Gene Tunney Circa 1926 Versus George Foreman Circa 1994

I think Tunney could make himself elusive and busy enough to win a points decision against old man Foreman.

 

Dundee did not have the ropes loosened, that is a hoary old myth.
They had the wrong size ropes for the telephone booth-like ring.
Angelo was screaming for Ali to get off the ropes.
It was a high risk high reward strategy, requiring superbability to shift, absorb punches in areas & ways to minimize impact, & throw punches from a shell.

Ali was also brilliant starting with the discombobulating hard lead rights.
The psychological games & taunting.
And other things.

Tunney may have been faster of foot only than Zaire Ali, but I do not see him evading Foreman who was great at making the ring small.
WHich it was in AFrica, AND soft, bad & exhausting for movers.
When the weight is about 30 lbs. of pure functional muscle, compared to a man who would be a rehydrated LHW today, it makes a significant difference.

 

No, it isnt.

 

I confess I knew that already, since not only did Jeffries die in 1953...
Even with a paranoid conspiracy theory, "you" would need to be 148 years old!

 

No version of the super slow Foreman catches Tunney within five rounds. "Game, Set, Match!" right there. (Hell, we have an old and desperately obese 5'-5-1/2 Qawi winning rounds over Old Foreman.)

Gene would have analyzed youthful Foreman to death, unlike the far less smart Ali, circle in both directions, logistically, Tunney has been argued for by Steve Compton as having won 20 of 20 rounds over an aged and rusty but still much faster Dempsey, Foreman's tenth round stoppage win in Peralta II was dubious (to save George face), and Gene was far, FAR greater.

Ali said of himself, "I never said I was the smartest, just the greatest." Tunney WAS the smartest. We don't know how much better Gene would have gotten, but his career finale with Tom Heeney was his peak performance.

Ken Norton panicked when he realized, "This guy can hurt me!" But like Loughran (who would have looked like he was shadow boxing against any version of George) and Greb (the only man to ever defeat Tunney, indefatigable, and possibly the fastest boxer of all time), Tunney was legitimately fearless. (Incidentally, Norton was at his athletic peak when the 188 pound Garcia destroyed Kenny in 1970.)

1970's Foreman was strictly a five round knockdown threat. Beyond five rounds, Roberto Davila (weight 200. age 37), Levi Forte (who weighed 200 and after ten rounds had an exhausted George wrap his arms around him and gasp "No rematch! No rematch!," just like Apollo Creed in Rocky), the sub 200 pound former LHW Title challenger Peralta (who had the same height and weight as Tunney) 2X and the 5'9" Scrap Iron (who was stopped on cuts in seven but never floored) ALL reported how Foreman's power precipitously declined after five rounds. We do know that Gene was vastly more experienced and infinitely greater than everybody before Ali who extended George beyond five rounds combined.

Speed. We don't know that Ali was faster than Tunney, and if so, not by much. Gene was noted for body punching (as was Jimmy Young) and Foreman had a huge wide open body. Nor did George have any head defense to speak of against a master like that.

Martin Burke stood 6'3" and had a 79 inch reach, same height and reach as Foreman. Gene dispatched him in eight rounds. We also have footage and records of Dempsey reaching and destroying opponents with vastly superior stamina and experience of the same height and reach or greater than Foreman, showing that Tunney would have never had any difficulty reaching George.

The Championship Distance was never an issue for Gene.

"Power is good, but if you can't use it quickly, it's of no avail!" - Bruce Lee

Foreman would always be hitting air, then sucking wind as lactic acid buildup eradicated his muscle endurance (never an issue with Carnera, Willard, Jeffries or other title level giants of Championship Distance capacity).

How does George catch Tunney within five rounds? How does Foreman even score enough to win a single round on Gene? With the passing wind from all his missed punches? Sheer punching power when even Max Baer couldn't do it to the chin challenged Loughran? Tommy dominated the first five rounds over Carnera.

If Primo couldn't physically manhandle Tommy over the first five rounds, how's Foreman going to do it over the first five with the much stronger Tunney? We've all seen how a youthful George FAILED to do this in Peralta I. ("Yeah, but, but Foreman didn't have the experience yet!" Neither would he ever while in his 20's, and then largely on the strength of his two defeats where he proved with his second loss that he'd learned little from his first defeat.)

We see how even the first round between Carnera and Loughran is. The case can be made that Tommy won it. Gene Ward then reports Tommy as taking rounds two, three and four. Round five, Loughran remains elusive despite Primo cornering him at moments, then Tommy buckles the Italian Goliath with his best right of the fight. A case can be made for Loughran sweeping the first five on Primo, the point by which the much heavier and stronger Tunney would have to be stopped if 1970's George is going to punch him out. (And yes, Carnera was faster than Foreman.) According to Ward, "The tiring Loughran took rounds eight and ten, but the strong finishing Carnera grabbed the ninth and 11th." Primo takes a competitive 12th, but Tommy takes the 13th according to Ward, who is narrating the footage as if he may have watched all 15 rounds. Ward states Carnera taking the 14th as Loughran runs out of steam.

According to Gene Ward of The New York Daily News, Carnera-Loughran was far, far, far closer than 11-4 for Primo.

This is the most footage I've ever seen of Carnera-Loughran, and it has huge ramifications for 1970's Foreman against 1928 Tunney.

