Best Heavyweight Ring General Aside From Ali and Johnson?

[McGrain]

What do you think?

[Sonny's jab]

Tunney
Holmes

[janitor]

What do you think?

Why should it necisarily be one of those two?

[McGrain]

Why should it necisarily be one of those two?

They are my picks and I have clear water between them and the rest. I'd be fascinated to hear what you think though, if it's otherwise.

[ChrisPontius]

Rocky Marciano.

I know this will raise a few eyebrowes, but think about it. He never allowed his opponents to fight from their comfort zone, he set the pace and had a way of turning it into a rough, inside fight.

[McGrain]

Rocky Marciano.

I know this will raise a few eyebrowes, but think about it. He never allowed his opponents to fight from their comfort zone, he set the pace and had a way of turning it into a rough, inside fight.

I think it's a fine shout.

He made the opposition fight a fight that they weren't comfy with that got him results. That's the definition of ring generalship.

Now go and read the small essay I wrote you in the "Beware the bum of the month" thread.

[Marnoff]

Rocky Marciano.

I know this will raise a few eyebrowes, but think about it. He never allowed his opponents to fight from their comfort zone, he set the pace and had a way of turning it into a rough, inside fight.

I like this pick, because I like your reason for it.

[janitor]

They are my picks and I have clear water between them and the rest.

I think that there are many diferent types of ring generalship. I think that depending on criteria the following fighters could be ranked with your top two.

Sam Langford
Jack Dempsey
Gene Tunney
Joe Louis
Ezzard Charles
Joe Walcott
Larry Holmes

Red = superior offensive ring generals

[McGrain]

I think that there are many diferent types of ring generalship.


Hmmmm.

I'd see ring generalship as controlling the action. That means forcing your opponent to fight a fight that benefits you and not him.

The criteria would be correct tactical selection, adaptability after a correct analysis and execution. As to whether or not one outweights the other would be on the individual to decide - Chris has already picked a fighter (Marciano) who was absolutley outstanding at executing as a ring general.

[janitor]

I'd see ring generalship as controlling the action. That means forcing your opponent to fight a fight that benefits you and not him.


Ring generalship for an offensive fighter requires verry different atributes to the generalship of a defensive fighter. You can excel at one and be poor at the other.

The most outstanding example to my mind taking everything into acount is Sam Langford.

"Whatever da other fella want to do, jus don't let him do it".

[robert ungurean]

Tunney
Walcott
Charles
Holmes

[Club Fighter]

I think that there are many diferent types of ring generalship. I think that depending on criteria the following fighters could be ranked with your top two.

Sam Langford
Jack Dempsey
Gene Tunney
Joe Louis
Ezzard Charles
Joe Walcott
Larry Holmes

Red = superior offensive ring generals

I concur, although I reckon you might wanna alter the color writing that Larry Holmes is written in to a more burgundy hue.

[unitas]

holmes.

[heerko koois]

:good Rocky Marciano.

I know this will raise a few eyebrowes, but think about it. He never allowed his opponents to fight from their comfort zone, he set the pace and had a way of turning it into a rough, inside fight.

I agree

[Duodenum]

I don't really buy Ali as a great ring general, so much as a physically gifted tough guy who could psych out many of his challengers. Holmes dominated Norton for seven rounds, to an extent beyond anything Ali ever managed against Ken. Muhammad was also befuddled against Jimmy Young, and for three rounds, Folley got the better of him.

As for Holmes, he was supreme at adapting to unexpectedly adverse conditions in mid-fight. Against a surprising challenge from unheralded Weaver, Larry masterfully set Mike up with the uppercut bomb which decided the match. Against Snipes, Holmes was advancing until Rennie's punch of a lifetime, then adjusted by outboxing him in retreat, until the taunting Snipes was ready to be taken. Louis and Blackburn needed a rematch to plot an effective strategy for taking out Godoy. Larry would have likely figured out and implemented a similar solution in mid-match. Pre-fight planning can be brilliant, but life is not predictable, so the ability to improvise to changing conditions is also important. Of course, if talent is taken as knowing one's own limitations, Larry selected his opposition intelligently. As a middle ager, he really did box the ears off of Mercer and Esch.

