re: Favorite fighter (boxer or mma) of all time

quote:

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He literally wasn't getting hit. Not even by the likes of Sonny Liston. Go back and watch that first fight in Miami. It's a masterpiece. Clay v. Liston, Round 1

If you don't have a couple free minutes, these three seconds are representative:

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God, I love that first round. One of my favorite ever rounds in boxing. I could watch it on repeat for hours. Hell, cumulatively I already have I'm sure. Why do I love it so very very much? A few reasons:.

Clay was a 7-1 underdog, but why? Why was Liston such a huge favorite when Clay was bigger, orders of magnitude faster both with hands and feet, a more skillful boxer, and 11 years younger to boot (though Liston lied about his age, so people thought he was only 8 years younger)?

In my estimation, it's a combination of recency bias and the sometimes-misleadign power of narrative. Floyd Patterson was the existing heavyweight champion. Now we know now that Patterson wasn't really anything that special, but I suppose at the time it was probably tougher to arrive at that conclusion when he had the belt....even though he really shouldn't have passed anyone's eyeball test. But, anyway, so Liston fights Patterson for the title and knocks him out in the first round. They fight again, and he knocks him out in the first round again.

And so people see this indestructible force of nature much like they would later see with George Foreman after he did away with Frazier and Kenny Norton in pretty awesome fashion. I realize it's easy to say this in hindsight, but I'd like to think that if I had been around then I would have looked at the Clay/Liston fight more objectively and taken into consideration, how fricking good Clay was, how much bigger he was definitely than Patterson, but than Liston too. And how, athletically speaking, he was in a different astroplane than Liston, and would utilize said athleticism in the service of a style that would disrupt and frustrate Liston, rather than just focking walking straight in and getting KTFO like Patterson.

Assume for the sake of argument that I did all that, and so I see the 7-1 odds as an opportunity and toss some serious coin on Clay. If that happens, I'm watching the first round and I see the following 7 seconds of action...



-Clay lands a ja, then casually scoots back to avoid a lunging, wild right hook by Liston.
-Dances for a second on the outside
-Sticks him with another left jab to the face and then casually pulls his head back and avoids a wild lunging left hook by Liston

Ballgame, baby. Free Money.

And those would have been my thoughts regardless of whether or not I had simultaneously heard the announcer say "Liston's got a different kind of boy in there tonight than Patterson." But that did happen. And indeed hie did.