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Primo's ridiculous stamina and conditioning is the exact opposite of the complete absence of staying power 1970's Foreman totally lacked after only five rounds. Again, Gene's just as smart as Tommy, MUCH bigger and stronger, completely fearless like Loughran, and like Tommy, kept things in the middle of the ring. Unlike Carnera, George didn't wear ANYBODY down with attrition. We have footage of the sub 200 pound Goyo holding his position while forcing Foreman to move on him. George also admitted something we can see in the Kinshasa footage, that he simply could not compete in center ring with Ali. Tunney would be circling both right and left while both pumping that jab and belaboring Foreman's body as Jimmy Young did with his counters downstairs.

Frazier was totally fearless, but once George knocked him silly in Jamaica, Smoke kept running right back in. We saw in Dempsey II how Gene reacted in that same situation, and how Foreman completely wiped himself out when Young rolled with George's hook at the outset of round seven in San Juan. Scrutinizing that footage at 0.25 speed on YouTube, I've had NO doubt for years that Jimmy was playing possum. George didn't land a single clean blow in that round, then just before the end, stepped back and gasped a HUGE breath, knowing that he'd been had yet again, like he was in Kinshasa.

After Ali, he quit for two years, then for ten after San Juan. He just wasn't smart enough, didn't have enough stamina, didn't have enough speed, and he knew it. Gene would be boxing for a 15 round decision. It would be pretty lopsided in the Marine's favor.

I understand that Deontay Wilder has been 212 to 214 at 6'7" with considerable success during this heavily soaked PED era. Michael Spinks proved a damned good heavyweight just two bouts after weighing 170 pounds. We somehow remain yet trapped in this "Bigger is better!" brain lock. Tunney was a big enough HW over the Championship Distance, fast and smart enough to decision many subsequent HW Champions with the 15 round limit in place (which would cause many steroid soaked PED babies to gas). You can't beat what you can barely hit. Hitting Tunney required blinding speed. Foreman never had it.

 

Not sure what the worst part of this post is, but I think I'll take Ali being "far less smart" than Tunney, or better yet Tunney winning a round, in which he was knocked down, unstable, and by his own admission didn't know whether he would've survived Dempsey's follow up attack without the few extra precious seconds to recover.

Or maybe the laughable claim that the ref was in on the take and dubiously stopped Peralta-Foreman II to "save face" for Foreman, who was dominating and hadn't lost a single round that fight. Foreman had cornered him, and was wailing away on a literally helpless Peralta who was about to take an 8 count according to his corner. https://www.newspapers.com/article/oakland-tribune/130118862/

Peralta also had ZERO dispute with the stoppage (why would he? It saved his life) and even said, Foreman had gotten much better compared to their first bout (though he still didn't think Foreman was quite ready for Frazier nor Ali).

 

Swag already hit several glaring errors in your post, which I would like you to address.
About how the Paralta fight went, what he & his corner believed, & especially how you can find credible that Tunney won ever round against Dempsy in 2 fights, including even the long count round (Dempsey's fault for not following the neutral corner wule his corner insisted upon).

Swag I had not read that Tunney himself did not know if he could have made the count, he looked like he was waiting a la Bouster DOuglas to get up, you sure about that?

But Anubis back to my objections...
Ali himself said he was surprised by how fast Foreman was-& that was in a slft/slow ring.
He needed to implement his strategy to survive & win when seeing he would be exahsuted taking multiple steps to Foreman's only one.

Can you provide evidence of George "I don't want no rematch" Rocky-like comment?
Mainly though you say repeatedly Loughran is MUCH bigger & stronger than Tunney.
But check box rec: they are almost exactly the same size, both lean.
Tommy isiListed as half an inch shorter, & both moved up from LHW to the early 190's.
I mean their weights are almost identical!

How did you get to believe that Tunney was dramatically bigger?!?

 

Sorry, I meant Tunney knew he would've beaten the count regardless, but didn't know if he would've survived Dempsey's follow up attack without those precious seconds.

 

Thanks Swag! I did not know he admitted this; manfully honest.
I edited my post slightly, but it is funny that Tommy & Gene's weights tracked so closely. Except...
Loughran had

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more fights at least in the 180's. And Gene the lowest recorded weight.
SO for most of their careers Tunney was smaller.

I do not know how he could have been seen as much bigger.

 

It seems, just as many view Conn relative to Louis in their first fight, Peralta has perhaps often been overweighted as being symbolic of Foreman’s Achilles heel.

For one thing, as you already highlighted, Foreman was still in development for both Peralta fights - and George did that much better in the rematch, stopping Peralta.

For another thing, Peralta maybe somewhat underrated by many fans - and you perfectly outlined his record otherwise - not a lot of HWs but certainly some decent ones.

Gregorio was an excellent boxer and incredibly durable and willing.

Imo, one only needs to watch the actual fight to see how well Peralta performed and to know that the difficulties he presented were also very much about the quality fighter that Peralta was, aside from whatever deficiencies it peeled back re Foreman during the formative stage of his career.

 

How the hell could you possibly have recalled that from my entrance here 15 years ago, then my departure to another site 11 years ago? (And yes, I ABSOLUTELY should be permabanned for trolling, but that's ALWAYS been the case with me, slithery dinklike cretin that I've always been...)