Muhammad Ali Beat Liston, Frazier and Foreman When None of Them Looked Beatable

Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship three separate times and finished 56-5. Every time boxing produced a man who appeared unbeatable, Sonny Liston, then Joe Frazier, then George Foreman, Ali was the one who beat him.

Liston was considered the most frightening champion since Marciano and was a seven to one favorite in 1964. Ali took the title from him at 22, then knocked him out in the first round of the rematch. Frazier handed Ali his first defeat in 1971, so Ali beat him in 1974 and beat him again in the Thrilla in Manila in 1975, fourteen brutal rounds in heat that both men said nearly killed them.

The Foreman fight is the one that decides his case. Foreman had destroyed Frazier in two rounds and was regarded as unbeatable; Ali was 32 and three years removed from his prime after a forced layoff. In Zaire he leaned on the ropes and let Foreman punch himself into exhaustion for seven rounds, then knocked him out in the eighth. Winning that fight required abandoning the style that had made him great and inventing a new one in real time.

That is the underrated part. The young Ali was a heavyweight who moved like a lightweight, with hand speed and footwork the division had never seen, and he beat people by not being there. The older Ali could not do that, so he won on ring intelligence and on a chin that let him absorb the hardest punchers of the era and keep thinking.

Joe Louis defended the title 25 consecutive times, a record that will never be threatened, and held it for nearly twelve years. Rocky Marciano retired 49-0, the only heavyweight champion to finish undefeated. Mike Tyson between 1986 and 1988 was the most physically terrifying version of a heavyweight anyone has watched. Larry Holmes had the best jab in the division's history and beat a faded Ali.

Louis has the reign and Marciano has the unbeaten record. Ali has the quality of opposition, and the fact that he beat the three best heavyweights of his generation in their primes, twice each.

The verdict: Muhammad Ali. Three titles, and he beat all of them.