Ali Ducking Foreman and Young?

He's since discredited his own book by saying it was just being a bitter **** in denial.

 

So if David Haye becomes Wlad's mandatory; then he's due a mandatory defence, says he'll fight him, retires, the comes back and defends against somebody else, what would you describe that as?

They weren't the mandatory contender. Foreman was. Ali only fought one mandatory in his 11 defences during his second reign (which was Frazier- who'd been made #1 becuase of Foreman's activity) something the likes of Conteh and Foster were stripped off...Spinks too when he didn't face the mandatory in his very first title defence.

It's not as if fighting to half-empty stadiums vs Bugner and Dunn made great commercial sense for Ali, the purse for a Foreman rematch would have been huge. It's ok looking back in hindsight at the Foreman-Young fight and dismissing it as something that would have happened anyway, but this is not what people believed in 1976. They thought George had a great chance of winning back the title.

 

He has since reaffirmed it. He goes back and forth depending on who he is talking to. He has never denied the rematch (Sadler) story.

 

Young and Shavers were not the former champion. Historically foreman deserved a rematch. He wanted one pushed for it hard. Beat top contenders to get a shot was told continually by ali he would get a shot....but it never occurred. plus he had three promoters pushing ali for that rematch and it still never occurred. Ali ducked the Foreman rematch.

 

I'd never heard about the Sadler story before reading about it on this site. I detect a slight aroma about it.

 

I reckon Ali would definitely have gone for a rematch in 1975. I've already mentioned the reasons why he never did after that point in time.

 

You comments don't hold water. George was yelling for a rematch late in 74.....few months after losing the championship. He yelled all through 75 and 76 and 77. He went to an Ali press conference and demanded a return bout and Alis response was....."one more fight.". Ali knew what he was going to get from both Frazier and Norton.....neither were going to knock him out. In Alis mind Frazier was dead meat....a shot fighter. Norton would be a tactical battle. Ali stated after his win over Foreman...he had me out several times. He just never knew it. Foreman did not land huge volumes of punches to Alis head but those that did had Ali on ***** street. Ali was the best at hiding when he was hurt...covering up, holding. He also recovered quickly. George's body punches were crunching....Ali peed blood for a week after that fight. Ali did not want to go through that again and that's why the rematch never happened. Three years he gave the likes of...Dunn, Wepner, Coopman, Evangilista, ....all nobodies titleshots. Why could not have one of them instead be against the former champion?

 

Frazier x3, Norton x3, Liston x2, Quarry x2,Patterson x2, Chuvalo x2 Foreman,Holmes, Lyle, Shavers, Young, Bonavena
Fought all comers from the early sixties to '80.

 

Absolutely but a rematch with the man he won the title from is missing.

 

You've never read Foreman's books. He's written about it twice.

 

After Wlad handily defeated Haye? I would describe that as Wlad not being interested and enjoying giving Haye the runaround. A key element to "ducking", IMO, is fear, concern and/or intimidation. And that's why I almost never use the term "ducking" to describe a failed rematch, especially a rematch to a relatively easy fight like Wlad-Haye....or Ali-Foreman. There are dozens of other reasons why a fight doesn't materialize that has nothing to do with fear. Money, politics, and ego are among them.

Which should tell you that being a mandatory alone isn't enough incentive for Ali to fight you. He started talking about retirement before the Foreman fight, and announced his retirement at the post-fight conference, though he changed his mind immediately after. When a fighter starts talking retirement, he's at the victory lap stage of his career and is almost always going to be selective in who he can get up and go to camp for.

And even THEN, he still fought all of the best fighters in the division at least once. Every last one of them. If I were Ali advisor, I would have also advised him not to fight Foreman again because he put on an absolute masterclass and had nothing more to gain. To this day, people look back on that as his greatest ever performance. Why muddy up a work of art like that with a rematch? Especially when you might retire after any given fight. Move on and have some fun with different challenges.

There isn't a fighter alive (or dead) who doesn't take on stay busy tune-ups fights. My biggest issue with this whole idea that Ali "ducked" Foreman was that Ali put on a masterclass with him. You don't "duck" a man you handily defeated to fight people who gave you absolute hell. That's just now how ducking works, lol.

