No matter how you cut it, a fight is a fight. Two men are walking into a confined space with the goal of pounding away at each other until one of them cannot continue. The ancient Greeks, who certainly did not invent boxing but enshrined it in their Games, had no weight divisions. The clouds of heroism and legend must have surrounded these ancient gladiators who were as much born of Olympus as they were imbued with the courage and skill of the gods. Only the great and powerful could have entered the boxing circle; no mere mortal could hope to walk out.
Naturally the modern sport has evolved into a more participatory event, and each weight division has its own intrigues. The flyweight is a whirlwind, the welterweight a blend of speed and power, and middleweights collide like wild Mongolian horses. However, the dreadnaught that is the heavyweight is still the man at the top of the mountain. Yes, he offers the terrifying an thrilling prospect of delivering a knockout with every punch. Yes, it is the only open weight division, and the heavyweight champion is a man who can defeat any man of any size. But more than anything, he is the lone torchbearer of the flame of the Greeks. The last of the Hellenistic marbles that is a true Hercules—half man, half god—and a victory in the dirt of the square circle is to claim dominion over all the Earth.
Of all the statues ever carved, Ali was the most perfect.
The perfection of his physique was such that, when he had to have his appendix removed before his rematch with Sonny Liston, the doctor almost couldn’t take the scalpel to him. And yet he never lifted a weight in his life. Hated them, in fact. He was one of the last fighters to be sculpted with the medicine ball, pull-up par, and the jump rope he skipped over for twenty minutes a day, all the time moving around the room, dancing.
Most non-boxers don’t realize that the jump rope is the tool that keeps a fighter light on their toes. It’s also very hard work. When you’re bouncing up and down you’re only jumping on the balls of your feet, never flat-footed. A fighter who is on their toes has very little contact with the floor both in terms of the time each foot is in the ground and how much of them touches when they do. With very little friction, a great fighter like Ali almost floats over the canvas. If you watch the famous Ali Shuffle, you can see the blurring speed of his feet. Michael Jackson actually took to wearing white socks because, like Ali’s white boots, they make your feet look even faster. Conversely, Ali turned the bloody canvas into a ballet stage that was captivating for even the most averse to the savagery of the sport.
On to the most important question: how did he get away with it?
Ali took the jewel that was Joe Louis’ mastery of the fundamentals and set it alight in a kaleidoscope.
Ali’s dance is directed at creating the most complex and difficult puzzle for an opponent to judge when he was in range to punch and when he is not, as well as his orientation relative to your centerline. The finest example of this can be seen in his fight against Cleveland Williams. He utterly dominated Williams, knocked him down four times with blazing hand speed, and stopped him in the third. Williams, and indeed, every fighter Ali faced save one or two was absolutely befuddled as to how to deal with such an unorthodox style, whirling around them like a leaf on a breezy day, and most unfortunately, beating the living shit out of them with punches so fast that, as Richard Pryor described it when he and Ali had some fun for a benefit, you only see them when they’re going back.
Below is a diagram showing Ali on the left, Williams on the right, and the dotted circle is the edge of Ali’s punching range:
Ali is going to swirl around Williams, a Louise-esque fighter typical of the era, moving in and out of the circle. The difficulty for Williams is that, while Ali knows exactly where he is at all times, it’s extremely hard for an opponent to tell when Ali is in range to punch, much less when Williams is. In this diagram, the line shows Ali’s motion over time in the direction of the arrow.
Note that range is handled exactly like an orthodox fighter like Louis, just in small moments in the motion. (It's worth a reminder that this isn't a welterweight; Ali is a 6'3'' heavyweight who should be lumbering back and forth like a battleship in the water) That same line could be drawn for Louis, but it would be little steps and positioning over forty-five seconds rather than ten seconds of dancing. Also, that squiggle is constantly speeding up and slowing down, thus making it exponentially more difficult to follow. Then all of a sudden, BANG! That’s the star, and that could have come at any point. Hopefully for Williams it’s not BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Ali’s speed, particularly the young Ali, is most evident in his combinations. Not only are they thrown in all the standard ways, but much like his improvisatory movement, often in sequences that were also unorthodox. Worse still, Ali’s brain was quick enough that he was able to find his opponent’s openings during combinations just like any excellent boxer does as the poor man was trying to defend himself, except do so at three times the normal speed. For having dropped out of high school at sixteen he was certainly never accused of being book-smart, but in terms boxing he was the equivalent of an Einstein or Feynman in physics. And probably calculated a little faster too, but we have as good a chance of knowing that as we do knowing if Einstein could have hit harder. The tests weren't really run...
Worse still is that as Ali moved in and out, he was constantly swiveling back and forth so his centerline was moving and pivoting too. Fleeting openings would appear when fighters tried to keep up but, turning too slowly, suddenly exposed their centerline as Ali was rotating around. Ali could keep up with these micro-adjustments. Almost nobody else even came close.
