Is it safe to say Ali is the fastest heavyweight ever? (I haven't seen much of heavyweight fighting other than Ali's, but from what I have seen he blows the competition away.)
extremely. great head movement, footwork, and handspeed.
he and patterson employed a style at HW that placed much more emphasis on speed of foot and upper body than most.
Except for when he squared up and had to readjust his stance since he was a natural lefty. That was a bad habit of his but man he was awesome.
awesome, awesome styles on those two. i think it's safe to say that the division would be better with mike tyson on top instead of wladimir.
Oh most definitely. HW boxing would be at the forefront. Tyson's style was incredible, not to mention the level of excitement he brought. You damn near had an anxiety attack every time he stepped in the ring. The adrenaline was unbelievable.
I agree completely.
awesome, awesome styles on those two. i think it's safe to say that the division would be better with mike tyson on top instead of wladimir.
extremely. great head movement, footwork, and handspeed.
he and patterson employed a style at HW that placed much more emphasis on speed of foot and upper body than most.
I agree completely.
I would say Ali for sure followed by Patterson. Tyson was very quick as well.
extremely. great head movement, footwork, and handspeed.
he and patterson employed a style at HW that placed much more emphasis on speed of foot and upper body than most.
by modern divisions would Ali and patterson be cruiserweights?
patterson could have been a LHW early in his career. he was 180ish when he beat archie moore.
patterson had a 71" reach. that's shorter than floyd mayweather.
ali was a much, much larger man. anybody who thinks he's the same size as patteron, or that he'd fight at cruiserweight today, is foolish. he had big shoulders. he was 6'3" at the very least. he had 80 inches of reach. int he 70's he regularly weighed over 220 lbs in world championship shape.
i always use lamon brewster as a comparison for the size of past HW. lamon brewster was never completely ripped. he weighed 225 lbs when he knocked out klitschko. he was 6'2". when you consider how lean louis was in his prime, brewster was roughly the size of joe louis. maybe brewster was naturally 10 lbs heavier. maybe.
is that 10 lbs going to be an insurmountable advantage in size? of course not. if brewster isn't too small for wlaidmir, neither is joe louis, and certainly not the bigger ali.
Muhammad Ali and Floyd Patterson come to mind, I would lean towards Ali though due to how big he was in relation to his speed...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D25isWarm0o
Roy Jones Jr was the fastest fighter to ever fight at heavyweight... I really don't think its close either....
But Ali was natural HW. I'm thinking that's what we're speaking of for the most part. Considering Roy started at Jr MW its not really fair to compare him to naturally larger man in Ali. You could make the argument that all things equal, Ali may be just as fast as Roy.
Floyd Patterson IMO. It depends on what type of speed we are talking about. I think there might be a few guys who are faster than Ali with a single shot like Patterson, maybe Tyson or even David Haye. But in terms of combinations Ali was the fastest.