"You're ASSUMING otherwise, based on..... absolutely nothing, at all"
I've already answered this point multiple times so I'll do it one final time. Jones isn't a paycheck chasing journeyman, doesn't love the sport to the point where he's willing to take losses way past prime and has a keen awareness of his limitations. He most likely wouldn't be fighting a guy like Gane if he had slipped significantly. Perhaps Jones comes out as a walking corpse and gets KO'd in a round. But if he gets schooled over 5 over even stopped late, I don't see that as being good evidence that he's slipped badly. But that will be the inevitable excuse. And as I made clear at the start of the thread, Jones objectively has big advantages here, including the favour of the officials as the much bigger name, the American fighter and the more "legitimate" champion (as Ngannou beat Gane).
"Ali destroyed Cooper"
I consider Liston-Patterson 1 and 2 "destructions" but we have very different understandings of the term, clearly.
It's ridiculous to say that Ali "destroyed" 186 pounder Cooper if Ali effectively got KO'd and needed illegal cornerwork to win. Dundee gave Ali smelling salts and tore one of his gloves. The fight was a farce and with proper officiating would have resulted in a DQ win for Cooper.
"because Ali never fought against southpaws"
Ali also lost to two southpaws in the amateurs and one of them KO'd him. It was a huge weakness for heavies in those days but few southpaws were around to expose it, and no top class ones. Those skills just weren't taught back then. Put 1966 Ali in with an elite southpaw and I think he gets outboxed or KO'd.
"while seemingly oblivious to the fact that Liston rubbed ointment in Ali's eyes"
Liston outlanded Ali in rounds 2 and 3, not just round 5. It's true that round 5 did distort the stats but again, heavyweights were able to land plenty on Ali. If he was as fast or skilled as fans like you make out he wouldn't have been hit nearly as much as he was by these small Euro level guys and fringe contenders from the 60's.
"reliance on CompuBox"
Compubox isn't perfect but at least it's presumably neutral on this issue. Being American if anything you'd expect it to paint a very positive picture of Ali but it doesn't. Ali-Mildenberger in 1966 was 154-144 in landed punches according to Compubox. A blogger counted punches for a litany of heavyweight fights and found that (in his view) Compubox generally inflates the number of punches that land, sometimes massively. Perhaps it does but it's still a decent rule of thumb unless you're willing to go back and review every fight in 0.25 speed.
Throw that Ali in with prime Frazier or prime Norton and I think he probably loses, just as he actually lost to them in their first meetings (despite being more mature, experienced and durable than the 60's version) and needed A-side officiating in others.
"reputable sports writers"
You're not going to find many American boxing writers exposing myths around Ali, they're obviously going to defend him to the hilt. Thomas Hauser was also a friend and biographer(!) of Ali's, hardly objective.
