Could anyone out slug young Foreman?

Great quote JT. Thanks for providing same.

 

No need to even reach for Lyle; young Foreman also got dropped by Young, and KO'd by Ali. A significant proportion of the fights young Foreman had against contenders put him on the canvas. The same can't really be said of Holmes.

EDIT: To elaborate, Holmes got dropped by Shavers once out of two fights. Isaac, Snipes, and Weaver also apparently dropped him. (Though the ref didn't count Weaver, so maybe not.) Tyson stopped Old Man Holmes. Butterbean "knocked down" Even Older Man Holmes en route to losing. Meanwhile, young Foreman, who did not fight as many ranked guys, got KO'd by Ali-- a solid but unexceptional puncher -- bang in the middle of Foreman's prime, got dropped by another non-puncher, and also dropped in his only shootout with a fellow puncher his own size.

 

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.

 

Well that’s your personal experience (with respect you’re not an established long time pro - Or are you? Not being cute, it wouldn’t be surprising we have a few pros etc) I’ve got my own personal sources one including a world champion fighter (believe me or not, doesn’t matter to me) and I didn’t plan on getting into a “back and forth” it can be done it’s a fact, it has been done before and Foreman’s case against Lyle would rest on whether you think he trained hard in camp to knock the rust off which I think he did but that’s as far as it can go methinks without having further info. But anyways we can be part ways on this topic like gentleman cheers GCC.

 

You try minimize Foreman/Ali/Liston/70's heavyweights at every single opportunity. It's bizarre. Here it is again in your very first sentence. Foreman's actual time off was a bees prong shy of 15 months. Prior to that Foreman had been fighting every 7 months or so. We are talking double the amount of time off that he had been taking. Post Lyle and pre Frazier he'd been extremely busy.

Not being acknowledged is that not only was he coming off double the layoff, but he was coming back against a top 5 heavyweight after a knockout loss. Taking on a top 5 contender when you are coming off a knockout loss is plain stupid. I think it was you claiming Lyle was selected to make him look good. That's utterly ridiculous. Knocked out fighters don't have extended layoffs then come straight back vs top 5 contenders to look good.

The whole Leonard thing has triggered into stupidity. Pugman mentioned Leonard's unique type prep to highlight that ring rust is real. There's simply no argument to be made against it no matter how disingenuous one gets. It's bizarre. The entire sidebar of whether one calls Leonard's whatever they were fights, simulated fights, sparring or whatever is totally irrelevant. The fact that they strived beyond their normal scope because they were worried about his lack of real fights stands for itself and is a valid piece of evidence in Pugmans case.

Pug has already explained to you that the guys that fight far less today vs Foreman's era are not disadvantaged because their opponents are similar or the same. The moderns have no doubt structured their training and tactics around the modern schedule. Was Foreman fighting once a year?

The bolded shows you opining that because Leonard was "in the ring with a crowd" that period can't be claimed as out of the ring/inactive? You've argued endlessly that Leonards "simulated fights" are just sparring and count for nothing yet here you are claiming Leonard going some sparring rounds for the crowd virtually counts as a fight per ring rust?

Foreman looked bad for all the reasons already given to you. You are clutching at straws and every straw just happens to be a negative one.

Foreman had around double the size or worse layoff that he had ever had as a pro excepting for one easy fight.
Foreman was coming off a knockout loss.
Foreman was coming off a knockout loss against a top 5 heavyweight.
Foreman was a mental midget, losing his aura of invincibility against Ali did his head in. The evidence is countless.
Lyle was a dangerous heavyweight against any guy standing in front of him and exchanging.
Lyle could come back for dark places on the mat and come back to win.
Foreman was transitioning into a more conservative style.

All of these factors contributed to a back and forth war.

Bottom line - With numerous factors against him Foreman showed he could come back from the depths of despair and leave an opponent senseless - Foreman won the fight. despite facing a mountain of intangibles.