George Foreman , overrated ?

Hopkins

 

Sound like you're suffering from a touch of paranoia.

Of course it matters !
Different folks mean different things by the term.
You've been bandying the term around for a while, so I just wanted to know how you defined an ATG heavyweight.

Fair enough.

Mike fits my idea of an ATG as well.

George, however, was as feared as Mike in his time. His wins over Frazier and Norton are better than anything Mike has on his resume. And Mike never had to deal with the GOAT.

And 42 year old George gave 29 year old Holyfield a much better fight than 30 year old Tyson gave the 35 year old version of Holy.

Lennox and George share 3/4 on my all-time list. No question about his ATG status.
But again, if we want to make comparisons to Foreman, one was sparked twice in his prime by journeymen while the other was only ever stopped by the GOAT, and even then, mostly due to exhaustion.

Well yes, I think it's safe to put what a majority of fans consider the GOAT as an ATG.

Oh...

Getting beaten convincingly on four occasions removes your ATG credentials ?

Then we need to rethink Iron Mike who was KTFO on five occasions.

As someone has already stated, it depens who is doing the rating. Like most other champions, some overrate him and some underrate him.

Few would dispute his ATG status.

 

No layoff!

 

Ok, but Foreman didn't just jump into world class opponents. He fought a double digit number of stiffs in the late 80s.

 

Return 4Man used have bum fights every month. He blew through 9 bodies in 1988. One of them a very decent fighter Dwight Quawi.

HWs of today would need 4 months prep for a guy like Quawi and then 6 months down time. Foreman mangled him and had another fight in that same month.
Part of what contributed to his greatness was the suckiness of the calibre of HWs that came after him.

He would have dealt with Vitali's 4 year bum run in just 12 months for example. Not that Vitali sucked as bad as his little brother. He was the exception during that era until Tyson Fury and AJ came along.

 

??? Where did that happen ?

I notice you didn't refute any of my points on Foreman vis-a-vis Tyson.

He doesn't. You've been on here for three months. I can tell you that over the life of the forum, every ATG has had the same treatment as you gave George in your OP. And most of them (Tyson, Ali, Louis, Lewis etc) several times.

All of the greats have their fans.

And their disparagers.

Ali and Young, you can count, and be regarded as reasonable.

Holy came at age 43 for George, when every other top 100 HW had long-since retired.

And Morrison ? George was almost 50 !


Compare like to like.

In his prime, he was never sparked once, much less twice by a single punch from a journeyman.

By 74, he was already a feared HW champion with a dominant string of KOs including a top ten and a top twenty.
The fact that he hd a second career after a ten year lay-off, that took him back to the top, is nothing short of amazing.


The feat has no parallels in the history of HW boxing !

We don't have any points of comparison to judge whether or not it was a great achievement on account of there not being too many HW boxers who retired and then came back at age 38, after a ten year layoff, and boxed competitively at the highest levels, re-winning the linear world HW championship title.

It's a category of ONE.

And my point should be clear by now.

The reason I asked you for your definition of ATG was that there would be little point in making a case for George being an ATG if it turned out that you only regarded perhaps the top five ever HWs to be worthy of the description.


Given that there have been tens of thousands of professional HW boxers, I would count the top twenty at a minimum, as being ATGs in the division.

 

Agree. I also don't believe that he got lucky. He set the man up and took everything that came his way for 9 plus rounds.

 

I think he was also wearing moorer down and the last punch just finished him, he was actually hitting moorer throughout the fight. foreman had a strange kind of power especially in the comeback where his opponents would see his shots coming but they would almost universally react badly to them as if they hadn't even sparred in preperation and were taking punches in the ring for the first time for months. almost all of his opponents would shy away from his punches as if his gloves had acid lining. the man was a real freak of nature. bullying big young guys like savarese and briggs around. Holyfield went and brawled with bowe, jumping in with lead rights even though he was getting countered with the right uppercut everytime, exchanging punches with the much bigger an. but had no desire to do so vs foreman except for a few combinations

 

George was unusual. For an all time great he never really hit the bar of dependability like some other ATG champions. His first career George had so few competitive fights that once he actually got a competative fight he didn't know what to do in it! We can blame that on his talent but it is also the truth.

And in that career, he never recovered from that first loss.

People will say if you take the best two wins away from anyone's career it's the same because it reduces any fighters worth but in that first career George had, if you take away Norton and Frazier there is nothing at all that could have forecast those two wins. Nothing. It left George too ill prepared for a guy who was going to hit him back. And you can't say that about anyone else.

This is the problem I have when a fighters best win is a blow out. On paper it is great. It demonstrates dominance but what is overlooked in an early blow out is the fact one guy never got going. It ends up being a bag workout with nothing coming back.

If you take away the one round blowouts of Max Schmeling and Buddy Baer, Joe Louis still has the Billy Conn, Arturo Godoy, Galento, Nova fights.

If you take away Tysons Spinks and Berbick wins he still has Biggs, Bruno, Ruddock and Tucker.

If you take away blowing out Sonny Liston and Walcott, Marciano and Ali still have careers worth talking about.

In the heavyweight division one punch can mean the better guy loses. I am not saying Norton and Frazier are fluke wins at all. But by having that power George did bypass a necessary level he did not meet in 1972 when he fought the absolute worst bunch of opponents ANY challenger met prior to a world title shot. Check out Terry Sorrel!

So when that career ended George went down as a wasted talent. an extremely talented kid who showed two times that he was capable of stunning early wins over elite men but who like Max Baer had not fulfilled his potential. He was not regarded as an ATG. Not one bit.

This is exactly why his comeback was seen as some kind of joke like circus. A comedy-even up until the Holyfield fight. He even had the whole "I eat burgers" Schtik going on. After the Holyfield fight he was still only a kind of part time celebrity boxer.

The one win that made him look a real contender was beating Pierre Coetzer because he emulated the exact result that Bowe and Bruno inflicted on him. But that was it until the Moorer surprise.

That surprise win, together with the remarkable longevity made George unique. It means he won't be forgotten. It doesn't mean he was an ATG that can be counted on against other ATG champions since everything he did was somewhat of a surprise. Also his route in both careers was extremely selective.

 

*Tumbleweed*

 

Truly elite wins of Louis, Marciano and Holmes compared to Foreman beating Frazier?

It is true, When George beat Frazier he beat the guy who was unquestionably the best heavyweight in the world.

But this is true of ingemar Johansson as well.


*Tumbleweed*

 

Firstly the question wasn't for you, but that matters not.

Secondly are you seriously comparing that to Foreman axing Frazier? Good grief. Not to mention Foreman backing it up with Norton.

The fact of the matter is the others don't have anything to match Foreman's win, which was of course over a reigning ATG. Foreman backed it up with a total destruction of a guy who as a lesser version gave Larry a tremendous tussle.

The fact is Foreman's devastation of Frazier is above anything the other greats achieved when it comes to wins.

You can overrate Foreman, but gee you'd be heaping enormous praise on him to do so.

 

Ingemar Johansson also destroyed Eddie Machen. In fact Machen and Patterson were regarded the best two heavyweights in the world at that time. Ingo beat them back to back about as emphatically as possible. It is exactly the same as Foreman beating Frazier and Norton in emphatic style. Frazier and Norton were the best two heavyweights on paper at that time. George equalled Ingo when he blasted them out. Do you think, in his first career, George then surpassed Ingo by losing to Ali?