George Foreman from the 90s vs. Zhang Zhilei.

Exactly. I've conceded quite a bit in my posts and in fact the only thing i have promoted is that Foreman would have fought anyone he had to for that first title shot.

 

Beautiful.

 

Try and keep up.

 

was he OFFERED a title fight against either of those men WHILE they held said titles ?

 

People have argued he would have fought anyone for the title in 1991 but I see no reason his calculus would have changed just a year or two later. Maybe he simply had no interest in facing Bowe or Lewis.

Foreman was a big draw so money wouldn't have been an issue.

 

Despite their being, at the time, three major belts, title shots did not grow on trees. This was particularly the case when Comeback Foreman made his first attempt at regaining the Championship, because those belts were unified to form an Undisputed and Lineal Championship and only became split after Bowe trashed the WBC strap.

A defeated Foreman was unlikely to get a quick rematch against Holyfield and, even if Holyfield had retained the Championship against Bowe in Nov '92, it would have been some years before the opportunity arose again, if at all.

As it was, Holyfield remained the Undisputed and Lineal Champion for another year and a half. Then came the Bowe defeat and only then did the proximity of another title shot for Foreman potentially shorten.

From that point on, there was a period of two years (Nov '92 - Nov '94), before Foreman got his second shot at, this time, the Unified and Lineal Championship. So what happened during those two years?


Bowe, soon after his victory, trashed the WBC Belt, allowing Lewis to become de facto WBC champ.
(The question from this this point on is how realistic was it that either Bowe or Lewis would offer Foreman a shot?)

Newman, who would eventually become a pariah in boxing circles, was very clear about his mission to make as much money as possible for the easiest fights. True to his word and in record time (only a week after trashing the WBC belt) Bowe was lined up with Dokes. Following the Doke's pasting, inside a round, the Bowe camp honored a verbal agreement to fight Mercer (after his expected victory over Ferguson) by fighting Ferguson, Mercer's conqueror.

Newman would then have his hand forced into meeting the obligations of a Holyfield rematch clause. Then Bowe lost the Unified Titles to Holyfield in 'Nov '93, never to regain any of the major belts again. So, in effect, Foreman had had a year in which to get a fight with Bowe and Foreman was clearly not the Bowe team's first choice, while other competing interests superseded the desire for a Bowe/Foreman bout.

Meanwhile, Lewis was held to fighting his WBC Mandatory, Tucker, and soon after, his team had already mapped out a path via Bruno (a matter of domestic rivalry and his British image to clear up) and then Morrison who had, not long after Lewis' win over Tucker, taken a decision victory over Foreman. The Morrison/Foreman bout is significant, because the loss to Morrison had, in effect from June '93, ruled Foreman out of a contest with either Lewis or Bowe for the foreseeable future.

Nonetheless, for completeness, after the Foreman win, Morrison decided that a tune-up and some extra pocket money were in order, which turned out to be a disaster for him and ended any chance of a Lewis/Morrison Title fight. This shifted the focus of the Lewis team.

Lewis beat Bruno in Oct '93, soon after which Holyfield had come back into view because of his rematch victory over Bowe. Unlike Bowe and having regained the Championship, Holyfield wanted to correct the kink in history caused by Bowe's reneging on the deal to fight Lewis. However, he changed his mind and went after Moorer first, instead. Lewis was prepared to wait and focused on PR, while lining up a filler bout with Phil Jackson in the May of '94 - He would also need to face his Mandatory challenger, McCall before the intended clash with Holyfield took place.

However, Holyfield lost to Moorer in April '94 and Moorer, the new Unified & Lineal Champ, showed no immediate inclination to fight Lewis. Moreover, Lewis would lose to McCall in September of '94 and would not regain the title until Feb '97, the same year Foreman went into retirement for good.

Foreman had earlier gone into 'retirement' in '93, after losing the decision to Morrison, but had also put himself in the cross-hairs of Moorer (and more importantly, the Duva promotional team) due to his comments, following the Holyfield/Moorer bout in April '94 - stating that Holyfield had won that bout and more than implying that the decision was shady.

By end of May '94, Moorer's team were negotiating with Foreman for a provisional fight date in November the same year.


Therefore, all in all, there was very limited opportunity for Foreman to meet either Bowe or Lewis and, though Foreman's name was used here and there as a potential opponent by respective promotional teams (and particularly Bowe's), neither camp made hard attempts at any serious negotiations with Foreman (or at drawing him out of his 1993/94 retirement).


Whether or not people have expectations that Foreman should have sought out the toughest challenges at age 46, post-Moorer, is a matter of opinion. I personally do not have a massive gripe with him having decided to fight who he wanted, under whatever promotional banner he wanted, from '95 to '97.

What is clear to me is that claims about Foreman's second career are often glib and uneducated. The fight game can be a complex business, especially with a shifting Heavyweight landscape, such as it was from '92 to '97, but the sequences of events are there on record to review, thereby removing the need for much of the assumption that is made about the history.

