Be world champion these days. Watch the dude fight Frazier. Great boxing skill, Good power and plenty of size to compete with the modern heavyweights. Couldn't hold up to the frazier, but Frazier would crush wilder.
Anyone with a pulse would be undefeated in these modern times All sports are regressing. It is known. John Havlicek would make Tracy McGrady look like Glen fuckin Davis Santander comes to mind speaking of Frazier opponents....what a killer he was ol boy. Toughest title challenger since Ruiz popped up. John Ruiz that is
buster was talented but in Joe Frazier's opinion, a little weak minded, and not mean at all. Joe got the olympic oppurtunity because bus wouldn't fight for some trivial reason, sweet man, nice guy like a lot of boxers and particularly heavyweights. Talented though, discipline problems, couldn't take Cus d'amato's controlling, but ya, today, he'd beat these guys.
For a fat guy he moved well. Reminiscent of Tony Tubbs in many ways. Frazier was not a very good match-up for him. His son actually fought more like Frazier than Mathis himself. From what I understand, diabetes ended up being his undoing. The legend has it that Wepner was never down before the Ali fight, but Mathis had already knocked him down about a decade earlier:
stander and that other hopeless guy frazier fought were after the first ali fight, yank durham thought frazier took enough punishment in that fight that he'd have to step way back, truth is he was never the same, neither was ali. Joe still was able to fight off a young hungry Joe Bugner in a pretty good fight later on and of course the thrilla in manila but with all his health issues and the punishment, he says in his bio, the writers said he was finished and he says even though it hurt to hear, he knew it was true. Fighters like him have shorter careers, you might be surprised to see he didn't even have 40 fights.
looks like a knockdown to me, wonder what the hell it was called. Wepner stood up to old mean sonny though, when asked if wepner was the bravest man he ever fought, sonny said, "no, his manager is".
ya, i remember seeing the ali fight as an adult (I remember seeing it as a 6 year old but didn't know shit) and thinking "how did this guy ever make it to fighting for a title".
Toughness and the will to keep going took you a long way back in those days. I mean it does now too but in no alternate universe is he fighting for a title right now....maybe in the Charles Martin/Valuev era
