George Foreman , overrated ?

mcvey · May 30, 2018

GordonGarner65 said: ↑

And THAT is the point I've been making.
For that I'm a troll/ hater etc !
I'm STILL.waiting for someone to list me all his great wins ? They just can't do it.
Frazier . Yes a rather strange looking version of the man who was Frazier ( maybe the lifestyle he was living post fotc) he didn't look as fit as he had been ?
Norton Terrified, backed up in straight lines.
Yes these wins look great on paper , no doubt.
Lyle , good name of his CV , no doubt, but Lyle was good , no more than that and the style of win was hardly impressive. Courageous yes.
Moorer . Outboxed all night before landing a big right hand. Credit for doing it at that age. Nobody was great because they beat Moorer, but credit all the same.
But that's it.
Tyson gets alot of digs for a short prime but he defended his title 9 times. Foreman prime wasn't very long.
He was embarrassed by what was seen at the time as old Ali and basically re hashed the performance later against Young when still around his prime.Then quit.
Lennox gets digs for his losses in his prime but should an ATG in his prime have lost to Jimmy Young ? Has an ATG in his prime ever been so schooled in a title defence ( Zaire) ? Has an ATG ever had so few notable wins ?
THATS my point.
Terrific fighter and historical figure YES
hugely overrated YES
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Want to list Frazier's great wins?

mcvey · May 30, 2018

Cojimar 1946 said: ↑

Cooney, Coetzer, Saverese etc were not ranked in the top 10. In his entire career Foreman appears to have only beat 5 guys ranked in the top 10. His only world-class wins are Chuvalo, Frazier, Norton, Lyle, and Moorer. Lewis beat 12 guys in the top 10 more than twice as many as Foreman. Lewis, Holyfied and Wladimir Klitschko for example have much deeper resumes.

Foreman (Chuvalo, Frazier, Norton, Lyle, Moorer) vs vs Lewis (Ruddock, Tucker, Bruno, Mercer, McCall, Akinwande, Golota, Holyfield, Grant, Tua, Rahman, Klitschko)
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Roman was in the top ten when Foreman defended against him.

GordonGarner65 · May 30, 2018

choklab said: ↑

I think Foreman is a great fighter.

Knocking out Frazier and Norton made Foreman great at that moment because they were sensational results. There was nobody better at that time since both guys had just beat Ali. It’s right up there with Max Baer knocking out Schmeling and Carnera in back to back fights. Ingo knocking out Machen and Floyd in back to back fights. And Liston knocking out Patterson twice in back to back fights. At the time there was nothing better a fighter could do than scoring those results that emphatically.

There is no real shame in losing to Ali of course, muhammad was after all a very special fighter (a top two of all time) but it went against the natural order of things when George was knocked out by him. It was not supposed to happen.

This should have been the George Foreman era and it was not. Instead Ali proved to be a particularly weak champion in Foreman’s place.

George had already knocked out the guys who beat Ali. In this respect it is like Ingo losing to Floyd, Baer losing to Braddock and Liston losing to Ali. Upsets like you would not believe. Nothing you could forecast.

So then we have the Lyle and Young fights and the early retirement and the low all time ranking for George that went with that for the next ten years.

Then as half the man, Old Foreman relaunched himself. This time around George benefited from novelty value, knowing his own physical limitations, having the experience of having done everything before and still being a very strong man. George was a very wise old man this time who understood the business and he used all of that to navigate himself into the most sensational result in the history of boxing. Which is absolutely incredible. When nobody initially took his comeback seriously this was some feat, a feat of greatness. I accept and appreciate this.

What this isn’t of course is conformation that Foreman established himself as the best heavyweight in the world. In order to do this he had to have beaten Riddick Bowe, Lennox Lewis or Evander Holyfeild. Beating Moorer, who may have been the undisputed champion, Is like Joe Louis beating only Jimmy Braddock without beating all those ex champions or Max Schmeling. Had Joe only done that he would have had a lot to prove at that time. But then I accept Joe Louis was not forty four years old.

Perhaps the equivalent might be old Jack Dempsey going ahead of Joe Louis in beating jimmy Braddock for the title on his comeback having avoided Baer, Schmeling, pastor, Retzlaf and Tommy Farr. then Dempsey taking the title on the road, defending only against Jack Roper and Johnny Paycheck.

Folks might still marvel that Dempsey won the championship back after all those years but nobody would be under any illusions about who the best fighter in the world Really was.
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That's a damn good post.

GordonGarner65 · May 30, 2018

mcvey said: ↑

Want to list Frazier's great wins?
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What's the relevance of that question ?

mcvey · May 30, 2018

GordonGarner65 said: ↑

What's the relevance of that question ?
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Some body picking apart Foreman for the implied paucity of his great wins ?

Sting like a bean · May 30, 2018

mcvey said: ↑

Roman was in the top ten when Foreman defended against him.
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I'm kind of surprised to here that, Because George damn near killed him. It was like he was fighting a mannequin.

Sting like a bean · May 30, 2018

Sangria said: ↑

Not gonna lie...scouring these boxing forums and finding ridiculous comments about Foreman has made me less of a fan of his.

Although I still favor Foreman over most fighters, I used to love the guy. Not anymore. And I wanted to see Tyson-Foreman in 1990 more than Tyson-Holyfield and even Bowe-Lewis. Why? Because both were my favorite heavyweight fighters of all time.

My argument: George Foreman is the most overrated heavyweight of all time.
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An argument links a chain of premises, each firmly supporting the next, which lead stepwise to a conclusion.
An isolated conclusion is most definitively not an argument.

JohnThomas1 · May 30, 2018

Bump

GordonGarner65 · May 30, 2018

Sting like a bean said: ↑

I'm kind of surprised to here that, Because George damn near killed him. It was like he was fighting a mannequin.
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Maybe that era didn't have the depth that some would have us believe , outside of the obvious 4 or 5 or so.

GordonGarner65 · May 30, 2018

mcvey said: ↑

Some body picking apart Foreman for the implied paucity of his great wins ?
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Still don't see the relevance.
Frazier is pretty fairly rated on here.No less or more than he should .
Whereas George....

choklab · May 30, 2018

mcvey said: ↑

Roman was in the top ten when Foreman defended against him.
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how?

JohnThomas1 · May 30, 2018

GordonGarner65 said: ↑

Maybe that era didn't have the depth that some would have us believe , outside of the obvious 4 or 5 or so.
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What heavyweight era's would you like to nominate as being strong from 6-10?

Cojimar 1946 · May 30, 2018

If Foreman wanted to be an ATG he had to beat Ali.

GordonGarner65 · May 30, 2018

Fergy said: ↑

Oh come on ..yes he had his fault's, just as Johnson, Dempsey, Marciano and yes . Muhammad Ali did.But he's a massive part of heavyweight boxing history. Take out Foreman from the 70 s and to a degree the 90 s and we lose a lot. He played a great role in the history of boxing .The smashing of Frazier and Norton .Ali coming back to beat him. The war with Lyle .The strange fight and goings on with Young. The crazy comeback in his 40 s .Going the distance with Holyfield,knocking out Moorer to win back the lineal belt 20/years after losing it !!.
Foreman ,for all his fault's is a living part of history .Not sure how can be critical over that .
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And I'm not !

GordonGarner65 · May 30, 2018

JohnThomas1 said: ↑

What heavyweight era's would you like to nominate as being strong from 6-10?
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Other eras had better guys than him in the top 10 surely

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