Ali’s short right hand connects over the top and clips Liston cleanly. Notice that Ali fakes a jab to draw Liston, then immediately pulls his head back as Liston lunges in with a jab. Personally I have seen all of the film available on Jack Johnson and have never seen him use a punch with a similar set up to Ali’s (Johnson was more a clinch fighter than anything else) but you cannot argue with the results that Ali had with it. After the second bout with Sonny Liston which ended very abruptly as Liston went down off of this counter, this punch was pulled into the spotlight and Ali referred to it as “The Anchor Punch”, declaring that it was a technique which had previously been used by Jack Johnson. This punch carried none of the traditional weight that a punch thrown with full body rotation would, but the timing and the fact that his opponents were often diving in with no regard for a counter from Ali could make this a fight changer. The point of Ali’s inside slip and leaning back away from punches was to leave space for him to land his chopping right hand as a counter. Notice in both how out of position he is and how exposed the right side of his jaw is. Here Sonny Liston, a very sound technical boxer, throws two different jabs which he had to run all the way across the ring to attempt. Read on and we will pull back the curtain on some of the tricks which made Muhammad Ali the best fighter in the world during the heavyweight division’s greatest era. Instead, however, Ali developed his own style which was different to anything before seen in the heavyweight division as he carried his hands low, drew punches with his face and pulled straight back out of range of them. Muhammad Ali had the hand speed, foot speed, endurance and reach to be a very good fighter if he chose to follow the orthodox methods laid out by other greats. It is an oft recited cliche that textbooks do not have all of life’s answers yet in boxing the “textbook style” is considered the pinnacle of boxing technique. Ali truly transcended the sport of boxing with his outspoken positions on civil rights and the Vietnam war, but in truth he had gone far beyond traditional boxing even inside the ring. Ali was at one point the most famous man on earth and children in Africa would have no idea who Richard Nixon was but could tell you all about Muhammad Ali. Ali turned 71 at the weekend and while this received plenty of media attention I am ashamed to say that I have never talked at any great length about The Greatest of All Time. Today I want to set aside a few moments to talk about the incredible and inimitable Muhammad Ali.
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