Could anyone out slug young Foreman?

Thanks for this man. Just a couple of points. You're using Chuvalo in comparison to Holmes? Chuvalo? Holy moly. Do you think Larry Holmes would take the same kind of beating in a brawl as a one dimensional one paced fighter like Chuvalo? Snipes? Snipes hurt Holmes, so what? Does that define him? He was only stopped once in all of his fights and that was by one of the quickest and most efficient hitting heavyweights ever. Using Snipes as a rod to beat Holmes with is like using Lyle to beat Foreman with. Holmes beat Snipes. He beat Shavers. And Formean beat Lyle after an up and down battle that showed his heart and his chin were top notch. Now, x beats y, so x must beat z doesn't work in boxing, but you seem determined to play this game. Would Holmes have that kind of up and down war with Ron Lyle? Maybe, but i don't think so.

Man, I enjoy shooting the breeze about real or imaginary boxing matches, but I enjoy doing so civilly. You have been anything but civil in your protestations, so I'm going to leave this one and politely agree to disagree. It's been an interesting discourse but I fear this conversation will only now go one way, so, allow me to wish you peace, love and happiness and hope you have a wonderful day. Px

 

Eddie Futch agrees with you. But, what would he know?

Eddie Futch, who trained the last man to beat Hagler (Willie Monroe, 1976), says, yes, it is possible for Leonard to beat Hagler. “Leonard has a chance if he can go the distance. He knows how to fight Hagler, to box him, counter him and give him angles. He should not elect to punch it out with Hagler.”

Duran gave Hagler trouble, Futch says, because Hagler overlooked his tremendous boxing skill. That is how Leonard must fight Hagler.

“But those five years of inactivity,” Futch insists, “that will be the major factor. Things are always a little different when you finally get into the ring. He’ll wonder why the things that worked in the ring aren’t quite on the money in the ring now. Suddenly, you can’t quite get out of the way of all those little punches.”

Futch agrees with almost everybody else that, “Five years ago, this had a chance to be a great fight. Leonard had a chance to outbox him, outspeed him. I don’t think that kind of speed exists today.”

 

Eddie Futch on Foreman - Tyson

"Mike Tyson cannot fight going backwards," said Futch. "Holyfield showed that. And George would have pushed him back."

 

Great quote JT. Thanks for providing same.

 

JT, not to be a pedant or pick sides here (as this thread is getting weirdly personal) but I would class this as sparring. For my money, match conditions include same size gloves on both men and no headgear. This is just paid rounds with a professional sparring partner imo. A 4 - 0 pro wouldn't be considered a good tune up in the pro ring even for a depreciated Leonard. There's no difference between this and Mayweather's 'doghouse' sparring imo.

This just sounds like another media exaggeration for the Leonard camp imo.

 

The question of whether it was cheating for Ray to have ‘secret fights’ (as you allege) is part of his prep for Hagler, so it is entirely within the real of what you dragged into a Foreman thread. You don’t get to pick and choose which aspects of something YOU introduced (off topic I might add) can be discussed.

They were not real fights. By any definition. To call them such is to post a fallacy, which is what you did. You dragged the topic into this thread out of left field. But now that you did, I’ll discuss any aspect of it that I choose to discuss.

As for which posters have called it cheating, I don’t take notes on who posts what. There are many threads on Leonard-Hagler and you can pick through them yourself if you want to find such posts. But they have been posted on this forum.

“Handicapped” sparring is common. Doesn’t make it a real fight. One of Leonard’s sparring partners for Hagler was a lightweight — which puts him at a handicap. Doesn’t make their sparring sessions real fights. In our gym (and in others I visited over the years), it was not uncommon for the coach to say ‘you just broke your left hand, you can’t use it, now go out and fight without it,’ or ‘you just got knocked down, you need to hold and move and survive for the next minute to clear your head.’ And similar things.

Those all handicap a fighter. They are done to simulate and prepare for what could happen in a real fight. That does not make these sparring sessions real fights.

Leonard undoubtedly did things in sparring to prepare him for his return to the ring after a long layoff. No one disputes that. But they weren’t ’secret fights.’ If Leonard said it felt like a fight, I’ve heard fighters say that after hard sparring sessions (especially when we would switch in a fresh guy every third round or so while the one guy went the full 10 or 12) came out saying it felt like a real fight (as far as toll on his body, how he had to be on point and focused for the entirety of it). None of those countless such sessions I was present for are on anyone’s record, nor does anyone regard them as actual fights, and there’s a reason for that — they weren’t real fights, secret or otherwise.

 

Yellow *clears throat* “Big James”

 

Something Jimmy Young, Peralta and Ali in one aspect succeeded with was to quote Uncle Jim “I’m gonna stay too far from him and too close” I think inside fighters like James, Louis, and Kabayal (spell) could get inside those looping long punches (rendering them harmless) and with the right ref beat the tar out of him heck Qawi showed us he could take his punches fine his power didn’t decease with age so throw him in to “stay too close” (don’t like his odds) but he’d be interesting to watch who is the best inside, smothering sort of HW there is? Marciano but he’s probably just too small IMO - I think later stages of Evander Holyfields career would be a no brainer Benton wanted him to execute such a plan and the ref made them (correctly) fight it out inside.

 

"Simulated fights" seems to be the wording it settled on. The media knew nothing about it until after the fight, so it's not like they used them for media hype. Leonard was the one actually put at the disadvantage via bigger gloves and no headgear.