While Ali gets credit for ingenuity against Foreman, the reality is that he went with the only approach available to use, his insane toughness. (And let's face it, Muhammad behaved as if he was on PCP during that event. On that occasion, he was a megalomaniacal lunatic, inebriated with himself to an extreme disassociative grandiosity. In layman's terms, he won because he was stark raving mad.)

Corbett, Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling, Walcott, Charles, and Mike Spinks, are fine additions to Jack Johnson.

In the case of both Frazier and Marciano, they pretty much fought according to how their physical abilities required them to. It doesn't mean they weren't smart, just that the attributes they had restricted their capacity to demonstrate much variance in their performance. They were certainly intelligent enough to understand the primacy of their conditioning.

During Foreman's second career, he was ironically the architect of his own defeat to Tommy Morrison. The Duke called George for some career advice following his devastating kayo loss to Mercer, and Foreman recommended that Tommy relax and loosen up a bit. Against George, it worked. Of course, Foreman kept his own counsel with Dundee in his corner, and regained the title his way. The argument has been made by many that he should have been undefeated through the remainder of his career, and Larry Hazzard has essentially admitted that the inexperienced judges he assigned to the Foreman/Briggs matchup botched the scoring in favor of Briggs. It doesn't diminish George's importance in engineering his own successful comeback.

[rekcutnevets]

Sonny Liston. He dictated how the fight was going to be fought. If he wanted to come forward, you either moved or went to sleep. He wasn't going to be outbulled.

[janitor]

Sonny Liston. He dictated how the fight was going to be fought. If he wanted to come forward, you either moved or went to sleep. He wasn't going to be outbulled.

Good choice.

[janitor]

I reckon you might wanna alter the color writing that Larry Holmes is written in to a more burgundy hue.

Then you have made a good case for him as the answer to this thread.

[McGrain]

I don't really buy Ali as a great ring general, so much as a physically gifted tough guy who could psych out many of his challengers. Holmes dominated Norton for seven rounds, to an extent beyond anything Ali ever managed against Ken. Muhammad was also befuddled against Jimmy Young, and for three rounds, Folley got the better of him.

As to Young and Folley part of Ring Generalship is adapting and changing in terms of your gameplan, and he got there in the end.

For the absolute summit of Ali's generalship see the Williams fight. Williams was absolutley done, of couse, but it was Ali that exposed hims as such, and going in he was regarded as a big, big hitter. Ali litterally feels him out with speed for the first round and then in the last forty seconds, having identified Williams' vulnerability in around two minutes, he changes gear.

The rest of the fight is an tactical offensive masterclass in assault, though against an opponent who is, admitidly, depressingly vulnerable. That is neither here no there, however in terms of Ali

A) Identifying absolutley the right plan going in

AND

B) Changing it within seconds when he ID's a better one.

[McGrain]

Sonny Liston. He dictated how the fight was going to be fought. If he wanted to come forward, you either moved or went to sleep. He wasn't going to be outbulled.


Great shout.

[Duodenum]

As to Young and Folley part of Ring Generalship is adapting and changing in terms of your gameplan, and he got there in the end.

For the absolute summit of Ali's generalship see the Williams fight. Williams was absolutley done, of couse, but it was Ali that exposed hims as such, and going in he was regarded as a big, big hitter. Ali litterally feels him out with speed for the first round and then in the last forty seconds, having identified Williams' vulnerability in around two minutes, he changes gear.

The rest of the fight is an tactical offensive masterclass in assault, though against an opponent who is, admitidly, depressingly vulnerable. That is neither here no there, however in terms of Ali

A) Identifying absolutley the right plan going in

AND

B) Changing it within seconds when he ID's a better one.It was a masterpiece, but Ali was also behaving as though he'd overdosed on Vivarin. I counted no less than four double shuffles in that brief outing, an obscene display of surplus energy. During his second career, he spouted something about taking on Foreman and Frazier in the same night. As wired as he was against Williams, he might have been able to pull off this trick on that date in the Astrodome.

Muhammad pulled out many rounds in the closing seconds, leaving those scoring the round with a positive final impression. This is in large part due to the sense of timing garnered by sparring three minute rounds in training. Some boxers spar longer rounds to try developing greater stamina, but I think it's more useful for purposes of competition to employ interval training according to contest timing. For boxing, that would mean going all out for three minutes, then letting up for 60 seconds, before going full bore again, whether it's in sparring, doing roadwork, skipping rope, or punching bags, to develop an acutely ingrained sense of how far along a round has progressed in the heat of battle. Ali had tuned that sense, and few scorers besides Arthur Mercante were able to evolve a counter strategy for superceding the illusion of having won a round with a few final seconds of flurrying.

