Re-evaluating George Foreman

It's justifiable to consider him lower in the rankings, but the fact he had effectively two careers, separated by a 10-year retirement, and did great things in both, anchors him, by my reckoning, to the central region of the Top-10.

 

I thought he was a great fighter, but he had a lot of weaknesses. In both careers he could be outmaneuvered and outboxed. His first career was great, but when he had pressure he lost to Ali.. Although Lyle is a great fight and showed heart. The second career he had 3 shots at the title and one the last one against a very weak chinned Moorer. I would put him top 15.. I cannot see how he would be top 10. He had many defensive flaws. His defense was his offense.

 

His wins over Norton and Frazier can only be matched by a couple of Heavies, Frazier was better than Moorer was when each fighter lost to George in their respective eras. Norton fought well v Ali and Moorer never proved himself at that level though old George did well to KO him I feel his first title reign is vastly underestimated, Ali was brilliant v George, both fighters showed great glove control in the epic in Zaire, George wasn`t just a slugger at all.

 

I can see why many might say he's overrated. We can also view him as an Olympian, and a guy we'd pick H2H over almost anyone. I'm big on Sonny Liston too though, so maybe I just have a bias towards that type.

 

All Boxers have weaknesses. Foreman's only cost him 5 losses in 81 contests.

3 of those losses came when he was in his 40s; one of those suffered in his prime was to Ali; the other to a Top-5 ranked Heavyweight. I don't think his weaknesses show up on his record with particularly greater significance than any other candidate's with Top-10 ATG potential.

Ali didn't apply pressure on Foreman. In fact, he did just the opposite, by soaking up Foreman's pressure and then turning the tables in one, quite sudden attack.

Foreman having three shots at the World Title, in his second career is not a negative. By norms, he had no business competing at the world level, anyway. As it happens his losing effort against Holyfield was what I would call a high quality loss and in losing to Morrison for a vacant title, fate had probably handed him a favor, because Moorer was undefeated and the lineal champ, whilst Foreman was 45 by then and given no hope. That victory, in those circumstances, seals his second career, as a great one.

Using one's offense as defense is a perfectly legitimate tactic and not something that, in itself, can be considered a credible mark against any fighter, who garnered the type of success that Foreman did.

 

Foreman is Top 10 without question.

A large part of that rests on the strengths of 2 victories; the dethroning of the undefeated Joe Frazier and the dethroning of the unbeaten Micheal Moorer at the age of 45 both of which was for the Heavyweight Championship. Other notable wins, including knockout wins over Ken Norton and Ron Lyle which add a solid boost to his resume.

1. Joe Frazier 2X
2. Ken Norton
3. Micheal Moorer
4. Ron Lyle
5. Axel Shulz
6. Adilson Rodrigues
7. Alex Stewart
8. Lou Savarese
9. Gerry Cooney
10. Bert Cooper
11. Dwight Muhammad Qawi
12. Joe King Roman
13. George Chuvalo
14. Chuck Wepner
15. Gregorio Peralta

These are the TOP 15 names on Foreman's resume; more than half of them are from his 2nd career where they were carefully hand picked opponents suggesting that his first career alone would be insufficient to get him into the TOP 10.

His notable losses to Ali and Young were unavenged. While his 2nd career losses to Holyfield, Morrison and Briggs are typically glossed over understandably due to his age (and to a large extent his persona) at the time of the fights. He never fought Quarry, Shavers, Holmes (70s or 90s), Bowe or Tyson. I won't fault him for not fighting Lewis because had he beaten Briggs he would have fought Lewis next.

The difficulty of assessing Foreman is understanding that his second career is not judged the same way you judge most fighters; it's judged more delicately given the anomaly of the situation, sort of like grading on a curve. You can't really fault a 40+ year old fighter for dropping a decision to the Heavyweight Champion almost half his age, but you can certainly reward him for knocking one out. Double Standard? Yes. But not many fighters have the ability or longevity to compete competitively against top flight Heavyweight Champions half their age. I suppose it's the boxing equivalent of a 'senior citizen discount'.

Overall I can't find any justifiable reason to put him in the Top 5 ATG Heavyweight list because he never actually cleaned out the division at any point of his Championship reign in either career. While he accumulated a respectable 9-4 record in title fights (if you include the NABF and WBO) and put together some signature victories, his resume lacks serious depth. I have him at #8 above (9) Frazier and (10) Holyfield.

 

Excellent summary.

 

Just get a room.

