George Foreman Says He Was Drugged Before Ali Fight

You know my stance on this matter. :bart

 

you hate heavyweights like i hate clowns. which is a lot

 

:deal

 

'Tis true.

 

Zaire loved Ali and they wanted him to win. Could they have done something to George? Perhaps.

BUT,Foreman would have KO'd anyone else that night except Ali.

The heat couldnt have helped him either. It was just his time to lose.

 

That was after the Jimmy Young fight.

Foreman made the drugged water claim as recently as 2007, in his book.

Other claims he has made about that fight and his trainer Dick Saddler:


Saddler pushed Foreman, between rounds, to keep swinging- to not let up. Foreman claims this was out of character for Saddler. Saddler had always coached him to pace himself and not get in a hurry.


When Foreman was knocked down he started to get up around the two count. Saddler screamed at him to stay down until he told him to get up. He never did.


After the fight, Foreman fired Saddler and Saddler immediately went to work for Ali.


Both Ali and his manager Herbert Muhammad refused Foreman a rematch unless Foreman hired Saddler to train him.



Foreman has said in interviews that this stuff is just a bunch of excuses, but he always ends it by saying "but it IS true".


I don't know if any of it's true or not. I'd give it about 50/50. Anything the young Don King was involved in could have been crooked.

 

He must have been drugged because we wouldn't hear Foremanism's like this:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCzuKIT9Jjk[/ame]

 

Foreman says in an interview in 'The Life and Times of Muhammad Ali' by Thomas Hauser (1991) that as a constant winner, he didn't know how to lose with dignity; and so he came up with all sorts of excuses after his loss to Ali. Including that he was drugged. In the Hauser book, Foreman mocks his younger, excuse-making-self by saying: "Yeah - I was drugged alright - I got a big dose of that Ali right."

He did say that he could have gotten up after the knockdown, but looked to his corner as a fighter is trained to do, and the signal to rise didn't come in time. However, he admitted that he was very tired, and that in all probability Ali would still have beaten him even if he'd beaten the count.

Unfortunately, he's changed his story quite a few of times over the years, which damages his credibility as a witness.

 

Actually, he's told pretty much the same story all along.

Where the change comes in is that he will say it is all excuses, but then he'll be sure to add that it is true.

I think he genuinely wants to let bygones be bygones. Life's been good to him.
At the same time that fight keeps eating at him and he wants the story out. He tries to balance the two sides.

 

That's not the impression I got at all from reading the same book Chaney references here. Foreman clearly debunks the "drugged" myth in Houser's book.

 

Just plain crap. You can find Foreman saying all sorts of things through the years. However during his comeback he was on several of the local sports radio shows in the NY area. He was asked about this and said frankly that he was searching for a reason why he lost to Ali when he made that statement. He laughed and said the reality was that Ali was hitting him cleanly for many rounds and it was just so much he could take with a 215 pound hwt hitting him round after round.

 

He's repeated it as the truth as late as his 2007 book.

 

Another myth surrounding this fight was that Foreman was not counted out. Indeed he was counted out. The confusion is that the announcer for the fight were several counts slow as the ref was counting over George. So it looks as if the ref reaches 8 and waves the fight off. Of course this was not the case...Foreman just missed the count as his gloves left the canvas.