Complicating things even more, Ali’s torso was rarely aligned over his feet. All the fundamentals of footwork were there just like with a Joe Louis, except whereas a traditional boxer could count on them, with Ali, the torso with all the little punchy bits a fighter keeps his eye on was constantly lying about where he actually “was” relative to you. This diagram is one example that is one of many variations:
A simple pull back and he's magically six inches away again. Of course, Ali could do this moving side to side leaning in the opposite direction, or the reverse, where his feet are in range and you don’t find out until all of a sudden he makes the slight adjustment and blasts you about the head and ass. Often when the famous head slips with the hands down that awed the crowd were going on, this was another element assisting that.
If he wasn’t doing any of this he would be subtly repositioning his feet exactly like Joe Louis in the previous piece, to find his angles of attack. Again, what was a gem for Louis was a glittering tiara for Ali.
But worst of all, and what is impossible to diagram without an animated sequence, while all of this is going on, Williams is trying to follow him around the ring so the whole snapshot above is constantly spinning circles and bouncing around the ring like a game of Pong. Williams himself has to somehow figure it out while gaging his own punching range. It seems to me he did not quite accomplish this task. He manages to catch Ali flush about once to the head. Unfortunately, Ali had a very long range compared to most fighters, so often when he was punching his opponent had to wade through it to get close enough to return fire. Few men were able to pull this off, most notably Joe Frazier in the first and third fights with Ali which they split, who simply got blasted in the face over and over on the way in.
The net takeaway is that everything Louis did in terms of fundamentals, Ali did too. The difference is that Ali created these fundamental positions and principles while whirling around the ring. He changed absolutely nothing and everything.
Knowing all that, it is time for you to watch the Ali/Williams fight. I will point out a few more things to look for:
1. Ali often jabs to Williams’ body and then to the head with two quick punches. The first jab is a setup; notice that, when Ali bends over as he jabs to the body, he’s actually positioning himself deceptively so that when he straightens up to jab to the head he’s on the superior angle relative to Williams that was there the whole time. That’s why the jab to the head comes much faster than the jab to the body. This highlights yet another problem—it’s hard to time and counter a man who is constantly changing the speed of his punches.
I do have to extend Williams a great deal of credit though. As soon as he starts to get used to Ali's jabs to the body, he starts trying to time him with a hook but Ali slips back out of the way. He does everything he should to the best of his ability, he's just totally outclassed. After a few go-rounds with the counter, Ali just starts going upstairs with the right hand when Williams has exposed himself by trying to counter low.
2. The first knockdown is incredible. Ali is actually moving backwards when he throws the left-right combination that is almost impossible to see without slowing down the film. It’s damn near impossible to get any leverage on your punches going backwards, and while Williams is punching and bullying him into a corner, but his punches are so damn fast (almost impossible to see without slowing down the film) and so accurate that Williams’ entire body literally just shits off both physiologically and neurologically. It’s almost as if Ali had missed the shock and awe alone would have dropped him.
3. Ali often throws a looping right hand over the top of Williams’ lead shoulder, thus whooping his ass from yet another awkward angle.
4. The one moment that does look like Louis is when Ali tries to take Williams out after the first knockdown. Like Louis when he is pummeling Baer in the corner, Ali stands flat-footed, subtlety adjusting his angles and throwing bombs until Williams starts to lose it and squares up to Ali completely as he gets entirely disoriented. Then Ali just unloads up the middle.
5. Watch the first round of Louis/Baer, then spend a little time looking at Williams during the fight. That's the kind of fighter that typified the pre-Ali era.
Really, knowing all this and having a reasonable understanding of the infinite complex boxing provides even if nobody is trying to kill you, it’s extremely impressive that Cleveland “Big Cat” Williams lasted as long as he did. This fight is considered Ali's masterpiece, if not a nearly perfect fight, and although he had legendary victories after his return from exile, he never displayed the totality of his abilities at their highest level that this fight represents.
On that night, no man in the history of the sport could have beaten him. That's the stuff of Homeric legend.
Almost nobody could keep pace with him except a rare few, and this was during the Golden Era of the heavyweight division where the third tier fighters would absolutely obliterate the best of them today. The result was that Ali was 56-3 before his ill-advised comeback against Larry Holmes in 1980at the age of 38, had planned to retire permanently (which only lasted two years) in 1978 after regaining the heavyweight title for the third time when he was already well over the hill, and two of those losses came because Ali had his jaw broken by Ken Norton and still finished the fight only to lose a split decision, and Leon Spinks in his penultimate fight before the first retirement when he was already suffering the effects of Parkinsons. He, beat Ken Norton twice after the loss, and would whip Spinks’ ass in the rematch.
I would say that Joe Frazier is the only man who truly beat Ali, and it was one of the greatest fights of all time. And it was Ali’s third fight after a return from his three-year ban from boxing for refusing induction into the army, during which time he didn’t fight at all. And Ali won the following two fights of the trilogy.
Had he stayed retired, he would have been the only heavyweights besides Lennox Lewis and Rocky Marciano to retire having defeated every man they ever faced, as well as retiring as champion of the world.
Ali’s success in the ring and life—in a manner most befitting the Louisville Lip—spoke for itself. He truly is The Greatest.