Old Foreman: never knocked down. Why?

Why? it's an easy call. Old Foreman was relaxed in the ring, he was comfortable and wasn't tensed up as he was when he was a young man trying to kill his opponent with every shot. He picked his spots to throw hard punches, Teddy Atlas explained it beautifully, " George would stand there and let a guy get close and throw a few arm punches nothing hard , and as Atlas say, nothing to worry about here I'm just an old man ,,and then BAM! His man was hurt.

 

No one has yet mentioned the key ingredient to the OP's question. BALANCE.

 

Determination. He had something to prove. When Ali knocked him down he sort of quit in a sense. Some of it was fatigue but he also didn't want any more. That bothered George for many years.

 

because he weighed 900 pounds and had the lord on his side

 

He fought some big punchers .. Morrison , Briggs, Cooper, Savarese, Moorer, Stewart and Cooney. Holyfield hit him with ten punch combinations ... George took a very good punch for sure and like what another poster said he learned to relax and roll with them much better than in the past .. when he fought Ali he collapsed from exhaustion and half quit mentally .. with Young it was a flash again when exhausted .. Lyle was a monster puncher , fought the fight of his life against Foreman in George's first post Zaire fight and George showed a ton of heart by outlasting him .. all that said, George was sharp enough not to dare fight Lewis or Bowe and lucky enough not to have had a Tyson fight materialize .. he did not go near a Tua, a Mercer or a Ruddock .. George was a very, very clever matchmaker ..

 

Ali went down against Henry cooper who didn't nearly have the punch Frazier or shavers did, overtime just like Ali foreman learned to roll with punches better, but George also learned to pace himself better, facing Ali he got hit aloft but more than anything tired himself out and went down more from that than from actual damage.

 

Foreman's size played a role imo. He was much bigger and he seemed more confident in his ability to take a punch. Standing still with a porous cross-armed guard against heavyweights shows confidence. He also kept his chin tucked unlike George Jr. Holyfield in '91 wasn't a big puncher. Morrison was the biggest puncher Foreman fought but Morrison came to box. Morrison chose to stick and move and didn't really load up on his shots. I do think Foreman had one of the best chins ever but he could still be hurt, even in the 90s.

 

He had hypertension and anxiety issues when he was younger. Just wanted to demolish the opponent and get it over with and often had bad pacing.

 

When he was older he was more relaxed and paid more attention to what his opponent was doing. In the 70s he was only concerned with how HE was going to hurt his opponent...not much at all about what THEY were trying to do to him. That mentality led to him overexerting himself and taking too many avoidable punches. In the 80s and 90s, he was much more relaxed and focused more on what was going on in the fight in general, not just what he was trying to do. It made him more defensively conscious of punches coming his way and he was able to better brace for what go through.

I don't think his chin got any better with age, it was more how he protected himself that got better.

 

Iron chin, iron will.

Plus he was so dangerous a puncher no one who had the power wanted to stand and trade with him.

 

Combination of a great chin, those huge arms to block punches, confidence, and patience.

 

Gerry Cooney wasn't a great fighter but one thing he could do was crack with his left hand. He caught George right on the button with that hook and Foreman did buckle for a second. He took it and kept pressing forward. Later George said that his leg was tingling from that punch. He almost got a short circuit.
I don't think Morrison ever came close to hitting Foreman that way. He was too busy retreating for the hills.