was rated #7 when he fought Norton in 1975.
This was considered a fairly big fight at the time. It wasn't like Norton was fighting someone that was considered shot.

If you look at Norton vs Shavers, there is nothing there. He isn't throwing punches, he is just laying there for Shavers to hammer him.
Atleast Quarry was throwing punches against Norton. I don't see how Quarry's performance is any worse than when he fought Ali 3 years earlier. I know a lot of people don't like to hear this, but Quarry was closer to say Lyle,Bonavena,Chuvalo,Ellis, old Patterson level fighters than he was to Ali, Frazier, Foreman, or even Norton.

It's true that other fightrs have been washed up in their 20's as well. However, seldom at heavyweight, and there are usually extenuating circumstances even then. (Drugs, didn't want to train, personal problems etc.) Physically a heavyweight (and usually even fighters of other weights) shouldn't be shot unless at the age of 29 unless they had an extremely high amount of fights/punishment. Quarry didn't.

I think we agree on most of these issues, but are going around and around on this. I will give you the last word.

I once read a quote by one of Norton's opponents who put it something like this...

"He was susceptible in the early rounds. But once he got warmed up Kenny could fight all night."

Any championship level fighter would knock Norton out in 1 or 2 rounds.

He had a glass chin and a glass midsection.

Both Shavers and Foreman paralyzed him with a single body punch and immediately finished him off.

Nobody can answer the question of how Ali fought Norton a total of forty nine rounds without ever scoring a knockdown, much less a knockout.

The same Ali who "knocked out" Sonny Liston with a single "punch" in the first round.

LOL

I see my good name is being dragged through the mud... :(


"A good name is better than precious ointments..."

Ecclesiastes 7:1

One fella is criticizing me for not understanding what I have seen and commenting on it and another fella is criticizing me for commenting on things I have not even seen...Those criticisms are , of course, mutually exclusive, and logically a wreck...

That's the problem with this site if I may so humbly suggest;everybody here thinks he's the Ken Burns or Ambrose Bierce of boxing history...In the grand scheme of things it matters not to me whether I am thought here to be a charlatan or an oracle...

I made the simple observation that it is interesting that Ken Norton went fifty four rounds with two consensus top ten heavyweights, Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, and succumbed to the likes of big punchers like George Foreman, Earnie Shavers, and Gerry Cooney within a round or two , albeit at different stages of his career...Even the estimable or is it inestimable Eddie Futch said Ken Norton had problems with big punchers ...Perhaps he was able to take chances with an Ali, a Young, or a Norton because he knew they generally lacked one punch knock out power and the price he had to pay for a mistake wasn't being knocked out...

It's the old chestnut does sitting behind one's computer and watching every genre of porn known to man make one a cocksman or does it does it just make him a wanker...

TheOneIsHere2008 wrote:It's the old chestnut does sitting behind one's computer and watching every genre of porn known to man make one a cocksman or does it does it just make him a wanker...

Neither, it makes him a waste of oxygen.

Terry D wrote:

TheOneIsHere2008 wrote:I see my good name is being dragged through the mud... :(


"A good name is better than precious ointments..."

Ecclesiastes 7:1

One fella is criticizing me for not understanding what I have seen and commenting on it and another fella is criticizing me for commenting on things I have not even seen...Those criticisms are , of course, mutually exclusive, and logically a wreck...

That's the problem with this site if I may so humbly suggest;everybody here thinks he's the Ken Burns or Ambrose Bierce of boxing history...In the grand scheme of things it matters not to me whether I am thought here to be a charlatan or an oracle...

I made the simple observation that it is interesting that Ken Norton went fifty four rounds with two consensus top ten heavyweights, Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, and succumbed to the likes of big punchers like George Foreman, Earnie Shavers, and Gerry Cooney within a round or two , albeit at different stages of his career...Even the estimable or is it inestimable Eddie Futch said Ken Norton had problems with big punchers ...Perhaps he was able to take chances with an Ali, a Young, or a Norton because he knew they generally lacked one punch knock out power and the price he had to pay for a mistake wasn't being knocked out...

It's the old chestnut does sitting behind one's computer and watching every genre of porn known to man make one a cocksman or does it does it just make him a wanker...

Come down of your crucifix mate. I was not having a go at you. I just highlighted a point made and expanded on it. Those points apply to a lot of Current Scene, on many forums, posters. This forum is the best, especially with two people on ignore, neither of whom is you.

I like your posts and it was not a personal attack.

'Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.' Cassio

Yours is fine.

I was just being my jocular self, hence the :( icon...

Some people have argued that the heavyweights of the 70s were great but I should think their losses in crossover matchups seriously challenges this view. I can accept that Norton and Lyle were past their best against Cooney but why should this be enough for Cooney to dispatch them with such ease. If the 70s heavyweights were so great shoulden't they be able to compete with the likes of Cooney without being at their peak? Jimmy Young was only 31 against Cooney and still managed to lose. This is not impressive.

Cojimar 1945 wrote:Some people have argued that the heavyweights of the 70s were great but I should think their losses in crossover matchups seriously challenges this view. I can accept that Norton and Lyle were past their best against Cooney but why should this be enough for Cooney to dispatch them with such ease. If the 70s heavyweights were so great shoulden't they be able to compete with the likes of Cooney without being at their peak? Jimmy Young was only 31 against Cooney and still managed to lose. This is not impressive.

He fought four 70's fighters-Holmes, Young, Foreman, and Lyle so we have a small sample...

He beat two of them and was knocked out by two of them , and one of those boxers was 41 years old...

How would Cooney have done against Joe Frazier,Ken Norton George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, and Earnie Shavers in their primes

Interesting reading, as always but, I thought the topic might be about what is KN doing now? I hope he put a bit aside for later.
Good Luck Ken

..theone....eventually someone will come on and ask "who did ambrose bierce ever beat?"

as for how cooney would have done against the fighters you named, i recognize it has rhetorical questiion....cooney never would have gone in against those fighters.

Grant wrote:Interesting reading, as always but, I thought the topic might be about what is KN doing now? I hope he put a bit aside for later.
Good Luck Ken

He seems to be doing fine:

http://www.kennorton.com/


as well as his progeny:

http://www.49ersparadise.com/biographies/norton.shtml

Ken Norton had a stroke and is on a wheelchair, he is in bad shape.

kikibalt wrote:Ken Norton had a stroke and is on a wheelchair, he is in bad shape.

Thank you...That's sad... I hope he gets well....There isn't a boxer I don't like, except for Tyson, and even then I can muster up sympathy for him...To go from the penthouse to the outhouse (bankrupt) must be tough...