Washington, October 31 : Two Kent State University sociology professors have likened U. S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s debating style to the technique boxing legend Muhammed Ali relied on during his matches.

Drs. Will Kalkhoff and Stanford W. Gregory Jr. say that Obama demonstrates a “rope-a-dope” debating style, which is similar to the way Ali would hang back during the beginning of a fight until his opponent exhausted himself, and then would dominate the end of the match, winning most of his contests with this style.

The researchers came to this conclusion after studying nonverbal cues in the voice of Obama and his Republican counterpart John McCain during all the three presidential debates, which enabled them to see which candidate showed dominance at what point of time.

They observed that during the first and middle third of the debates, McCain showed dominance in the lower, nonverbal frequencies of his voice, while Obama finished each debate more strongly than did the former.

Kalkhoff and Gregory agree that their findings require additional study to substantiate their conclusiveness.

Their study has been published online in the peer-reviewed journal Current Research In Social Psychology. (ANI)