K.O.W. - The Power of Muhammad

As part of our Ali birthday celebration, we take you back to November 14, 1966 for the No Mas Knockout of the Week - the night the Champ beat the stuffing out of Cleveland Williams in the Astrodome.

Granted, Williams was a shot fighter in 1966, a once fearsome heavyweight who'd been through a few too many wars, one in particular with the police. Williams hadn't fought a single bout in 1965 due to a gunshot wound that he received from a cop. Prior to that, he'd been known as a punishing puncher who had seriously hurt Sonny Liston in a 1959 fight before the Big Bear came back to stop him.

But even allowing for Williams' diminished capacity, Ali was miraculous in their fight - mobile, powerful, and with the handspeed of a Mexican flyweight on crank. Perhaps no heavyweight who ever lived would have beaten him that night - not Johnson, not Louis, certainly not Marciano or Tyson. He first puts Williams on the canvas with about a minute to go in the second with a straight right hand as he's backing up, a punch that occurs in the exact same part of the ring and looks oddly like the phantom right that felled Liston in their second bout. This punch, however, is no phantom. Williams gets up quickly, but he's far down queer street, and Ali floors him two more times in the round, both with beautiful right hooks, the second of which definitely would have ended the bout if Williams hadn't been saved by the bell. The third round brings another knockdown before the ref mercifully steps in. All in all, it's must-see material for the Ali acolyte. Everything is there - the patented shuffe, the laser jab, the laconic panther circling his prey. He's just a fighting machine, the total package.

Jim Brown calls the bout with Don Dunphy, just a year off his retirement from the NFL. Check out Jim at the end of the fight noting that Ali came into the fight at 212, and that both he and Angelo Dundee think that is the champ's ideal weight. I can only imagine how reassuring Angelo found Jim Brown's concurrence on that count.