Whatever it was, it was over and above anything Leonard had ever done before. It was done due to the feeling he needed to make up for lost time and inactivity. If Leonard had been doing such stuff in previous bouts then it's just more of the same.....but it wasn't. It was way different.

Quincy Taylor was just one of the regular sparring partners.

The point of it all is is ring rust tho. Do you believe sparring could fully compensate for not fighting for a large amount of time? Say double the amount of time you normally have between bouts?

 

Foreman is possibly the only boxer on the entire forum who gets penalized and criticized for getting off the floor to win a brutal slugfest. Posters ironically use that to build their case that he'd lose against others in a slugfest.

 

I'm not sure any of these people dismissing the psychological damage and ring rust Foreman had to overcome have ever needed to dig deep to achieve anything in terms of combat sports in their lives.

 

The point of all the ring rust talk wasn’t Leonard coming back to 100% after 3 years and aged / above his best weight and nearly shot but Foreman coming back after 1 year off in his literal prime… Leonard got put into the mix because Pug was saying Leonard used “secret fights” instead of sparring to come back lol when they were IMO hard spars but that’s also to a degree irrelevant because it isn’t 3 years it’s 1 year (technically like 6 months after he was last in the ring with a crowd) and that’s pretty common-ish now so it isn’t really a “comeback” or a “rusty fighter” Canelo and other modern guys have been employing hard sparring to get back to status quo fine, to get sharp in camp and learn a year off isn’t much it’s been proven and developing / arranging a keep busy fight for PPV stars and top modern pros like Canelo (Or Foreman today) would be a lot more difficult business wise, so evidentially hard sparring is enough at least for a guy fighting twice a year on average (sometimes once) and it should be enough for a former HW champion to be sparring to knock the ring rust off as it’s proven all the time today - do you really think the contained effort of fighting Jose Roman King again would be better prep for Lyle? or do you think it’s the camps before a fight where they do all the those hard rounds and learning that’s important? You could say Foreman didn’t train hard enough for Lyle and that’s why he looked bad, that’s a fair assessment maybe he wasn’t sparring much? But I don’t have that info, I assume a guy trying to get back into title contention would train hard and knock the rust off Lille many before and after him especially for his first fight after a loss my 0.2$.

 

Again, NO. I didn’t drag in Leonard vs Hagler.

I called in an extremely inactive Ray’s PREP for the Hagler fight, as it pertained to the question of RING RUST and offsetting same in whole or in some measure.

RING RUST was relevant in so far someone on this thread inexplicably trying to claim that Foreman didn’t suffer from same vs Lyle - in their unsupported attempt to suggest that it was still a best version of Foreman.

Perfectly on TOPIC.

From left field, you dragged in the question of Ray having been accused of cheating due to his mere inclusion of that prep. Completely OFF topic.

Right. So accusations of cheating via his prep are apparently contained in Hagler vs Leonard threads. Hardly relevant.

At any rate. I don’t recall ever reading that - I’ve only read claims that Ray cheated via his material specifications for the fight.

Certainly no one has mentioned any form of alleged cheating on this thread - why?, because it has nothing to do with the subject.

As to handicapping - I made it clear that Ray, as reported, was the one being handicapped against fully fledged MWs - which is what we’re talking about - and, as such, the fights were still very much real for Ray.

You’re referring to sparring that targets specific contingencies, strategies, honing of certain attributes, etc. - which also includes sparring partners being instructed to fight in a specific fashion in order to accomodate whatever the fighter is trying to work on.

Again, as reported, these were open fights under pointedly simulated, real fight conditions - clearly distinguished from the examples of sparring you have provided.

 

I mean not even im dismissing it - I’ve given a case that is founded in a bit of fact for Ring Rust and why I think he was “good to go” (some are suggesting he didn’t train but I don’t know about that) based on modern context and info on Ring Rust he was fine if he trained.

Ol George showed he wanted it bad in the ring and Lyle had just come off a great effort against Shavers and Ali so why wouldn’t he prepare? Ron Lyle was a powerful and mean heavy like he had never fought? It was his first fight after a loss he’d be especially motivated no? It was a very dangerous opponent.

as for GF’s psychological damage? I think plenty of fighters have lost their there title and kept trucking on to more success, I think that’s what George did after Ali he won fighter of the year didn’t he? Foreman might be mentally weak compared to those other champions? That’s a fair assessment given the info we have according to some but personally I give him the benefit of a doubt, no one who doesn’t want it gets off the canvas in the fight of there lives like George did against Lyle - Foreman clearly wanted to win that fight, didn’t look “mentally fried” to me he had then and always had an enormous fighting heart and will.

The Young fight is where he evidently mentally gave up (after the fact) even being outboxed and hurt he almost pulled the rabbit out of the hat and in doing so proved he had mid and late rounds power. Likely what happened is that was his shot at Ali again and it was slipping away due to IMO a tactical error - I can see why you’d say “**** it” at that point lol Young just outsmarted him, Foreman fought the wrong way.

 

Speaking from experience, if I miss even 2 weeks of training, I notice a slight dip in my coordination, timing, balance, and accuracy when I'm shadow boxing or sparring. Others I've trained with have expressed similar concerns. This is why boxers have tune ups in the first place and usually avoid jumping straight into big, high profile matches after a layoff.

I am not going to get into a big back and forth discussion on something I've witnessed with my own body's diminished reflexes/endurance after being out of the gym for a while. It's a fact. Unless Foreman was doing intense workouts and heavy sparring throughout that 14 month period, I have serious doubts he was just fine and his usual self with the same reflexes/timing etc. Not to mention the psychological damage of his first loss in a major globally televised event.