Ali was in no way, shape, or form, a mediocre ring general. Against opponents like Quarry, he could be riveting in his surgical dissection. But no, I don't quite rate Muhammad at the very top of the HW list. (I realize this probably places me firmly in a tiny minority.)

[ChrisPontius]

On that occasion, he was a megalomaniacal lunatic, inebriated with himself to an extreme disassociative grandiosity.


That must the most beautiful sentence i've read here. What exactly do Vivarin and PCP do?

And i think Ali has always been like that.


The comments about the Folley fights are interesting, i watched that fight a few weeks ago and Folley did get the better of the first three rounds, even managed to land some good right hands despite being old and slow as fuck and extremelly chinny. I think Ali choose to go easy in the first rounds, measure his opponent a bit etc. But three rounds is a pretty long time. This is why i think Frazier would always beat him the first time; you cannot afford to lose the first three rounds to Frazier.

[hopkinsfan07]

Roy Jones Jr

[Duodenum]

That must the most beautiful sentence i've read here. What exactly do Vivarin and PCP do?

And i think Ali has always been like that.


The comments about the Folley fights are interesting, i watched that fight a few weeks ago and Folley did get the better of the first three rounds, even managed to land some good right hands despite being old and slow as fuck and extremelly chinny. I think Ali choose to go easy in the first rounds, measure his opponent a bit etc. But three rounds is a pretty long time. This is why i think Frazier would always beat him the first time; you cannot afford to lose the first three rounds to Frazier.Well Chris, Vivarin is a non-prescription caffeine tablet sold over-the-counter in the States, and manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, which is used to induce alertness when experiencing fatigue or drowsiness. Vivarin contains 200 mg of caffeine per tablet, approximately the same amount contained in 16 oz of coffee. It was originally popularized by truckers driving on long overnight trips, and quickly adopted by students cramming for tests. It's also misused as a metabolic accelerative for inducing weight loss. (In individuals suffering a high level of nervousness, it can trigger anxiety attacks.)

PCP is an acronym for phencyclidine (itself a contraction of the chemical name phenylcyclohexylpiperidine). It is commonly known as "Ashy Larry," or "Angel Dust." PCP was originally developed for use as a surgical anesthetic, but quickly withdrawn because of unacceptably adverse side-effects. Mostly consumed in the States as an illegal street drug, the anesthetic properties of PCP can induce violent individuals to feel less pain at the time, and consequently persist in violent or injurious acts as a result (such as taking all of George Foreman's hardest right hands to the entirely unprotected left side of one's body without feeling it, or reacting to it at all).

Subduing a violent suspect believed to be using PCP is one of the most dreaded hazards of police duty. Some have even speculated that Panama Lewis administered PCP to Aaron Pryor before the winning round of his initial match with Arguello. (That allegation is, of course, pure sensationalistic rubbish. The tireless performances he produced in the ring were a product of his inherent nature.) PCP causes a type of brain damage called Olney's lesions, vacuolization in the cortex. Nasty stuff which kills.


Regarding the Folley match, Ali was a tactician, but he was also a known fast starter at his peak in the ring, not the sort of boxer who tended to feel out an opponent cautiously to begin a match. Muhammad usually had an abundance of pent up nervous energy to dispel once the bell rang, and he generally discharged that surplus burst in winning his opening rounds. Therefore, the manner in which he slowly undertook his defense against Folley was extremely uncharacteristic, and may have had more to do with Zora's boxing intelligence and skill.

Ali clearly peaked against Cleveland Williams, but if Folley or Eddie Machen had been with Ali in the Astrodome, instead of Williams, I believe Ali would have had no choice but to proceed more cautiously. (Eddie Machen selected the most wretched time to go on a losing streak. While he could never have beaten Ali, he may have been the most competitive challenger Muhammad faced at his peak. It would have been interesting to see how successful Machen could be against him, and whether or not Ali could have taken the tough Machen out.)

[Holmes' Jab]

Tunney
Holmes

:good

[ThinBlack]

Larry Holmes, possibly Lennox Lewis.

[Beatle]

Rocky Marciano, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran.

Ring General just means good fighter.