George Foreman '73 Vs Tyson '88

Its mind games dude

 

It's gay too.

Mind games maybe, but what's Ruddock supposed to think ? .... "this guy wants to kiss me ! ****, I better devise a strategy to avoid his homosexual advances .... "

was there anything behind Tyson's calling Ruddock "a transvestite" or was that just something he fanatasised about ?

 

Tyson was just messing around. He had a group of people around him sitting with sunglasses and he was messing with Ruddock and pissing him off. Actually it was kind of funny. I remember Ruddock saying something like look at you sitting there with sunglasses on thinking your a hit man or something and Tyson said keep talking big boy Im going to make you kiss me with those big lips.

 

That's part of the appeal. :smoke

at least if youre also a short, short-armed guy. :tong

He's boxing's Barry Sanders or Pedro Martinez.

 

i'd prefer foreman however i think tyson would win. great head movement, and fast.

 

Berbick had a good, positive start in the fight. He came to prove a point, and it's only until he starting shipping some big punches did he go on the retreat and forget about winning.
It was probably a mistake going after Tyson, but at least he gave it a shot.
I sometimes think the old 'everyone was scared to death of Tyson' line has been overemphasised at times.

Anyway, regarding the pushing and the supposed superhuman strength George possessed...again I think it's overplayed.

He did push Frazier back occasionally, but it wasn't the reason he won. I watched this one last night, and it's interesting to sit down and analyse the fight.

In my opinion, George blew out Frazier because of two things:

1) He didn't respect Frazier's power at all.

Frazier actually didn't start too badly. He nailed George with a flush hook just moments into the fight, and landed some jabs and even a right hand. He nailed George with at least three clean, flush hooks in the fight.

Problem is, these hooks had no effect on George whatsoever. He just walked right through Frazier.
Joe was always going to struggle against a guy he could not hurt, especially a guy who could definitely hurt him.

2) Frazier displayed zero survival instincts.

Joe did nothing to try and tie Foreman up at any point in the fight. It's actually frightening that he made no attempt to grab George and try and catch a break.
He didn't clinch, and he didn't back off. He literally stood right in front of Foreman and ducked into one uppercut after another. It was target practice for big George.
No wonder the fight only lasted two rounds.

Maybe, just maybe, had Frazier shown a degree of self-preservation and had known how to tie George up enough, he could have weathered the onslaught.
But Joe was in deep trouble the moment his punches had no effect on Foreman.

To come back to all this pushing George is going to do to Tyson, I can't really fathom how this makes a big impact, if at all.
George did push Frazier back occasionally, but one thing I noticed is that it didn't really alter the dynamic of the fight in any way.

The way some posters talk, you'd think that George would push and shove Tyson from pillar to post with considerable ease, with Tyson being hurled backward into the ropes or the corner like a child.
Mike was a very powerful guy himself, and I just don't see this physical mismatch (strength-wise) that some seem to think it will be.

No doubt '73 George was a very powerful man, but was he any more powerful than say, Razor Ruddock at 238 or Frank Bruno at 247? If anyone wants to make a case for it, then be my guest.
My guess is, he wasn't.

Now oddly enough, I do think '90's George has a much better chance than '70's George of putting Tyson on the back foot. He weighed around 260 lbs, was probably physically stronger than his '70's self, and had considerably tightened his defensive skills.
The only place once could really hit him was high on the head or to the body, and all the while he'd walk you down, landing those big, clubbing shots.
In some respects, he was a better fighter than the '70's version.

 

Pushing Tyson's left shoulder twists his torso. Gil Clancy did a real good job of demonstrating this prior to the Lewis/Tyson fight and explained that Lennox could employ that strategy against Mike as well. He didn't, but could have.

What the twisting of the torso does is to make Tyson move his feet to reset himself. There is a BBC set of boxing specials called my greatest fight. In it, Foreman describes the strategy and tactics for that Frazier fight. It was that shoulder and take a half step back. Simple. What Joe did next--as would Mike--was to walk in after re-setting his feet. And that's when the hooks and uppercuts caught him coming in.

 

Pushing Tyson's left shoulder twists his torso. Gil Clancy did a real good job of demonstrating this prior to the Lewis/Tyson fight and explained that Lennox could employ that strategy against Mike as well. He didn't, but could have.

What the twisting of the torso does is to make Tyson move his feet to reset himself. There is a BBC set of boxing specials called my greatest fight. In it, Foreman describes the strategy and tactics for that Frazier fight. It was that shoulder and take a half step back. Simple. What Joe did next--as would Mike--was to walk in after re-setting his feet. And that's when the hooks and uppercuts caught him coming in. Load up because the opponent is moving in after getting shoved or jabbed to that shoulder. But everything was based on moving that shoulder and twisting that torso and then a half step.

Foreman used some other smart tactics with Norton and he really was hardly a big guy winging away. He only did that stuff after successfully manouvering a guy where he wanted them to be.

 

Good post. Interesting stuff.
I've always imagined that's how the fight would go down. Foreman always had his arms at that sort of catching/blocking position and gets his man at ths shoulders and pushes or spins him. That's what Foreman seemed to do with just about anyone.
And Tyson was kind of made to order for that, coming in up out of his bobbing sort of square on. Foreman would be all out to manhandle him.

I think the styles suit Foreman very well indeed.

 

Tyson v Ruddock 11 revisited.

 

Foreman was physically lighter than Tyson and pretty comparable in size to a lot of the guys Tyson fought in 88-89. The guys he fought post 90 were some 20 pounds heavier. Foreman wasnt pushing Holyfield around in the 90's either.

The idea that a 217 pound Foreman would push Tyson around and beat him up is just laughable. Tyson was stronger than some of you think. Foreman at 250 plus is a different animal, but by that time his handspeed and timing was that of a sloth.

 

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FIXED - to what you would of said if it was Early 1996. :thumbsup


Foreman Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooook!:smoke

 

That was 96 not 88 dummy

 

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formans legs look like twiglets!