Old Foreman vs Wlad Klitschko

OK, let's roll with that.

Old Foreman was also much slower and less explosive than his younger self and he'd have a devil of a time landing anything on the much more mobile and bigger man in Wlad. I do indeed think that Wlad could run around and jab old man Foreman for 12 rounds without being caught by anything big, but the real question is how much punishment is old Foreman going to take as he shambles, sloth-like, after Wlad?

People forget this:

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Foreman fought Lou Savarese TEN years after he made his comeback. Its already been stated that Wlad could beat the version of Foreman who was pushing 50 years old.
The 88-92 Foreman was a different beast altogether and gets severely underrated. Had he fought some of the face first plodders from the K era , you would see exactly how dangerous he really was. Every guy that fought comeback Foreman had to adjust their movement and implement some type of hit n move game.

Alex Stewart gets mentioned a lot , but he was very lucky to have survived the opening rounds after being dropped hard twice. Those hards drops made him box off the backfoot for the rest of the fight.
Even prime Biggs knew he had to dance away from Foreman and he fought the oldest slowest version of Foreman that EVER stepped into the ring!!

How come Wlad couldn't 'batter' Peter first time out? Was Peter being shot to bits the key to Wlad being good enough to deliver the knockout?

Perhaps you should watch that rematch again , if you can stomach it , because you probably forgot that prior to the KO , Wlad was holding , clinching and mauling just as bad , if not worse than he was in the first fight.

This was against Peter who was way past his prime and had been utterly drubbed senseless by Vitali two years earlier. Wlad still couldn't perform against this body bag without crawling over his back after every jab he threw.
Even his own trainer was appalled by his behavior.

https://www.boxingnews24.com/2010/09/steward-was-telling-wladimir-to-stop-clinching-peter/

The only reason he 'battered' Peter in that rematch is because Peter was unconditioned , shot and had poor stamina.. Wlad made it worse by riding his back around the ring.
The very same Sam Peter was toy'd with and brutally knocked out by Robert Helenius who ever had to use a single clinch or illegal holding tactic.
Why is it Wlad couldn't outbox Peter (in BOTH fights) or keep him on the outside like Vitali and Helenius were able to manage with absolute ease? But he's going to keep Foreman on the outside no problem???? It doesn't add up and thats why those seasoned posters are putting up an argument for Foreman.

 

Cue Dino with his latest revisionist installment in his anti Klitscko crusade.

Peter was much faster and more explosive than old Foreman, and any study of the footage will prove this.

Briggs (not Biggs ) fought Foreman head-on as he always did and not "off the back foot" as Dino fancies. He was given the nod over Foreman. Yeah, I think it was a robbery too. Nevertheless, fact is that Briggs did enough for the judges to give him the nod and not have to run for their lives right afterwards. Wlad is levels above Briggs.

 

I do understand why it appears remarkable to think Foreman stands a good chance, here. However, early comeback Foreman - say - the 87-91 version was not all that far removed, age-wise, from a number of Wlad's championship opponents; many of them being mid-to-late 30s (Tony Thompson and Jean Marc Mormeck spring to mind as two of the oldest - with neither, of course, posing any realistic offensive threat).

The version of Foreman I'm looking at is an offensive threat and certainly more so than that of second-time-around Sam Peter, who'd by then taken an embarrassing drubbing at the hands of Vitali and lost to Eddie Chambers soon after that, before meeting Wlad again. The mythology of Peter's power, at this point was, to all intents and purposes, dispelled and the idea of him having a Puncher's Chance against Wlad was thin hope.

In order to think Comeback Foreman has no chance of winning, you have to believe that there is no version of him, from '87 onwards, who can get to Wlad. You also have to pretend that Wlad reacted well under fire (and I mean real fire; not the narrative form of potential that was built up for Sam Peter). One would also need to factor in how Foreman would deal with Wlad's incessant holding, which is how Wlad tended to deal with live threats. But, I think, in some ways, Foreman could capitalize, where others couldn't, on Wlad's 'open-arms-and-hug' method.

Believing Foreman can win is well within the realms of reasonable.

 

That is a good question but, for all Wlad's vaunted power, he generally dispatched his mediocre opposition in the latter half of the fight. The point being, he was a safety-first fighter and this placed a constraint on his power shot output.

I watched Wlad vs Ibragimov the other night. I suspect the fight was good for two things - curing constipation and putting one to sleep (I can vouch for the latter).

Wlad's jab looks very sharp to begin with, but it doesn't take too long for it to lose its sharpness or be dispensed with altogether, if someone actually attempts to fight Wlad.

Wlad is not some kind of impenetrable power punching machine. If people come to actually fight him then he can be beaten. If he's caught, it usually signifies the beginning of the end for Wlad. Peter is the only one, who couldn't finish Wlad off, after a modicum of success - but, in all honesty, this speaks to how poor Peter was rather than how well Wlad coped.

