The fighting was uneven, with flashes of excellence marred by Ali initiating 133 clinches, many by holding Frazier's head and pushing down on his neck, which referee
Tony Perez did not regard as a violation under the rules. Ali's clinching dominated the fight. Many rounds were close and difficult to score and punch volume was unusually low for the two fighters, and for heavyweight boxers in general. Ali ended up landing 181 punches to Joe Frazier's 172, with Ali leading on jabs 37 to 5 and Frazier on power punches 167 to 144; by contrast, in their first bout Frazier landed 378 punches (365 power) and Ali 330 (195 power). Frazier and Ali each landed more punches than the other in 5 of the 12 rounds, with 2 rounds even. Frazier was the more accurate puncher, landing 42% of his blows to Ali's 25%. In the opinion of sportswriters Bob Cannobio and Lee Groves: "Had they fought this way three years earlier, boxing would have been greatly harmed and the world probably never would have seen a second fight, much less a third." Tactically, instead of fighting flat-footed in the middle of the ring and "fighting Frazier's fight" as in their first, meeting, Ali came out dancing in his traditional "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" form. In the three years since he had been stripped of his titles and banned from the sport he had been able to recover much of the ringmanship on his toes he had lost since his 1967 professional ban. Still, he was older, heavier, and slower...as was Frazier. In hopes of making more contact with the relentlessly bobbing and weaving Frazier, he often employed a new punching style, flurries of a half-hook half-upper cuts coming from both sides. As in the first fight, Ali attempted to prevent Frazier from working inside, tying up the shorter man by holding him behind the neck with his left hand while keeping Frazier's vaunted left tied up with the other. This pattern of Ali punching in flurries followed by clinching, and stifling Frazier's advances and leaving him no room to throw his punches through neck-grabs and half-headlocks, dominated most of the fight, at times earning rounds of boos from fight fans. Explaining why he did not even warn Ali, referee
Tony Perez explained, "The only violation is if you [hold] and hit at the same time. Ali was holding but he wasn't hitting." Ali won a close but unanimous decision, with referee
Tony Perez scoring it 6–5–1, judge Tony Castellano 7–4–1, and judge Jack Gordon 8–4–0. ==Aftermath==