i used to hate Bonavena because all i had seen of him was that pre-hype "chicken" bullshit. after the fight he seemed like he was in awe of ali. and he apoligized to him directly on camera and said it was all to hype the fight. and he told ali right there that he was the greatest and that he would beat Frazier. after that i felt sort of bad about gettin so excited seein that KO left hook to Bonavena's temple.
ive seen most of ali's fights. i haven't been able to see every fight in the '72-'73 era. and i haven't seen a few of the '75-'78 title fights, nor holmes/berbick.
yes sir
the blin fight is one of my favorites. he connects on that right hand in the 7th right after the ref breaks them. man blin falls to the floor and you just know his head is pounding after all those hard jabs he took in the preceding rounds. i love that chapter in Ali's career. Later in the same year he had lost to Frazier, he was started on the vengeful comeback trail.
Ali's fights are definitely the reason for his condition
trust me brotha. i know all about the tragedies of Ali's life. he was so much bigger than boxing, yet in the end he let himself be devoured in the ring. he could have been anything. social rights leader, entertainer, political speaker etc. It's one of the many paradoxes of Ali that he allowed himself to be destroyed by the meat grinder of boxing even though he seemed to so far above the ring. i choose to cherish his fight career bigtime though because i know that his fights are all we have of the extraordinary man. Thats what he chose to define himself as so i feel like i have to honor those fights. I choose to believe that the sacrifices he made have brought about a lot of good the world over. i try to not spend too much time being depressed about the condition he ended up in. The man sacrificed his whole damn life for other people so its all just part of the heroism of his life.
He definitely didn't seem right
I am definitely thinking that he is not a healthy fighter at this point. I hate to see it happen to him but he looks like he is deteriorating. After getting tagged a few times he was on rubber legs and looked real glassy eyed. He wasn't there mentally after that. If there's something wrong with his vision, that only adds to his problems.
That was brutal
Those guys distributed some ridiculous punishment on each other. I was pretty much in awe of this fight's brutality. I like Bell and I have a lot of respect for the way he fought through the hellish shots he was taking early on. But it did make me feel a little shitty watching Mormeck get hit by the illegal blows (low and to the back of the head), with the ref doing little to protect him. The KO was impressive but the ref again completely blew it by letting the action continue even after two savage one-two combinations had Mormeck obviously out on his feet. The last shot to the back of Mormeck's head was disgusting and I never like to see stuff like that. I really hope Jean Marc didn't suffer any permanent damage with that blow.
I find it fascinating and somewhat tragic watching Ali with Frazier in their first fight. Every time he taunts him, every time he plays pattycake with Frazier's face, it makes me cringe a little because I know that these playful tactics only get Ali hurt against a terminator of a man. He can not crack Frazier with any of these psychological tactics. It is amazing to watch Ali use these strategies for the first many rounds only to eventually realize that he was up against a different breed. By the time Ali realizes he needs to administer the fire to Frazier it is too late. He has taken too much punishment to the body and has slowed to the point where he cannot escape Joe's hooks to the head.
This was a blood fued. There ain't no excuses.
there ain't no excuses in this rivalry. That was already established by Ali in their first fight. Do you think Ali was able to fight Frazier while he was still in his prime ? no. He went straight up to Frazier after 4 years of inactivity taken right out of his prime. When you are as great as Ali though, and as confident a champ as he was, there ain't no convincing him that he can't do it. It was pretty much a tragedy that he was forced to fight Frazier after so long out of the game. We probably got robbed of the fight were actually supposed to see between them. The fight that took place was, in my opinion, more fascinating and intense for certain reasons, but there ain't no question that Ali took a hell of a lot more punishment than he would have if they had matched up a few years earlier. Equal to Ali, Frazier seemed to also understand what their rivalry and its sacrifices entailed. He provided that evidence with his epic effort against Ali in Manila as his body had already started to fail him. Just like Ali in their first fight, he didn't make any excuses in Manila. These guys don't have that word in their vocabulary. A couple of champions, those two.
ya cant Ali ever get a break ?? he fought some of the most amazing, brutal, violent, heroic fights in history and was the finest heavy ever. So why at the tail end of his career does he have to worry about looking like he did ?? Frank Lotierzo is a solid writer though. "The Greatest Gifts of All" is one of my favorites.