Everyone talks Joe Frazier but Muhammad wasn't prime and had a long layoff and Joe had more heart with quicker feet then Tyson ever would have, these to men went 15 rounds 3times life or death with each other toe to toe, but prime Ali against Joe is a different fight. Muhammad would of had quicker feet being younger and wouldn't have had a long layoff Ali would of been sharper younger and prime if they faced each other before the Vietnam stuff. I just think that's a totally different first fight altogether .
I seem to remember Muhammad started suffering from his disease around the Joe Frazier fight or after.
With the evidence below we can all see and agree, that first fight with Frazier, Ali was not prime health wise and was starting to get sick with Parkinson’s. I think we can all agree to this, so that's not prime Muhammad Ali and that's why, if Muhammad fought Joe years earlier it's a totally a different fight altogether with Ali winning very easy. This is my opinion but i think i have very good evidence to prove me correct.
Ferdie Pacheco, the doctor working in Ali's corner at the time, said he saw signs of lasting brain damage after the Frazier fight in 1971. Pacheco said he told Ali to quit after that fight. Why didn't Ali listen? "There is no f------ cure to quick money," Pacheco said.
No one can say with certainty when brain damage begins to affect a person, although scientists have become much better in recent years at recognizing signs of trouble. When a person nears the age of 30, his brain tissue becomes progressively less elastic, making him more susceptible to permanent damage with each passing year and each passing shock to the skull. Boxers are especially susceptible. After all, the point of boxing is to concuss the opponent, to knock him down and out. If attempts were made to render boxing safe for boxers, it would likely mean the end of the sport. When Ali bounced back up after he was floored by Frazier's left hook, boxing fans and writers admired him for his grit. No one stepped in to offer a concussion test. The crowd cheered. The men in his corner urged him on.
The sport's long-term hazards have been studied since 1928, when an American doctor first used the term punch-drunk to describe fighters suffering cognitive dysfunctions, including memory loss, aggression, confusion, depression, slurred speech and, eventually, dementia. Today, punch-drunkenness is sometimes associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive, degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repetitive trauma. Scientists now understand that even small jolts to the brain, when repeated, can cause lasting damage. A boxer with a busy schedule probably takes more than a thousand shots to the head a year in bouts and thousands more while sparring.
Did Ali suffer for all those blows to the head? In all likelihood he did. Even as he entered what would later be described as the greatest phase of his career, there were signs of trouble, and they were noticeable every time Ali opened his mouth beginning around 1971.
The act of speaking is not as simple as it seems. Speech and language circuits in the brain work together to form a message, translate that message into movement across more than one hundred muscles from the lungs to the throat to the tongue and lips, and execute those intricate muscle movements to produce sound waves. That's why slurred speech is often one of the first indicators of moderate to severe neurological damage or disease. That's why drunks and stroke victims and victims of neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease or Lou Gehrig's disease often slur their words.
In 1967, according to a study published this year by speech scientists at Arizona State University, Ali spoke at a rate of 4.07 syllables per second, which is close to average for healthy adults. By 1971 his rate of speech had fallen to 3.80 syllables per second, and it would continue sliding steadily, year by year, fight by fight, over the course of his career. An ordinary adult would see little or no decline in his speaking rate between the ages of 25 and 40, but Ali experienced a drop of more than 26% in that period. His ability to clearly articulate words also declined significantly.
The brash boxer was slowly being hushed, and not by the government or by his critics; he was doing it to himself.
https://www.si.com/boxing/2017/09/27/muhammad-ali-joe-frazier-jonathan-eig-book-excerpt
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ali would come to call it his “trial”, a challenge to endure and overcome.
When the superstar began displaying the symptoms of the disease- such as slurred speech and slow body movement – during the late 1970s, it prompted wild speculation among a public not yet familiar with the reality of Parkinson’s.
This included the suggestion that Ali was battling deep-seated psychological problems or suffering the results of substance abuse.
Indeed his condition was not properly diagnosed as Parkinson’s until 1984, three years after he retired from the boxing ring.
It is now generally accepted that the disease – which attacks the nervous system and affects one in 500 people - was the result of Ali taking too many blows to the head, particularly in the final years of his career.
Following his four year ban from the sport for refusing to fight in Vietnam, Ali returned to the ring in 1970, having lost some of the speed and lightning reactions that had made him unbeatable during the Sixties.
In a dramatic change of tactics he adopted what he called the ‘rope a dope’ technique against George Foreman, in October 1974, and Joe Frazier the following year, in which he absorbed his opponents’ blows until the other fighter was too tired to respond to Ali’s counter-attack.
What followed only aggravated the neurological damage Ali had begun to suffer as a result of these brutal encounters.
In 1978, his speech already beginning to slur, Ali lost the heavyweight title to Leon Spinks, before regaining the championship from him seven months later - the first time anyone had won it on three separate occasions.
Two years later, at the age of 38, tempted back into the ring by money and his love of the crowd, he suffered a terrible beating at the hands of Larry Holmes, his former sparring partner. In 1981 he took another pummelling, losing on points to Trevor Berbick before finally retiring for good.
By now Ali’s physical deterioration was obvious. He suffered from permanent fatigue, his mouth drooled saliva and he developed a tremor in his hand.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...-muhammad-alis-fight-with-parkinsons-disease/