I'm convinced he was a phenomenal fighter and your not. End of discussion.
It isn't a question of being unconvinced. I am open to the idea that he was, and he certainly had all of the tools to be. It is only the lack of documented fights that keeps me from saying yes, he was. Likewise, lack of documentation does not mean that he wasn't.
I will say that he was a phenomenal martial artist. I generally do not like the term, but there are a few people who actually and legitimately embody the term and Lee was one of them.
I conceded that I believed Ali would beat him in a boxing match, I do believe Lee would take out Ali in a no holds barred street fight in his prime, but we will never know.
No, we won't ever know for sure. I would enjoy a reasonably technical explanation from any of those who pick Lee as to why. A technical analysis that does not sandbag Ali. Unfortunately, I am not sure that enough hard information about Lee as a fighter exists to make such a comparison. Ali, of course, is a statistician's dream.
I didn't have any problems with you doing that. It was more "why do people lose touch with reality when discussing Bruce Lee" that bothered me, in reality he was incredibly fast with outstanding power and technique.
I can see where that would bother you. It was meant as a generality. Most often, people saying that Lee could beat fill-in-blank have no basis for the statement. That Lee was incredibly fast and had outstanding power and technique is a given. But the leap to him beating Ali in a no holds barred fight is nearly always made with the assumption that Ali couldn't do anything but box, which is false. The other issue is that people are holding up a man who has no fight record or been in any documented fights and making the statement that he could have or would have beaten champion level fighters, which in my opinion, is generally (not always) absurd.
Thus the comparisons frequently do not have a basis in reality because they generally confine the championship fighter to only what they could see of him in their chosen sport without taking the time to learn about what sort of training that fighter has (if any) in other areas.
I thought you had written worse than that actually, challenging the very premise of the thread, must have been a different poster.
Well, if it was me, then I probably said something less articulately than I could have or should have. Could have been a kneejerk reaction on my part. I reread some of my posts and I can see where I came across as a bit snarkey, over the top, or a bit of both.
I liked most of what you wrote, I think it was a different poster I had in mind after reading your initial post. I don't have any problem with you believing Ali would defeat Lee. Those who believe there is no point in writing such a post in the first place should simply ignore it, as I do when I see posts that I think are really ridiculous.
Just to be clear, I am not an Ali fan. There are fighters for whom I have a much greater affinity. Unfortunately, facts being what they are, Ali in his prime could probably have beaten many of them, both in and out of the ring. Heretical as it may sound, I'd pick Ali in his prime over Chuck Norris in his.
Daniel
