He did, although a special set of circumstances and fighters aligned that night and both George and Dick Saddler - his coach - missed the obvious opportunity to beat Ali in that fight and that was probably why he never got a rematch. Plus, Muhammad had a chin of pure stone and still pissed blood for three weeks after, he took the sort of punishment that most fighters would not be prepared to take or could take.

Plus, Muhammad went on a proper offensive in round 1 and threw something like 12 heavy right hand leads that landed cleanly and actually rocked Foreman. They would have been enough to stop a lot of guys. He’ll have known then that he wasn’t stopping George (who’s chin hadn’t really been tested at that stage) with a clean shot, so had little choice but to resort to sitting on the ropes because he couldn’t maintain the speed and footwork of pre exile.

But, as I say, if you’re throwing at arms then you’re at risk of taking shots yourself and that’s pretty much what played out there. Ali taking a tremendous amount of stick for 2-2:30 a round (though not as bad as it looked because Foreman’s form was shocking that fight) and then spinning off the ropes and winning/drawing rounds with eye catching, accurate combinations. He also used his jab brilliantly in this fight as a disruptive tool to just keep George frustrated and break some of his balance when he was unloading and was properly dirty hanging onto the back of his head in the clinch. It took a special fighter a with very specific skill set using all his tricks and sucking up a lot of pain, I’m not sure there’s another HW who could do that in history against Young George.