{"id":740440,"date":"2026-08-17T03:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T03:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740440\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T03:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T03:56:10","slug":"muhammad-ali-once-named-the-fighter-that-he-underestimated-hes-the-toughest-i-faced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740440\/","title":{"rendered":"Muhammad Ali Once Named The Fighter That He Underestimated: “He’s The Toughest I Faced”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having shared the ring with so many legendary heavyweights during his career, Muhammad Ali<\/a> singled out just one fighter when naming his toughest ever opponent.<\/p>\n

Known as \u2018The Greatest\u2019, Ali first established himself as a serious contender back in 1960 when he captured Olympic Gold at the Summer Games in Rome, marking the beginning of what would prove to be a decorated boxing career.<\/p>\n

He won the world heavyweight championship for the first time when he produced a monumental sixth round stoppage victory over countryman Sonny Liston in February of 1964 and would go on to make nine successful defences of his crown.<\/p>\n

After returning from exile in 1970, Ali reclaimed the heavyweight championship in 1974 when he defeated George Foreman in \u2018The Rumble In The Jungle\u2019<\/a>, one of the sport\u2019s most memorable moments.<\/p>\n

In a resurfaced interview<\/a>, Ali spoke fondly of legendary rival Henry Cooper as he claims the British great was the toughest opponent he ever shared a ring with.<\/p>\n

\u201cCooper\u2019s not a bum anymore. I underestimated him. He\u2019s the toughest fighter I ever met [in the ring] and the first to really drop me. He\u2019s a real fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The Greatest\u2019 shared the ring with Cooper on two occasions during his career, defeating the Brit in their first encounter which took place at London\u2019s Wembley Stadium in June 1963, although Cooper famously floored Ali at the end of the fourth round.<\/p>\n

They met for the second time several years later at Highbury Stadium and it was Ali who prevailed yet again, stopping Cooper in the sixth round to successfully defend his world heavyweight championship. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having shared the ring with so many legendary heavyweights during his career, Muhammad Ali singled out just one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-740440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}