02.10.06 – By Rev. Marc Axelrod: Let’s say the Ali who fought Jerry Quarry in ATL comes back to fight todays top heavyweights. Let us talk about how it would go. I see Ali winning a late round TKO over Sergei Liahovich. He reminds me of the Oscar Bonavena of the present day, but he would be peppered all night by the Ali jab and the crisp right hands.
I also see Ali winning a unanimous decision over James Toney. Toney relies on airheaded sluggers coming forward, winging punches from the grandstands. Ali would make Toney come forward, and he would administer
a boxing lesson to the former 160 pound champion.
Ali would post a mid round stoppage against Oleg Maskaev. Oleg would be no match for the fast, sharp-shooting Ali, and he would crumple to the canvas in the 6th round under a bevy of blows from the Greatest.
Wladimir Klitschko would be sliced up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Ali would land rapier jabs and swift combinations that would make the slower Klitschko retreat. The butchery would be stopped before round 10.
Ali would stop a bloodied Sam Peter in the 11th round. Sam just doesn’t have the speed or the skills or the stamina to stand in there with Ali. He would eat him up with combinations, and step back and let Peter’s powerful windups sail past his face.
Ali would win a dull unanimous decision over Nicolay Valuev. I predict Muhammad would take 13 out of 15 rounds as an exhausted, beaten Valuev barely makes it to the end of the 15th round.
The bottom line is that there isn’t a heavyweight alive today who could beat the post exilic 1970 Muhammad Ali. Ali cleaned out the heavyweight division in the 1960s, he cleaned it out between 1970-1975, and he would clean out this generation of heavyweights as well.