Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 10:04 pm Post subject: Re: Muhammad Ali vs Wilt Chamberlain
22 wrote:
http://youtu.be/6jUq5rcM-58
For those of you that were around during this time, was there a lot of hype about this? Why didn't they ever fight?
I'm really curious to hear NPZ's take especially
No one knows why they didn't fight, but there a number of reasons advanced over the years:
-- It was publicity stunt and they never intended to fight
-- Wilt got cold feet
-- Wilt realized he didn't have enough time to train
-- They hit financial snags and couldn't agree on terms
-- Wilt extended his contract with the Lakers for a significant pay increase
In his book, Wilt said the reason was the financial terms, but he was a teller of tall tails so that might not be the truth.
focus wrote:
These TV clips feel like something special or authentic, pre-corporate baloney and 'branding'.
I don't know about that. There weren't many athletes in history who were more aware of the camera being on them, or who performed for the camera, more than Ali, and Wilt wasn't far behind him. These were two guys who were branding themselves before anyone knew the term branding.
Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 11:23 am Post subject: Re: Muhammad Ali vs Wilt Chamberlain
activeverb wrote:
focus wrote:
These TV clips feel like something special or authentic, pre-corporate baloney and 'branding'.
I don't know about that. There weren't many athletes in history who were more aware of the camera being on them, or who performed for the camera, more than Ali, and Wilt wasn't far behind him. These were two guys who were branding themselves before anyone knew the term branding.
True, but branding from the whole marketplace perspective, commercials and sponsorships, etc. from advertisers, media networks, agencies,etc.
I consider Wilt the greatest athlete that ever lived. But he'd get punished by Ali just because he would have trouble landing a punch.
Now if it was MMA, Wilt would destroy him.
Agree with the first part. Not sure about the second. I mean, Wilt may not have ever been in a fight in his life. If that's the case, even if it's MMA, Ali kills him. Now if Wilt were trained to a moderate level, then, yeah, no doubt. _________________ “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
― James Baldwin, Collected Essays
I can't find the thread about wilt shooting fadeaways. I've been watching as many of his videos of fadeaways as I can find, it's pretty incredible. He's (very comfortably) hitting jumpshot fadeaways from beyond the free throw. This is Wilt, and that's insane. If what I'm seeing is accurate as far as day to day action for him, i think he's better than kareem and #1 on the goat list. if you're the tallest, strongest, most athletic, most skilled, AND you can hit a fadeaway from far out...it's over.
Imagine if Wilt was born in the 90's and grew up with all the modern health/fitness knowledge.
We would have seen him in the Avengers movie starring as... himself.
It's one of those questions that i think about a lot. For me, forget playing against the modern guys...I wish I had a whole lot more HD videos of him playing full NBA games in his prime. Not highlights, the full thing. I have almost no sense of what he was like over the course of a game.
Also, we were able to see Kareem in the almost modern age. And given what i've seen between the two, Kareem was close. Not so much in strength, but the skillsets are kind of close, and kareem was no weakling either. So I feel Wilt would be like a stronger version of kareem with more moves, but without the skyhook.
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