Foreman vs Frazier 1...Different outcome??

Possibly not. It was like Joe himself even said, that it was always going to be a bad matchup for him. However, the one tactic used by Foreman that gave him the greatest physical advantage over Joe was what was practiced extensively in training, and that was to push Joe off when he got close. This tactic put Joe at a complete disadvantage and kept him on the end of George's bombs. If you could gripe about anything it was Mercante allowing this or it was Yank Durham not causing enough of a fuss about this. Pushing is illegal, but only if the culprit is warned by the ref. Having said that, even if Yank had bitched at Mercante after the first round, it wouldn't have mattered. The damage had already been done.

 

He was never winning this.

 

No, he was never beating Foreman.

 

Baseball bat? Crowbar?

Anything that he might have done differently would have required him to become a totally different fighter imho.

 

Yes. What Joe could have done different was make George earn his #1 rating and fight an eliminator with #2 Ali rather than fight all the dead bodies who George did fight in 1972 that had not won fights since the 1950s. Terry Sorrell, Clarence Boone, Joe Murphy Gordwin.

Either that or make himself 18 months younger. Two good eyes would help too.

 

No. Frazier never beats Foreman under any circumstances, unless George isn't allowed to use his arms.

Then it's pick-em........

 

If Foreman had to get past Ali in 1972 to get to Frazier (like he should have)...There would be no Foreman v Frazier.

 

Joe considered Foreman just to be an overated tune-up...a step above Terry Daniels & Ron Stander. And the Champ has the option to take tune-ups...as long as he gets his mandatory in on time. Post-fight #1, Frazier said "George hits a ton". Post-fight #2, Frazier said: "George hits a ton". Frazier was a class act who never made excuses if he lost.

 

Frazier was used to beating larger men, but Foreman just wasn't big, he was strong for even his size.

 

This assumes the same outcome as we saw in 1974. That's not a completely safe assumption. It's probably true that Ali would have been too smart and experienced for Foreman anyway in 1972 as well, but I think that a big factor leading to the result we saw in Zaire was Foreman's overconfidence, borne mostly (one would assume) from the overwhelming victories over the likes of Frazier and Norton. In 1972, he didn't have that success to get drunk from.

Conversely, Ali hadn't yet had his debacles with Norton, which forged him into the type of fighter he became by 1974. At least in part because of those trials and tribulations, he had to become something different and redefine himself in a way that hadn't occurred to him yet in 1972.

Put another way, they were both in different places with different stories when one compares 1972 with 1974. Not really an apples-to-apples thing.

 

I used to laugh back in the 70's when George used to say: "I wasn't even the toughest guy in Houston's 5th Ward...there was this really big, tough guy who used to kick everybody's bass".

 

Lol. That's Texas for you.