6. Muhammad Ali (56-5, 37 KO)

Born: Jan. 17, 1942

 

Ali and Louis were polar opposites when it came to their styles inside the ring and out.  When Ali was known as Cassius Marcellus Clay, he was a sharp-punching speed merchant who dangled his hands at his side and pulled his head straight back from punches instead of slipping to the side or ducking underneath them.  His offence was limited to a jab and a straight right hand to the head.  He completely ignored the body, his hook was improperly thrown and the deficiencies in his uppercut directly led to the famous knockdown by Joe Frazier in Super fight I.  When he was older, Ali spent most of his time resting on the ropes, holding opponents behind the head and relying on one of the biggest hearts the game has ever known.

 

The establishment said he danced too much.  He ran.  He didn’t have the right economy, he would burn out.  They said he didn’t sit down on his punches properly because he was always on his toes. Was it the flat out bigotry of a white press disgusted by this “uppity nigger,” a fighter who called sportswriters who disagreed with him “bum” instead of “sir”?  Was it just that he boxed in a style so new and shocking to the heavyweight division that the generally conservative sports editors of the time couldn’t understand what they were seeing?  Or was it that Ali was so disturbingly fast that they missed the fraction of a second in which he wanted to throw a hard punch that his feet were glued to the canvas, in the old way, done in a new way.

 

Boxing grammar calls for a fighter to wear his hands high.  Ali wore his low, at his waist, but they were rarely still, instead they moved sharply about his hips, touched together, fanning his left out to his side, tipping his right to his head as though in salute, and to the men given the job of appraising him, 'clowning' they called it.  So fast was Ali that the fluidity in his hands became, as rounds wore on, a terrifying series of feints.  Any given movement by Ali’s hands could be a precursor to any number of punches or nothing at all, not a unique tactic even in 1963, but taken in tandem with his floating footwork and his ability to conjure hard punches whilst moving laterally or even whilst retreating made it the most deadly first-line of defense and preparatory offense ever seen in the heavyweight division.

 

Boxing grammar also demands that a fighter move to his left and to his right to slip punches and must not pull back. Ali did the opposite, gliding directly backwards in tandem with head and upper-body movement that left his opponents firing at air whilst showing a completely unparalleled ability to counterpunch with murderous intent purely off the back foot. He did not move back, reset, counter, like the heavyweight technicians before him, nor did he move back into countering position like the heavyweight slickster Jersey Joe Walcott, rather he found the counter whatever his position upon his retreat. He was absolutely unique.

 

Most tellingly, boxing grammar calls for a fighter, any fighter, to attack the body of the opponent as part of almost any wider strategy.  This is the punctuation mark that Ali was most widely fought on by the boxing establishment he invaded and redefined.

 

Given all that, you must be asking why Ali is even on this list, and why is he rated above Joe Louis? Because no fighter has achieved so much with so little variety, but he was extraordinary at the things he did well.  The Ali that carved up Cleveland Williams would have beaten every heavyweight who ever lived, including 'The Brown Bomber.'  When Ali was at his peak, his dazzling hand and foot speed bewildered his foes and his skills were such that even his limited arsenal stood head and shoulders above everyone else.  Even a diminished Ali of the 1970’s was head of the class during the greatest heavyweight era of all, when names like Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton, Earnie Shavers, Jimmy Young, Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, Floyd Patterson and George Chuvalo roamed the land.  Ali fought them all and beat them all.  All the while, he said he was the greatest and unlike many pretenders in all sports who claimed it before and after him, Ali backed up his words with action.

 

When I was a boy, I was sure Muhammad Ali was the greatest fighter who ever lived.  As a young man, I became sure he was not.  Now that I’m older I have moments when I wonder to myself, and longer spells when I feel sure that had he been allowed to box on during those three wasted years, he might indeed have been The Greatest.