 

So who exactly have you recently bumped above him? I don’t mean to sound glib but all of the ATG heavyweights are overrated to some extent.

 

Well, it's very hard to rank any of the mini-heavyweights such as Marciano, Louis, Frazier or Dempsey higher than Foreman...

I have him right around the 6 spot..

And I don't rank solely based on ring accomplishments....I also rank by who I think would beat who in a real fight.

I would say at least the 70s Foreman could give most of the HW top 10 a good run for their money, probably knocking out many of today's big heavies...

And I give 90s foreman more credit than just the moorer victory...his losses to Holyfield and Morrison showed he could still get in and tangle with big hitters who had significant age advantes over him

 

I think your initial post is symptomatic of a bigger issue with the Heavyweight division in general. While it's always been the blue ribband division in terms of prestige and money, I think the Heavies, generally, haven't been as good as their smaller counterparts. If you put up a top ten list at 175, 160, 147 or 135 in particular (hell, maybe even 126), you'll find that most of the names you're playing with tick most of the boxes in terms of what you'd look for in an all-time great. On the other hand, outside of Ali and Louis, just about every Heavyweight champion has been decidedly underwhelming in particular aspects (be it longevity, how they'd fare head-to-head, how acceptable some of their losses were, the opponents they beat etc.). We're talking about Foreman here, but you could swap him for any of Johnson, Jeffries, Tyson, Lewis, Holmes, Dempsey etc. and the parameters wouldn't be all that different. Hence why a top ten Heavy list can vary wildly from poster to poster and often look pretty random and arbitrary once you get past Ali and Louis.

For what it's worth, I generally have Foreman somewhere around the number six mark. Yes, he had the size and style advantage over Frazier, but absolutely annihilating an unbeaten, legitimately all-time great Heavyweight champion who still had something left in the tank (even if slightly past his peak) is an accolade that no other Heavyweight legend can boast. The Ali loss, despite it's surprising nature, is of course forgivable, and while the Young loss is a blotch on his copybook, you have to keep in mind that he's in and around several other Heavies who had far more ignominious defeats (particularly Lewis against Rahman and Tyson against Douglas).

You could argue that a few other heavy-handed old timers could have emulated what Foreman did against Moorer, sure. But the point is, Foreman actually did do it. Moorer might have been the only lineal champion of the nineties who could have conspired to lose in such a way to George, but at the end of the day he'd earned that lineal title with a wonderful achievement of his own, taking Evander's scalp (Holy's heart issues notwithstanding). Can't blame Foreman for that - Moorer was the main to beat in 1994, and that's what he did. You can question whether or not a fighter can gain much credit for a loss, but I think it's fair to say at the very least that Foreman's failures against Holyfield and Morrison don't cost him any points. And let's be real - he beat Briggs, albeit it's debatable whether that'd be worth much praise in any case.

Like I said, with such a short championship record, you'd struggle to make the top half-dozen or even a top ten in some of the other classic divisions, but as Heavyweights go I couldn't imagine leaving Foreman out. I guess the indomitable aura he had in his wins over Frazier and Norton play a part; I'd imagine that for most people, he scores well on the hypothetical head-to-heads, particularly against smaller Heavies or ones with slightly questionable whiskers.

 

Jel, despite my great respect and high regard for you as a poster, I must disagree as to George Foreman's worth as a fighter and as a champion.... he is, I can say without fear of contradiction, a H2H monster...a major threat to the champions of any and all eras,....and if he wasn't so unfortunate in his prime era, the 70's,...to have two boxing wizards,....of course Ali and Jimmy Young,...who were uniquely disposed to finessing him and having the "stuff" to take what he had to dish out,...he would have ruled till '78, or whenever Larry Holmes would have been ready to take him on.....and I'm still not too sure of who wins that one. The young Foreman would have marched right through the Wlad Klitschkos, the John Ruiz's, Roy Jones Jr (he wouldn't have signed to fight young Foreman), Holyfield, Bowe, Chris Byrd (no Jimmy Young was he) YGF would have decapitated, President Ike would gave crumbled, forget about Tommy Morrison, Ray Mercer,...I'm also not too sure of Vitali Klitschko, but of them all, if anyone would have beaten Foreman, it would have been Lennox Lewis. There, now take your best shots at me.

 

A top post. Good work. The problem with Foreman is he likely lost the matches to Shcultz and Stewart, so two of his top 7 wins are questionable.

He did very well vs. smaller men who did take a good punch. I think Frazier and Ali fans tend to over rate him a little. His come back win over Moorer however was one special moment for boxing.