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And not just an ordinary
boxer, Muhammad Ali was by some measures the best boxer
anyone has ever seen in the ring. Not necessarily the best
pound for pound boxer, Sugar Ray Robinson still lays claim
to that title but as a heavyweight in his prime – and we saw
him only for a few flashes during his prime – it’s simply
impossible to imagine anyone beating the champ.
Ali’s career is easily
defined as two chapters – pre and post exile. During his
pre-exile period, when he fought in his early twenties, Ali
indeed floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. He was
devastatingly fast on his feet and with his hands. He moved,
especially in this early period, like a lightweight with
hand speed that was measured as 25 percent faster than
Robinson’s.
His foot speed enabled him
to circle his slow-footed opponents and frustrate their
attempts to pin him against the ropes or in the corners.
He was equally fast with
his head. Ali would avoid punches by pulling his head
backwards leaving his opponent grasping at air, then he
would counterpunch with that hand speed connecting over and
over again.
“He was just so damn
fast,” said heavyweight George Chuvalo of the young Ali. “
When he was young, he moved his legs and hands at the same
time. He threw his punches when he was in motion. He’d be
out of punching range and as he moved into range he’d
already begun to throw the punch. So if you waited until he
got into range to punch back, he beat you every time.”
Ali’s superior speed and
reflexes helped to overcome the size advantage that most of
his opponents had over him. In his first professional fight,
he weighed only 192. When he fought the formidable Sonny
Liston in 1964, he weighed only 210 to Liston’s 218. Ali, by
the way, was a seven to one underdog in that fight.
Even later in his career,
during phase two, after he lost some of that marvelous sped,
he was still almost always at a weight disadvantage.
In 1966, Ali was drafted
and refused to report as ordered. He was, in his
mid-twenties, entering what should have been the prime years
of his athletic career. He would not fight again until he
was almost 29.
Phase two of the Ali
career featured the fights that established his ring legend
and his rating as the greatest heavyweight of all time. Past
his prime, he fought Joe Frazier three times and George
Foreman once. His Rumble in the Jungle against Foreman in
1974 at the age of 32 was as improbable a victory as could
have been imagined. No one, not even those closest to him,
thought he had a chance against the seemingly invincible
Foreman.
Foreman had claimed the
heavyweight title by knocking Frazier down seven times in
their fight, on several occasions hitting Smoking Joe so
hard with uppercuts that he lifted the former champ into the
air.
Ali invented the
rope-a-dope on the fly, surprising his trainers, and forcing
the much younger and heavier Foreman to wear himself out.
Ali knocked Foreman out in the eighth round in a fight that
has been dubbed the greatest sporting event of the 20th
century.
Ali’s last great fight was
a year later when he faced Frazier for the third time. In
the Thriller in Manilla, Frazier and Ali went toe-to-toe
over the course of 14 rounds. Frazier could not come out for
the 15th. It was a fight that had Ali with the
advantage for the first five rounds while Frazier summoned
up his resolve to dominate the second five. Ali had the
advantage during the last four rounds in a fight he would
later describe as “like death – closest thing to dying that
I know of.”
Ali continued to fight for
another five years, losing the title and reclaiming it,
although well past his prime and taking blows that might
have led to the Parkinsons disease that afflicted him for
the rest of his life. Professional sports teams mercifully
cut players when their athletic gifts are on the wane and
the value of their contributions to the teams decline.
Unfortunately, individual athletes rarely know when to cut
themselves.
Boxing would never be the
same after Ali retired.
Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan,
Ali, Jim Brown, Wayne Gretzky, Jim Thorpe … it’s a short
list of those who might be considered the best athlete of
the 20th Century. Most lists place Ruth and
Jordan at the top, with Ali in third place. Of course, all
those other athletes were able to play during the entirety
of their prime years.
In the aftermath of the
Thriller in Manilla, Joe Frazier sat in the dark of his
room, nursing his wounds, awestruck over his most recent
encounter with a fighter for the ages. In spite of his pain,
he eloquently described his long-time nemesis.
“Man, I hit him with
punches that would bring down the walls of a city,” said
Smoking Joe. “Lawdy, lawdy, he’s a great champion.” |
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