Historically? Historically, Ali should have gone to Vietnam and put on a bunch of exhibitions to entertain the troops like all the great champions before him. Instead, he gave up his title and his freedom to make a point. You think the tradition of giving a titleholder an immediate rematch would move Ali to do anything other than exactly what he wants to do? Ali wasn't from the Robinson school of fighting guys 4-5 times. He gave up too many years, the division was too deep, and there wasn't enough time left in his career to fight endless rematches against anybody who gave him a tough fight, much less someone who didn't.

Historically, a person who wants to keep the pressure on the champion will do so IN the ring by immediately knocking off every other top challenger and showing that they've improved. They don't take off more than a year, and then come back showing the exact same flaws they had before against the guy the champion already knocked out with greater ease.

If Foreman was serious about wanting a rematch with Ali instead of just giving him lip service, he would have immediately gotten back in the ring and fought the likes of Lyle and Frazierbefore Ali knocked them both out, not after. He should have beaten Ali to the punch and fought Shavers and Young before Ali did. How is it a young, strong, desperate former champion was being beaten to the ring against the top contenders repeatedly by the old man? That was a HUGE tactical error, because all Foreman was doing was fighting the top challengers AFTER they were no longer the top challengers.

His post-Ali career consisted of beating two people Ali had just finished destroying, beating a bunch of nobodies, and then losing. Historically, that's not going to earn the challenger a title shot.

Again, a bitter Foreman can complain all he wants about lobbying for a rematch (like everybody else who wanted a payday against Ali) and not getting it, but Foreman should know better than anybody given his own history that opting not to fight someone isn't always a case of ducking.

The problem with many of these stories about how and why Ali ducked Foreman is that there are so many of them, and they often contradict each other through hearsay and often border on legend. There is what you've heard, and then there's the whole thing about Ali insisting on Foreman's trainer because, you know, Ali arranged to have Foreman drugged. All of these stories are one-way traffic from Foreman's camp and shadowy sources.

Boxing is a shady business with a lot of egos. The reality may have been that Foreman simply priced himself out of the rematch. The reality may have been that Foreman was giving the rematch lip service, but didn't really want the fight himself and that's why he remained so passive and inactive. The reality may be that the Foreman camp made serious tactical errors with whom they chose to put in the ring with Foreman. The reality may be that, as I've said before, that Ali beat him so decisively that he had no interest in a rematch and opted to seek out new challenges. The reality isn't always what Foreman and his camp said just because they said it. They went on a pretty vicious smear campaign for a number of years and Foreman only recently apologized for it.

I suspect that we could debate this endlessly and go nowhere, so I'll bow out of the discussion with my final thoughts on this topic. Given Ali's resume and his accomplishments, given the ease with which he defeated Foreman and given the extraordinary level of difficulty of his remaining fights (that he "ducked" Foreman to fight), there's simply no way Ali feared Foreman and went out of his way to avoiding fighting him again. No way.

 

Foreman actively pushed for a rematch with Ali. The thought that Ali avoided a rematch is not new news. This was the thought in boxing circles at that time from 75 to the day Foreman retired in 77. Everyone wanted to see the fight and Ali would have made just as much fighting George as he did Frazier or Norton. Ali had plenty of time to fight.....Dunn, Coopman, Wepner, Evangelista.....even a disgraceful boxer/wrestler bout! He had the time to fight these opponents but not the former champion? Foreman actually gatecrashed an Ali press conference to confront him concerning a title shot! You don't do something like that if you are not serious concerning a fight. If you watch interviews with Ali from that time invariably he is asked...when will you fight foreman? But here in 2013 black becomes white and white becomes black by those who were not there at that time.

 

A duck is a duck. I was around and active in the game at that time YOU were not. The talk of the hwt division was about a return match with Foreman. Thats why Ali was continually asked about the fight. The difference between Dempsey and Ali is.....Dempsey had no control over a fight with Wills...none. Ali had nothing in his way to make a fight with Foreman....nothing. Your prejudice against Dempsey shines through.