I don't get why people think a 70's Foreman beats a prime Tyson

You want me to buy Journeymen, who where knocking out other Journeymen in the beginning of their career, as being above avarage "punchers" in the division??? WTF is this!?!?

Do you want me to pull out the debut KO-ratios of Sammy Scaff, David Jaco and co. to sell them as punchers? Come on dude, what on earth is this?

Are there 5 bouts where George Foreman fought BONECRUSHER SMITH, RAZOR RUDDOCK or FRANK BRUNO kind opposition?
YES or NO?

 

You dont have to ko someone ranked #3 in the division to have punching power. Lamark clark knocked out 5 guys in one night but lost when he stepped up and fought an elte fighter. He quite obviously hit hard but didnt have the skills to make that power effective against elite fighters.

The point of the list is to show that foremans management wasnt simply filtering through the division to find light punchers and completely unskilled weaklings. Idk where this idea came from, but it has to stop. For crying out loud, foreman picked a prime 6'4 heavy hitting shannon briggs as his last opponent when he was 50 years old and showed no fear and went right at him.

So to address your first point, yes, if a professional fighter is

-active
-not cherry picking and fighting rated fighters
-has more than 25+ fights
-yet manages to have a ko% over 60%

Then they obviously hit hard. Theres levels to it obviously, im not saying david jaco, scaff, etc are comparable to david tua or lison, but they could quite obviously bang.

And foreman fought SEVERAL of these guys (with a flat footed stance and leaky defense, little head movement, etc) yet somehow never was floored until he met Ali, arguably the greatest hw of all time. What does that tell you?

And its very telling that he continued to face big punchers like cooper, cooney, stewart, etc as a fat old man and shook off their punches like they were bb gun pellets. What does that tell you?

-You never addressed what i said about james smith hugging tyson for 90% of the fight and not opening up till the last round, how is that evidence tyson could take a shot?

-you didnt address bruno being terrified and clinching, rabbit punching, and barely throwing power punches. Are you denying this? Youre acting like this was some vicious war where tyson was tagged and blasted in the face repeatedly by vicious shots from bruno when that was never the case in either fight.

-address the fact ruddock was one of the only big punching bonafide heavyweights tyson faced who wasnt scared of him, had sloppy skills and was essentially a no defense having, low ring iq 1 dimensional left armed fighter, yet he managed to go all 12 with tyson and tyson had to foul a dozen times to pull off a decision win?

-and i repeat: how the hell is tysons chin better when he was stopped FIVE TIMES and foreman was stopped only ONCE due to exhaustion? The only guy who KOed tyson who had power on foremans level was lennox lewis!

 

This is what the conclusion is about. Foreman did fight two elite power punchers, Lyle and Morrison. I don´t buy Briggs, due to the Wilson scenario one year prior. Tyson fought 5 times, period. And no, opponents came to fight as well, as good as they could. Smith tied him up? Wasn´t that bad either for him, right? He made it the distance, while Tyson avoided his shots.

I don´t know what the other mass of text has to do with that. Foreman knocked out by Ali is as IRRELEVANT as Tyson knocked out by Buster, it has nothing to do with the ability of both to fare with elite punchers! As has Zomby-Tyson knocked out three times at the end of his career. And no, Foreman wasn´t that shot, as well as i see him falling against Lewis as well.

I give Foreman the edge vs Holyfield in that chin comparison. But in detail, Holyfield broke Tyson down. He did with good movement, ring IQ and counter-tactics, not with power in general!

THIS IS ABOUT A DETAIL COMPARISON VS ELITE PUNCHERS ONLY, NOT JABBERS OR BOXERS BREAKING DOWN BOTH FOREMAN AND TYSON OR GETTING BATTERED BY YOUNG.

Foreman just did NOT better, or is better proven against elite punchers, in general the 70s Foreman. The Lyle Fight tells books about Foremans lack of defense vs bombs.

I just wanted to compare both vs ELITE PUNCHERS, did you get that? And as I said before: I give George a little edge in chin department, and alot less edge in the department of avoiding bombs, mostly due to his lack of defense and reflexes. Tyson on the other hand fought Elite punchers five times and looked very well.

 

The fact Smith threw one significant punch in the entire fight against Tyson aside, could you please explain to me why you consider Smith to be an "Elite Puncher"?

It's easy to avoid shots that aren't being thrown.

I don't know what you mean by the term "Elite Puncher" and you don't seem to want to take into account the performances of the Boxers in question, during the fights themselves. At the same time, you're determining who can and can't be considered whatever constitutes an elite puncher. This is quite a blatantly cherry-picked argument, made up as you go along, to serve your point of view.

If all you're content with is names on a page, listing Boxers you think are big punchers, who fought Tyson and Foreman respectively, then you can't really dismiss Briggs and a number of other of Foreman's opponents, already mentioned.