 

You're leaving out one key fact and that is the world let out a massive sigh of relief that Foreman managed to go the distance vs Holyfield who through Bowe 1 was considered a juiced up cruiserweight in a one sided loss. At that point everyone hoped George would get out while ahead with a huge payday and go away .. at no point was there any outcry for a rematch nor did George make definitive moves to force his way into and earn another shot by beating any top men .. George was respected for what he accomplished but not taken remotely seriously moving forward as anything but an easy payday between serious fights. ... of course there were many moving parts but as a cross over superstar George could have used his drawing power to push for another shot by fighting top guys but that was never even considered .. by design he took a path of least resistance, fighting cherry picked fringe guys like Ellis, Stewart, Coetzer and then Morrison ... that was how he choose to spend his next two years , getting big paydays against marginal talents because of his charm and marketability and hoping an opening would surface which he ended up getting against another blown up fighter with a weak chin in Moorer .. this is not to diminish what Foreman did achieve which was amazing both in and out of the ring .. it was terrific but perspective is important as well when rating him.

 

Foreman was perceived as an easy opponent and I expect a fight with him would have likely been far more lucrative for Bowe and Lewis than fights with the likes of Dokes, Ferguson, Phil Jackson etc. The public certainly wasn't clamoring at all for Bowe and Lewis to face those guys.

Fighters frequently ignore mandatory challengers for more lucrative opportunities so I wouldn't expect that to be an issue

 

Right. So, you have a comprehension issue then, despite me spelling the history out for you? There's not much I can do about that, sorry.

Who was perceiving Foreman as an easy opponent?

The public clamor was of no concern to Newman. He was widely regarded as an utter **** and boxing people couldn't wait to wrestle control from Newman to see the back of him. Nor were public perceptions of too much of a worry to the Lewis team as they took a filler bout on the road to what they thought would be a unification fight with Evander.

Just because you wouldn't expect ignoring Mandatory Challengers to be an issue (and it always is in one way or another), doesn't mean doing so was appropriate for Lewis, at that time. Especially, since Lewis had only just been awarded the WBC Title off the back of him being a Mandatory Challenger who had been ignored.

 

Matchmaking is driven to a large degree at heavyweight by risk assessment and monetary concerns. The perception of Foreman as an easy opponent but one with name recognition who would make an opponent considerable money puts him in a great position to secure fights.

Fans know who he was and wanted to see him fight. Being a former heavyweight champion with wins over Frazier and Norton helped a lot.

By contrast someone like Corrie Sanders had no name recognition and didn't bring a lot of money to the table so there would have been little reason for the top guys to face him. That's not the case with someone like Foreman at all.

 

This^ post has problems on multiple levels, so much so that it is difficult to know where to start.

First, your "one key fact" is, in reality, just your opinion which I presume you would like to think of as a fact.


Second, it suffices to say that I did not feel duty-bound to accommodate YOUR opinion alongside the ACTUAL history which, I might add, remains unchanged, regardless of said opinion.


Third, is your statement that: "..at no point was there any outcry for a rematch [with Holyfield]".
I did not state that there was. I actually speculated something quite the opposite.

That said, the Holyfield/Foreman rematch was actually on, in principle, if only for a short while. But, realistically, the only fight that was being aimed at by then was Holyfield/Tyson, with Foreman playing his part as the potential disruptor to the bout.

Foreman's team even sued Holyfield's team for breach of contract. Foreman gave the money from the settlement to charity. So, Foreman was still in the mix, even if events didn't quite pan out as they might have, i.e. Tyson being sentenced to prison.


Fourth, the post you have responded to addressed the specific query of another poster, re the potential of a Foreman/Lewis or Foreman/Bowe fight. You seem to be completely oblivious as to what those "moving parts" you give cursory regard to actually mean in real terms.

Lewis and Bowe became Titleists at roughly the same time, by end of 1992. There was an expression of interest from both of them, re Foreman, in early '93, but even the hope of one of these match-ups coming off was contingent on the outcome of the Morrison bout.


Finally, is your seeming ambiguity in relation to Foreman's lack of credibility and the hope he would just "go away", post-Holyfield, which doesn’t quite jive with your insistence that Foreman could use his drawing power to get big fights - or, as you have put it previously in this thread: "Foreman could have fought any of them at any time he wanted but he didn't because he was too smart."

So, which is it? Was he, a) able to use his cross-over appeal to force fights with the top contenders or, b) was he "not taken remotely seriously moving forward"?

The answer is c) Neither - apropos of my previous point, re Morrison, above.

Foreman actually gained credibility from the Holyfield fight and his Ring-rating went from #10 to #6. However, as laid out in my previous post, it was the fight selections and scheduling of the major camps, and the various results which kept Foreman from either Bowe or Lewis. When Foreman faced Ring-Rated Tommy Morrison in attempt to increase his foothold, he lost. At which point he retired.

He ended up facing Moorer, because Moorer was the only guy who point-blank offered him the shot.

 

Theory.

And again, who was perceiving Foreman as an easy opponent?

So what? It takes more than the public's will to make a fight.

I have no idea what Corrie Sanders has to do with this discussion, comparatively or otherwise.

 

Wow, Man Machine and the Great JT have bossed the everloving f*ck out of this thread. It's been a pleasure to read.

Also, I don't mean to be childish, but neckless has been banned hahahahahaha.com #silly c*nt

 

Sensitive aren't you, LOL .. let's make it easy ... George fought thirty four (34) times in his comeback ... please list the four best fighters that were big punchers he fought in that thirty four fight comeback ..

 

Exactly .. hiding behind the alphabet excuses is crap ... the organizations were as crooked as the promoters .. George cherry picked who he would fight from the time he started his comeback ... Arum open talked about having to beg him to fight a live body on the USA network tour or he'd have to pull him from appearing ... George was extremely bright, knew his limitations and only took certain fights and any other rational is revisionism ..