Foreman in Zaire

Perry,
I find it interesting that you have Tunney as beating Foreman in Zaire but have to ask just how he manages to avoid those big shots seeing as George was so adept at cutting off the ring. Take into account the canvas, i would wager at some point in the opening rounds Foreman backs him into a corner and no way does Tunney take those shots the way Ali could.

 

Tunney was a master boxer. Name a great boxer Foreman beat? He fought two, Ali and Young, and both beat him going away. Tunney was superior to both Ali and Young. Actually very little chance Foreman beats Johnson, Tunney, Ali or Holmes at their best. Quite simply Foremans track record against great boxers is poor.

 

And I am a great Foreman fan by the way. I cheered for him in every one of his bouts I watched since 1972.

 

Frazier was a great boxer IMO.

 

Name one destructive monster Tunney fought that in anyway compares to George Foreman?
No way Tunney stays out the way for the first 6 rounds on that canvas.

 

Frazier was a puncher not a great boxer.

Dempsey was a ferocious puncher and a much sharper hitter than Foreman. The question is why would one expect Foreman to beat prime Tunney when he could not beat Ali or Young both of which were Tunneys inferior as a boxer.

 

The mob influence wasn't investigated for decades. You can infer anything you want by this same logic during that time.

If there's one thing that merits some credibility, then its that Liston used liniment to blind both Machen and Ali. There we at least have a former corner man of Liston, Pollino, who claimed as much.

Foreman had many excuses for losing the fight. I don't see why anyone should be taken seriously. What transpired in Zaire was quite like how he looked against Young, where he also gassed badly. Was he drugged by Gil Clancy as well?

 

It existed and was known to exist.
Some members of the press were exposing mob corruption all along. Some mob figures were at least officially barred from going to fights.

Even the existence of rival managers and rivals among the underworld serves as some sort of balance. Things got out. Boxing reach height of its popularity when racketeers were almost folk heroes anyway, so didn't attempt to hide themselves much at that point.

Mob-influenced boxing enterprise in America is simply not a comparable subject to a one-off mega-fight bought for by a military dictatorship in the heart of Africa.
Zaire was way off the boxing map, and that's just a fact.

Yes, you can, if you want. Go ahead, infer.
Not sure why that's important to this discussion though.

Lots of things have some credibility.
If you believe Pollino might have been crooked, then why dismiss the suggestion of Sadler being crooked ?

I'll have to watch the Young fight again. I thought he looked badly against Young from the beginning. Gil Clancy might be guilty of ruining Foreman's style.

 

So because the mob influence was a proven thing, unlike any Mbotu interference, it doesn't count? Jesus.

Pollino said that Liston instructed him to put liniment on his gloves. There is absolutely nothing of such substance to prove that Sadler did anything crooked - no witness whatsoever, nothing. We only have accusations that were later recanted and that also included loose ropes and a quick count by a many that met Jesus in the shower after his next loss. This is silly.

 

??? .... It counts if you want it to count.
You brought up mob influence. I've already said it's a completely different subject. Nothing to do with Foreman in Zaire.

My point is simple : Boxing in America isn't/wasn't perfect, we all know this. There was plenty of corruption. It is well-documented. If you want to talk individual fights and specifics of that era, that's a different subject, and you can start some threads.

My point further : Boxing in Zaire under a military dictatorship in 1974 - specifically a fight whose whole purpose of being staged was to promote dictatorship home and abroad - should be viewed suitably.
For me, there's something wrong with that.

Was Pollino ever proven to have said that ? I remember this being discussed before and missed the final proof of him saying it.
As for Sadler, I don't know. Most of Foreman's recollections about the man are consistent portrait of a shady, old school boxing character.
I can't say one way or another. I have my doubts but why be so adamant ?

The drugged water is the one thing Foreman keeps coming back to and even while saying he wouldn't have beat Ali anyway, he seems to believe someone drugged him.
A thing that does sometimes happen.

 

I haven't mentioned "Mobutu interference" in the fight. I haven't really thought about that.

 

It very much is. So why point out this fight as anything different? There were shady characters involved (Don King), the loser made unsubstantiated excuses. Since there have been shady characters and/or organisations involved throughout boxing history and losers often are full of excuses I see nothing special about this fight, apart from the fact that here were much, much, much more attention and focus on it than most other fights. Foreman blamed the referee, whoever was in charge of the ropes and his own trainer of conspiring against him with the whole world watching but without a shred of evidence - and then recanted, and then said "but still...". If that is to be taken seriously, everything is.

Pollino on the other hand is quoted on Boxrec as saying that he received direct instructions from Liston to put liniment on his gloves in the fight against Ali. Machen has complained against similar tactis used against him by Liston. This is not solid evidence either, but much more solid than any spiked bottle, loose ropes or crooked referee in Zaire. You're not going to believe this because you don't want to, not because of any rational thinking.

That's what I'm going to say about this. Rational, objective persons will probably agreee with me. Ali detractors and/or Foreman fans probably won't. I will have to live with that.

 

I pointed out an actual difference. The fact that this fight was held in Zaire (a boxing backwater, if that) as a propaganda stunt, Zaire under a military dictatorship, people held in cages under the stadium, biggest purse of all-time coming straight from Mobutu's robbing regime, etc. etc.
If that's not noteworthy in your eyes, then so be it.
Almost everyone else thought it was.

You can talk about attention and media focus on the fight but actually the foreign media didn't have the same access and freedoms in Kinshasa, Zaire as they would have had if in New York or London, they simply didn't have the knowledge of the area or the security to go on as normal. It was a stage-managed propaganda stunt in an undeveloped country under a dictatorship.

I don't care if Foreman was drugged or not. I just don't discount it as "impossible" or "fantasy", since it isn't even that far-fetched. You can interpret his motives for making contradictory statements several different ways.
In the absence of evidence, of course it's just a story.

The point is : Who was responsible for all the regulations and supervision of those aspects of the fight anyway ?
The Zaire boxng commission ? WBA and WBC representatives ?
It's not unreasonable to suspect everyone outside of Mobutu's regime was intimidated by the strange surroundings, and caught up in the big event. It wasn't a normal environment for anyone.
It's not unreasonable to suspect the local boxing commission didn't know what they were doing, and probably just a man in a suit from the regime.

That's it. I'm not making any allegations of Mobutu fixing the outcome or anything like that, simply pointing out this promotion probably was not even up to the ordinary low standards of supervision expected in boxing at that time.

Let's say I believe the whole story. It's not hard to believe for me. What difference does that make ?

At the very least it's an interesting story worth discussing. Perhaps on other threads though.

I really don't understand where you're coming from.
I merely mentioned the problem of Zaire and Mobutu .... and accepted the possibility of the drugged water and Dick Sadler, and you're going on about Liston, Pollino and telling me I wont beleive "because you don't want to".

I feel perhaps you've misunderstood something somewhere or read something into my posts on this thread that isn't there.

I don't see you making many positive points to agree with here. You're simply picking at others for merely questioning the integrity of something that happened in Zaire in 1974, or even of questioning things surrounding the event.

Mobutu detractors would probably agree with me.

 

No one knows if the real Ali was in the ring that night but it's not completely out of the question.

 

Of course he was in the ring. What are you saying ?