I’m too young to have seen Rocky Marciano fight, but being a full head shorter than Muhammad Ali and by keeping his head even lower, Ali got the crap knocked out of him by a computer. And didn’t seem to object too strenuously, for a cut of the gate. (sigh) Twas ever thus in the fight game.
Aside:
Remember a few years ago when people were trying to get boxing banned for excessive violence? In comparison with Ultimate Fighting it’s a picnic in the park. And a lot less “violently gay,” noting how many bouts end with the victor astride the buttocks of the loser as he pummels him about the head. You’d never get Gentleman Jim Corbett in such a position, at least when cameras were rolling.
And the next year, The Super Fight gave way to The Fight Of The Century – when an undefeated heavyweight champ who shared Marciano’s tactics kept his head down to put Ali on the mat for the win.
Of course, Joe Frazier stood 5’11" to Marciano’s 5’10", but that’s still pretty good.
I agree with Ali that he would have beaten Jeffries, based on his later achievements. But this was before he’d regained the title against Foreman, or beaten Frazier two out of three times.
I find it hard to believe that Marciano could have beaten Dempsey in his prime, and I suspect that the algorithm placed too much emphasis on the fact that Marciano was never defeated, without accounting for the caliber of his opponents.
It’s tough to compare heavyweights across eras, because they’re so much bigger and stronger today. Whereas a middleweight from 1920 weighs the same as today. But I think that Dempsey in his prime (who weighed 187 pounds) would still have presented a challenge for Lennox Lewis, or these 7-foot Russians.
I also think Tyson might have been able to beat any of the fighters included in the computer simulation. A match between the 1919 Dempsey and the 1988 Tyson is IMO a candidate for the all-time matchup.
This may be simply my misinterpretation of your words, but Frazier didn’t knock Ali out for the win. He knocked him *down *in the 15th, and won by unanimous decision.
Cool. I’m really surprised I have never heard of this before. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. These kind of theoreticals are always more fantasy then science, but It is a fun thing to at least try.
No, I’d meant what I’d said; I wanted that analogy to the simulated Marciano fight to be as close as possible, which means pointing out that he (a) put Ali on the mat and (b) won. If Frazier had made the analogy even better by getting the knockout, believe me, I would’ve said that; if he’d made the analogy worse, by winning without so much as a knockdown, I would’ve left out that part and merely said he got the win like Marciano (and fought like Marciano did, and was the undefeated champ like Marciano had been, and so on).
I only heard about this once, in an article in one of ‘The People’s Almanac’ volumes. I recall that winner Marciano shrugged at the result and observed humbly and profoundly, “It’s just a computer”. And that one of the guys behind the whole effort acknowledged, “All we’ve done is start more arguments”, which forty years later has proved prophetic.
I don’t know the outcomes of the intermediate bouts in the computer simulation, but I think Jack Johnson and Joe Louis would be contenders for the all-time crown. As is the criminally underrated Gene Tunney. It merits a whole 'nother debate, about why the man who beat Jack Dempsey, twice, is often left out of all-time great lists. Reasons are many; e.g., boxers like Tunney are less exciting than brawlers like Dempsey and Tyson (Ali was a boxer, but his charisma, lip and influence outside the ring drew interest); Tunney never really embraced boxing after retiring to pursue other things, etc.
Tunney might have beaten any of the above. He was IMO as great a boxer as Ali, and punched harder.
Last night on TV I saw the documentary Thriller in Manila which told the story of the third Frazier- Ali fight from Frazier’s point of view. I was amazed to discover that had Frazier’s corner not thrown in the towel Ali may well have refused to fight the final round. It is a very fine boxing film and constantly fascinating.
I’ll say again that these snarky remarks, to my ears, are either from people who are unfamiliar with sports like wrestling, or are protesting loudly to convince themselves that they’re not thinking about it themselves.
I can watch entire fight nights and not have that occur to me.