Which of these will win a world title by the end of 2014?

First topic message reminder :

Simple, you can vote as many you like.

Which of these five fighters will go on to win a world title?

David Haye
David Price
Deontay Wilder
Tyson Fury
Audley Harrison

There's also plenty of footage of Benn doing neck raises/lifts whilst wearing a head collar with weights attached...didn't stop him being susceptible to head shots.... you either have it or you don't?

azania wrote:It's simple biology. Get hit hard enough you go down. Some take better shots than others. You dont train to take shots in the head. You try to avoid that in a fight.

I gave you a reference to back up what I said. I don't remember saying it was sensible. You can judge for yourself if all the head shots effected Ali long term.

Ali took less head shots than Chuvalo. It didn't affect him in the manner it affected Ali. Each person's biology differs.

Ali took a lot of head shots from some of the greatest punchers that ever lived. The standard of his opposition is unmatched.

Whether you believe Ali took head shots in training to prepare him for fight night is up to you. I made a statement and gave a reference to back it up.

You keep spinning straw men if it keeps you happy.

SO did Chuvalo. In fact because he was not a good a boxer as Ali he took more punches and more full blows more frequently. Are you arguing against that?

The reference you gave is a book. The book didn't say he took full blown shots in the head to prepare for Foreman.

azania wrote:SO did Chuvalo. In fact because he was not a good a boxer as Ali he took more punches and more full blows more frequently. Are you arguing against that?

The reference you gave is a book. The book didn't say he took full blown shots in the head to prepare for Foreman.

Extract from the book The Fighter by Norman Mailer

Fighters generally use a training period to build confidence in their reflexes, even as an average skier, after a week of work on his parallel, can begin to think he will yet look like an expert. In later years, however, Ali would concentrate less on building his own speed and more on how to take punches. Now, part of his art was to reduce the force of each blow he received to the head and then fraction it further. Every fighter does that, indeed a young boxer will not last long if his neck fails to swivel at the instant he is hit, but it was as if Ali were teaching his nervous system to transmit shock faster than other men could.

Maybe all illness results form a failure of communication between mind and body. It is certainly true of such quick disease as a knockout. The mind can no longer send a word to the limbs. The extreme of this theory, laid down by Cus D’Amato when managing Floyd Patterson and José Torres, is that a pugilist with an authentic desire to win cannot be knocked out if he sees the punch coming, for then he suffers no dramatic lack of communication. The blow may hurt but cannot wipe him out. In contrast, a five-punch combination in which every shot lands is certain to stampede any opponent into unconsciousness. No matter how light the blows, a jackpot has been struck. The sudden overloading of the victim’s message center is bound to produce that inrush of confusion known as coma.

Now it was as if Ali carried the idea to some advanced place where he could assimilate punches faster than other fighters, could literally transmit the shock through more parts of his body, or direct it to the best path, as if ideally he were working toward the ability to receive that five-punch combination (or six or seven!) yet be so ready to ship the impact out to each arm. each organ and each leg, that the punishment might be digested, and the mind remain clear.

I'm struggling to see where it says that Ali used to deliberately take shots to the head, could you enlighten me where it suggests he did that?

You train your body to be able to absorb a punch better, whether that means strengthening your neck and leg muscles or whether it as simple as rolling with a punch.

A knockout is a neurological thing, your brain shakes around inside your skull and the trauma causes you to lose consciousness, forget all this mentality mumbo jumbo it's a load of old rubbish.

Hagler, LaMotta, Chuvalo and McCall are custom built to take severe trauma to the head, a very strong core including powerful legs, a big neck and certainly in the case of Chuvalo a thicker skull. It is this reason that Khan isn't really susceptible to punches to his chin as he's got a fairly strong neck but has twice been knocked out by punches to his temple which would suggest he has a thinner skull.

I'm wondering the same thing.

I underline and bolded the most salient parts. I can't comprehend it for you.


Here's the following paragraph if this helps you:

It was a study to watch Ali take punches. He would lie on the ropes and paw at his sparring partner like a mother cat goading her kitten to belt away. Then Ali would flip up his glove and let the other’s punch bounce from that glove off his head, repeating the move form other angles, as if the second half of the art of getting hit was to learn the trajectories with which punches glanced off your gloves and still hit you; Ali was always studying how to deaden such shots or punish the glove that threw the punch, forever elaborating his inner comprehension of how to trap, damp, modify, mock , curve, c*ck, warp, distort, deflect, tip, and turn the bombs that came toward him, and do this with a minimum of movement, back against the ropes, languid hands up. He inevitably trained by a scenario that cast him as a fighter in deep fatigue, too tired to raise his arms in the twelfth round of a fifteen-round fight. Such training may have saved him from being knocked out by Frazier in their first fight, such training had been explored by him in every fight since. His corner would scream “Stop playing!”, the judges would score against him for lying on the ropes, the fight writers would report that he did not look like the old Ali and all the while he was refining methods.

I get the feeling your severely misinterpreting what you're reading there.

That isn't exactly training yourself how to take full blooded blows to the head is it. More like how to avoid it. Its good boxing training. Done by amateurs and pro boxers.

But keep digging. I used to take the legs off insects as a kid.

Imperial Ghosty wrote:I get the feeling your severely misinterpreting what you're reading there.

I'm getting the feeling your comprehension skills aren't up to interpreting a pretty straight forward piece of writing.

What part of putting your glove to deflect the punch is testing yourself with full blown punches?

Strongback wrote:

Imperial Ghosty wrote:I get the feeling your severely misinterpreting what you're reading there.

I'm getting the feeling your comprehension skills aren't up to interpreting a pretty straight forward piece of writing.

It's saying Ali practised taking punched to the head. You are either a contrarian or just a bit thick.

I must be thick then. Because that article says he was training to avoid full blows to the head. But hey, what do I know. Putting your glove up is not taking the full force off the punch. Quite the opposite.

I learn new things everyday.

azania wrote:What part of putting your glove to deflect the punch is testing yourself with full blown punches?

The first post talks about Ali adapting to absorb punches as he got older, It expressly says keeping the mind clear after punches.

Good night gentlemen.

Now, part of his art was to reduce the force of each blow he received to the head and then fraction it further.

Is that hard to understand?