Korchnoi's supposed statements of "no one could match up against Fischer," is not entirely true. I want to see the whole quote, verbatim, if you are going to use it in an argument. Otherwise it's trash.

If there were only a player at that time like Bronstein (out of form in '72 as he was), to show the world the fallacy of the unbeatable player.

The 1966 did feature some good games too e.g.
Spassky vs Petrosian, 1966, Petrosian vs Spassky, 1966 and Spassky vs Petrosian, 1969.

<And in the third, Fischer had an enormous time advantage to compensate for his inferior position on the board, so you can't really say he was lucky to save that one either.> How much time did Petrosian have left in the final position?

Hesam7: <iron maiden> On game 3 of Fischer-Petrosian match, I think Fischer was clearly inferior, his position has two weak points: First the damaged pawn structure on the king side and second Black's pawn majority on the queen side. I think with the correct play Petrosian should have won the game. My evaluation of the final position is:

Another point: In an old book I had different scores for that game [the draw was later something like move 36. I do not remember correctly] and it was stated that due to time trouble [For the last 10 moves Petrosian had less than 3 minutes and Fischer had half an hour, exactly as you said] Petrosian did not see the draw by repetition of position. He tried to avoid the repetition of moves but he repeated the same position 3 times.

All in all, before Korchnoi turned 50, he lost only two matches by more than 1-point margin: he had -3 in his 1968 candidates match with Spassky and -3 in his 1970 training match with Bronstein.

Comes to think of it, Korchnoy's joke may come closest to the truth: Given what happened to Taimanov after his 0:6 result in the quarter-finale, it would not suprise that the two semi-finalists were quite ambivalent about the prospect of advancing to face Fischer. They could have both view the alleged summon by authorities as actually a good opportunity to do some expectation management. After all, the repercussions for disgracing Soviet homeland in a crushing defeat by Fischer were sometimes draconian. Taimanov became a virtual road-kill. Later, Spassky went to the dog-house ...

Finally, Korchnoi may not have felt he could win, but Fischer would not have found complacency (ie Spassky, perhaps) nor fear (ie. other Soviets, it seems) in Korchnoi's game. His significant successes against Karpov speak more of Korchnoi's tenacity (perhaps unmatched by any other Russian of his day) than of Karpov's presumed vulnerability.

France?