 

Check Frank Brunos KO/WIN-Ratio!

We both know that Smith had heavy hands. Don´t you think he threw anything in 12 rounds?
By elite (power) puncher, I actually mean big heavy bangers.

What are we doing here? We want to put 70s Foreman and Tyson into a fantasy duell. By doing so, can we check if they did actually fight someone, who is COMPARABLE to both Tyson and Foreman in therms of power? We are looking for fighters, who they actually fought, who have most in common with them. In fact, be able to put both away in a Foreman/Tyson fashion. Holyfield did not. Ali did not. Young did not. Douglas did not. Forget about MCBride and Williams. Nor did Zouski, Jaco, Moorer, Stewart or Cooney at that point. I´m not sure about that Briggs.
I was searching for fighters, who share the ability to bomb both Foreman and Tyson away, just like they would do to each other. I found 5 fighters: Smith, Bruno, Ruddock, Morrison and Lyle. Then I compare what actually happened: Both got tagged (of course, they were HUGE bangers), but Tyson did just better.

In defense for Foreman I have to say that n = 2 is not that much, and you can give him the benefit of the doubt. Then again he looked horrible vs Lyle...

I think i have precised that. The Tyson-Frazier comparison is just pure nonsense. Lately, I think Foreman-Tyson very well aligned here, where just 5 years prior 8/10 were parroting: This will be a Frazier-Foreman copy. Which eligible just makes no sense.

 

Difference is Foreman looked bad against Lyle yet still won, when Tyson looked bad he mainly got KTFO!!!

 

Right before the Tillis fight where Holyfield weighed 202 lbs he was benching 185 for an unknown amount of reps. That's not strong by weight training standards at all for his weight/ being an athlete. During that same clip he was using less than 25 lbs for seated shoulder presses and a rather low weight for someone of his muscularity on the lat pulldown machine. In a clip from probably 20 years later he's using about 155 for bent over rows for sets of approximately 6 reps.

Now I'm not saying he absolutely couldn't hold a cow that probably weighs close to 1000 lbs on his shoulders but I'd be a lot more confident in someone who could lift more than a novice weight trainer.

 

Yea sure, crawling over the canvas before winning, is a huge improvement regarding a performance
Now I´ve seen everything...

 

Oh - "heavy bangers" - now I get you... ... ...

You need to rewatch the Tyson/Smith bout. It was awful. You can put it up as an example of Tyson facing one of these "heavy bangers", if you like. I'd have to reject that as folly.

The press dumped on the fight and even Tyson was appalled by Smith's performance.

This is why I pointed out that you appear not to want to look at the actual fights; the performances of the Boxers in those "showings". Like I said: It's easy to avoid shots that aren't being thrown.

If you want to include Smith amongst your "Elite Punchers" that Tyson faced then we should be including anyone we think could dig a bit. Where's the method for defining consistent criteria, here?

Again, as I've suggested before, this only works if we accept your definition of what constitutes an "Elite Puncher" and ignore what actually happened in the bouts themselves; how the "bangers" performed.

I'm not certain about what some of the above means. However, I am sure you are happy with the way you have angled your overall pitch, here. I wouldn't be. I think that, even if the basis for your selection of "Elite Punchers" were a precise science, it still couldn't support, on its own, a speculation on what Foreman/Tyson would look like.

As previously hinted at, you somehow think you can calculate meaningful stats, from which you can make statements of measurement. You give the edge on chin to Foreman but think Tyson did better against "punchers". Even if the dubious criteria you have used did somehow, miraculously generate some reliable measurements - in terms of "punchers" - what then would their value be, when we all know he got paneled by non-punchers?

I happen to think Foreman/Tyson would be similar to Foreman/Frazier - not exactly - but, analogous in many ways. You clearly, won't agree with that and I don't think we will find any middle ground, either.

In which case, I think it's probably best we agree to disagree.

 

@Man_Machine: I´m okay with that. I have precised the boxer vs. puncher comparison, they are distinct for me.
I know the Bonecrusher fight. Tyson rushing in, Bonecrusher throwing wide heavy punches, missed most of them, clinched Tyson, who got the better of the exchanges. What does it tell us? Tyson avoiding crude heavy blows, until one time in the 12th. Of course, Foreman put better punches together. However, there are four more bouts Tyson fought.

And again, i did in no way make Tyson a favourite, just remind what both of them happened versus bangers. It also shows the Frazier-Antonyme.

 

Let's just get something cleared up. Smith in no way was trying to win the Tyson fight. He literally avoided confrontation the entire night with clinching and constantly walking away from Tyson. It's really a sad fight to watch. Tyson was the only one doing any work in there. Smith never threw a meaningful punch over the 12 rounds. This fight simply cannot be used as evidence of Tyson's good defense, chin, or anything.