It's true. No proficiency at combos, not a great finisher. All he had was that right hand.
Shavers wasn't even a good finisher and he still beat him.
Um, what?!!
We're talking about one of the deadliest finishers in the history of the heavyweight division. A man who knocked out 68 of the 74 opponents that he beat. Damn, son. Just because he wasn't able to finish two of the greatest champions of all time in Ali & Holmes doesn't mean that he couldn't finish fights.
It's true. No proficiency at combos, not a great finisher. All he had was that right hand.
The vast majority of the time that right hand was all he needed. No, he wasn't a blazing fast combination puncher & he didn't need to be. He also had a very underrated, dangerous left hook. Watch the Norton fight again. It's his left hook that initially hurts Norton. Also, watch his blowouts of Jimmy Ellis, Henry Clark ( in their rematch ) & Howard "KO" Smith for examples of how well he could finish high caliber opposition.
Shavers wasn't even a good finisher and he still beat him.
I don't think that Ali would have been able to repeat the victory over Foreman had there been a rematch though. And Angelo Dundee told me as much back in 1985 when we had a conversation about the Foreman fight.
He said that Ali fought the perfect fight under the perfect set of circumstances that October night in 1974 & that repeating it would have been extremely difficult for him. And that it would have been impossible for him after his third fight with Frazier because of how much that fight took out of Ali. He was a shell of his former self afterward. His legs were pretty much shot & the snap on his punches was gone. Dundee said he couldn't have kept Foreman honest in a rematch & that George would have likely walked right through him. Which is why they never intended to fight him again. He said that Foreman's upset loss to Jimmy Young was the only thing that kept Ali in the game post-1976. He had fully intended on retiring after the Norton rubber match but when Foreman lost to Young & subsequently retired for a decade that Ali decided to keep going. Thus the hastily arranged title defense vs the undeserving Alfredo Evangelista in May of '77.
Norton couldn't even beat Shavers.
he did beat Foreman.
Spinks beat Ali.
We're playing Boxing math? I can do that too see:-I say yes, even though styles make fights. You could argue against if it was just one fight but he repeatedly destroyed guys Ali struggled with. Psychology aside, I would expect Foreman to beat Ali as well if he learns his lesson and they repeat it 10 times. I don't care how different they were style-wise ALi lost to far worse boxers than Foreman. It's by no means an impossible task to defeat him,
Frazier and Norton were cannon-fodder for Foreman. It wasn't even a fight. Both had wars with Ali. Neither one could go many rounds with big George. Ali said Norton in particular, he could never fully get passed even in the rematch, though Ali won. Norton got creamed by Foreman. Frazier got equally destroyed by George and did only marginally better in his rematch, still woefully inept and got stopped there as well.
We're playing Boxing math? I can do that too see:-
Ali beat Jimmy Young and Jimmy Young beat Foreman.
It's that easy and it's your own logic.
Now that we got that out of the way.
Foreman just hit super hard so it was pointless to charge forward at him aggressively all night. Ali and young beat both beat him off the ropes. No, I don't think foreman would have beaten either cause that's the only way Foreman knew how to fight(masterfully cut off the ring and bomb), but older come back foreman had improved his own jab far more.
It's bs that you wanna call out Ali's jab for a length advantage and not consider Foreman's inhuman raw strength advantage. But I'm just wasting my time, since people like you and Tidwel just reply with "you're triggered" to everything that disagree with you.
And Ali beat Spinks.
We're playing Boxing math? I can do that too see:-
Ali beat Jimmy Young and Jimmy Young beat Foreman.
It's that easy and it's your own logic.
.