January 2002 - July 2006 - The Jerry Quarry Foundation

damaged or becoming so. It was obviously wrong for him to have those fights.
Those fights should not have happened.Noam, you just don't get it. It is
not that Frazier avoided necessary fights. It is that Ali had to many
unnecessary fights. Looking at the heavyweight contenders through 1964 and 1974.
Who made out better than Joe Frazier other than George Foreman regarding
retiring with money and relatively good health. FRAZIER FOUGHT THE NECESSARY
FIGHTS, ALI FOUGHT UNNECESSARY FIGHTS. WHO MADE OUT BETTER. FAZIER HANDS DOWN.|
|6/29/05 11:26:43 AM|Kent|Murrieta, Ca||kentallenent@aol.com||||10|Noam, I
believe if we go through your posts we will find you have said on several
occasions that Jimmy Ellis did not have a win in four years. How am I supposed
to know you only meant four fights when you say four years each
time?Ellis was headed towards the downside when he fought Frazier the
second time but he had gone the distance with Bugner and Lyle and he gave a good
acount of himself.If he wasn't still a viable opponent even in the
period right before Frazier 2, then why was it considered a good win for Lyle
and before that Shavers too? Their wins over Ellis are when they started to
make a name for themselves.Another reason Ellis was a viable and even
tough opponent for Frazier the second time around is Ellis knew it was a big
chance to get back into the picture. He was a former champion with a lot of
experience who still might have been able to turn his career around with a win
and he fought very well, again, he was winning after five rounds and he might
have been ahead at the time of the stoppage or if behind, only by one point. I
have to ask again, have you seen the fight? He was a very live
underdog.Why couldn't it have been possible Ellis could have had a
resurrgence in his career? Frazier himself had lost two out of three fights, to
Foreman and Ali, with the win over Bugner and he came back to beat Quarry to get
another shot at Ali in Manila and he fought great, even if in a losing effort,
to test Ali to the limit. One of the reasons the Frazier critics
thought Ellis was completely shot by the point of Frazier/Ellis 2 is they
believed you Noam continualy saying Ellis had not won in four years, not four
fights. But they were tough losses and he had a draw with Middleton too.|
|6/29/05 03:52:32 PM|angelo|dc||funktron@yahoo.com||||10|Kent/Forrest: I
haven't gone through all of my old posts---I don't remember if I used the word
"ducked" when referring to Frazier not meeting Lyle, Shavers, Norton, etc. I
might have said it, but I think I said his management "avoided" them, which is a
little less accusatory. I stand by that. I understand the point that Ali might
have stayed around too long and took on fights he "didn't need to" but that's
why he's a legend. I understand that Frazier took the very absolute bare
minimum of fights against powerful punchers (probably with the exception of
Foreman II, which he needed like a hole in the head). He "chose" not to enter
the 60's tournament that all other contenders were in. He never fought the
aforementioned power punchers and we've all heard the theories why (buddy-buddy
with Kenny, Earnie lost to this guy and that guy, Lyle was too mean and a
jailbird). He DID fight guys he had already knocked out, including the infamous
"fun in the sun/Thunder down Under" against, and I'll say it again, a SHOT Jimmy
Ellis. I don't care that he fought surprisingly well for five rounds---he was
riding a ridiculous losing streak for a former world class fighter, he was not
capable of delivering a knockout against Frazier and it was a matter of time
before any reasonable Frazier punch would knock him from Melbourne to Toledo.
Plain and simple, Ellis didn't belong in the ring with Frazier, or more to the
point, Frazier was too good at that point (even with the losses to Ali and
Foreman) to be taking this infamous "tune-up" with Ellis. Leave the tune-ups to
an Exxon Station and fight Lyle please. And if Lyle is "unnecessary" than fine,
but don't expect to be mentioned in the same library with Muhammad Ali, who
lined them up and knocked them down. His poor health is the trade-off then, for
being the greatest while Frazier was merely "a good fighter of his era." |
|6/29/05 05:34:22 PM|Noam|same||same||||10|Forest - my understanding was that