Ali comments on the heavyweight greats of the past

[mcentepede]

I have to agree with Muhammed Ali there. After 25 years, he is still beautiful to watch for a heavyweight, even when he clinches...it looks good. Today we get a boring bunch of heavyweights...Klitchko, Peter, Rahman, Valuev. It is almost a devolving heavyweights we seeing. They getting worse. Marciano was wild, but he threw punches with evil intentions and had dynamite power. Walcott and Charles were slick. Max Baer, Dempsey and Jack were all similiar...wild, tuff, brawling type of fighters with little scientific skills involved in the art of boxing. But, with evolution and proper nutrition...you could get better. Prime Tyson is still the best IMO, after only Ali and Joe Louis (champ for 12 years).

[TheGreatA]

Here's it again:

[princemanspoper]

Well I can't see the embedded videos,but I'll take a wild guess and predict that this is the Ali,Cosell special feature about the past heavyweights.just before his fight with Jean-Pierre Coopman?

One thing I found interesting was the chip Ali had on his shoulder about the boxing media not rating him up there with the past greats and his chances against them,You could certainly tell that bothered him because he often did it and often led to him somewhat disrespecting their legacies.but when you could calm him down,He was generally respectful of the old timers and his insight was somewhat interesting

[Caesar]

thank you for this awesome post

[Spartacus Sully]

"I'm Bold he was Crazy....................Crazy"

Good videos thanks

[Sugarj]

I watched them all back to back, including the Ali / D'Amato one from Aka Cassius Clay the previous page. Just great footage! Thanks Gents.

Its hard not to find yourself agreeing with Ali. The footage of Tunney looked great though, I want to dig out some more films of that genius.

[sleazyfellow]

Glad those videos got reupped, thanks greata.

[sonnyboyx2]

Flicker-Film does not do the pre-1940s any justise.. However Muhammad Ali also said about his own opponents : Patterson was the best boxer, Foreman was the strongest, Liston was the scariest, but Joe Frazier was the roughest and the toughest

[Sugarj]

I've heard Ali say words to that effect too Sonnybox. Its a shame.........when Ali met Patterson in 1965 poor Floyd injured his back early on in the fight so we never really got to see a true boxing match between them.

I've only seen highlights of the 1972 return and gather Floyd was marginally ahead before being stopped in 7. Floyd was 16 or 17 years past his best at that point!

As for flicker film........yes, even Ali vs Williams would look awful on a 1919 camera!

[princemanspoper]

Patterson was able to compete in the greatest heavyweight era of all time despite being past his prime.He had also come out of retirement Age never really affected his performances in the ring and on my scorecard he was ahead against ali the second time around simply because he wasn't landing anything just throwing out a lazy jab where's patterson was attempting to throw meaningful punches occasionaly scoring with the left hook.Ali spent more effort in trying to clown frazier in the pre fight introductions than he did on this fight