 

It

There is no question Foreman has a granit chin. He was only stopped once when he collapsed from exhaustion.
I am not denying Wlad would have success and pull ahead on points. It would just be difficult for Wlad to avoid Foreman's bombs for 12 rounds, due to his fragile chin and stamina. Foreman just has the ingredients to make this a tough fight for Wlad: the jab, stamina, power, granit chin, size and mental edge. This would prove in my opinion probably too much over the course of 12 rounds but of course nobody really knows.

 

See, we totally agree. I already wrote this:

A proper, prime version of Wlad would very simply stink the joint out for 9-10 rounds, technically dismantling Foreman from the outside with his longer, faster and better jab, using his incomparably faster footwork to keep out of any exchange whatsoever. He might well feed Foreman the occasional left hook off the jab for variety and right straight down the pipe to keep him honest. Very late in the fight if we're lucky he opens up and puts him out of his misery. Everybody cries out about the unfair mismatch and how Foreman had the heart of a lion.

I disagree. Guys that "come to fight him" usually end up tasting the right straight down the pipe and become much, much less ambitious after that. The Ross and Brewster losses were thanks almost entirely to an over-eager young Wlad trying to get two guys with iron chins out of there and blowing his wad in the process. That could possibly happen to a greener Wlad against old Foreman, I'm not ruling it out. Sanders is the only guy until Joshua that "came to fight" Wlad and had any success. But that's more due to Sanders' own freakish speed, power and accuracy, attributes that old Foreman absolutely does not have.

Peter caught him. Wach caught him. Pulev caught him. Joshua caught him. In none of those instances did Wlad just curl up and die. Even vs Sanders, he was still trying to get up after the 4th KD. Foreman simply doesn't have the speed of punch to catch him in the first place, nor the footwork and speed to close him off enough to force a meaningful exchange.

A young Foreman I'd actually give a reasonable chance of "catching" Wlad and finishng him. Young Foreman loses the jab and the ring IQ but gains faster feet and explosiveness, which would be far more useful against Wlad.

 

Old Foreman does not have the footwork to close him off. That's the first problem.

The second problem is that Wlad's jab is longer, harder and faster. Old Foreman's jab was really good, and a big part of what made him formidable. With the best of intentions, it's simply not as good as Wlad's. Take away old Foreman's jab and he's stuck with tools that are only useful in a close up slugging match - something that Wlad will avoid like the bubonic plague.

It's a routine fight for Wlad.

 

Hahaha - I'm not sure this constitutes a total agreement but it did, nonetheless, make me laugh.

I can't say I've ever seen Foreman deterred.

I can't agree with Wlad's loss to Brewster being bundled into the same bracket as his loss to Puritty. Wlad got tagged good and went into sleepwalk mode.

You mention Wach catching him but it wasn't a huge shot and Wach isn't blessed with massive power, either. Still, it totally changed the complexion of the round and Wlad's reaction was, as always, disorganized under fire. The bell, to a great degree helped him out of a scrappy situation.

Pulev, another one, who is not particularly noted for power, nudged Wlad with a Jab and he became disorientated. It would have been shocking for him to have lost on the strength of that moment in the first round, but luckily his hugging for dear life method bought him enough time to gather himself from the light tap.

When Joshua landed big, it signified the end of the bout, despite Wlad's valiant efforts to stay in it.

I have to stick with the premise that Wlad getting tagged (and by that I mean taking a solid shot from someone who could punch - like Foreman, old or not) tended to lead to him losing.

Wlad didn't have an immensely complex game-plan, going into his fights. Anyone with a will to win, who was tough enough to take some heavy firepower and who carried artillery of their own was bound to beat Wlad.

 

I guess we basically disagree on the amount of pressure old Foreman can bring to the party and the fragility of Wlad himself. That's OK. Good to exchange views anyway.

 

Its amazing some posters just don't understand the above.

 

That's pretty much what it boils down to and there's solid arguments on both sides of those points. Fine lines and room for a well-reasoned exchange, which this has been.

 

It's nearly 70%. 7 to 3 on the poll. I've noticed, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you're often on the minority side of scorecards.

For example, you think Canelo won both fights over GGG, and Ali beat Norton in the third fight. Did I misspeak? Didn't you also think Wilder vs fury was a draw?

I think some pro-Ali posters overrate Foreman. He was awful in the ruble of the jungle. I looked at some of his prime clips yesterday. He has great power, but he's slow a wind-up type, and not much on defense. His stamina reserve was low, and he made his name on past his best Frazier, and a Norton who didn't match well vs punchers at all. His chin was tested by Lyle, and it was cracked early. Glad hits harder than Lyle.

But how did he do vs. good boxers? Not so well. Ali easily was ahead prior to the stoppage, and he lost and was floored by a light punching Jimmy Young. The old Foreman struggled to outbox the likes of Shultz ( I think old Foreman lost that one ) and Saverese. Red flags waving, doesn't this say it all? . He could not even stop a fraud like Crawford Grimsley, and was badly out pointed by Tommy Morrison. The excuses for these four fights were what??!! He'd have little chance beating Wlad.

Blind patriotism or dislike of a fighter ( not saying you ) should never trump objecting reasoning..but it does sometimes in boxing.

 

Yet Peter was able to put him down three times with grazing wild shots. And Peter does not have a jab.