Are there any Heavyweights from different eras that you would favor Bob Foster to beat?

Just to comment on some previous posts.
Foster does not beat Dempsey Tunney Schmeling or Baer as far as Champions go.

 

If Foster hadn't went up to HW to fight Ali and Frazier one would have a much easier time picking him to beat HW legends.

Fraziers a guy who struggled against taller opponents and he beat Foster easily. Ali knocked him down 7 times which I think is his career high. Ali and Frazier are Ali and Frazier but if legends are having career nights against you thats not a great sign. If he hadn't fought Ali and Frazier you'd think Foster would be a challenging matchup for a Floyd Patterson but looking at those fights I don't think he'd win.

 

Foster would be starched by Dempsey. He was beaten by far lesser fighters.

I can see Foster being competitive with the smaller HW's or less skilled such as Burns, Hart, Kaufman, Moran, Fulton, McVey, Braddock, Pastor, Godoy, Nova, Savold, and several other contenders pre-1955.

 

Prior to his final 3 fights, Frazier's record against taller opponents was 28-2. The two losses against Foreman and Ali, the latter of whom he also beat.

 

Bit uncertain with Bob, with that chin against the big boys.Hard to say.

 

He could have beaten a ton of them ... put Ali and Frazier aside .. Folley, Terrell and Jones were very good fighters ... I'm not enough of a student of his career to know all the backstories of the bouts nor his evolution but I cant help but think with better training along the way and more support he could have made better use of his outstanding size and skills against the smaller heavyweights of his era ..

 

Its not that he lost its that he struggled against Bugner and Mathis.


Foster was the best of that bunch he had no trouble with.

 

Or Sharkey.

 

Foster simple wasn't built for heavyweight, he had a thin frame. Now fast forward to the 2020's and ole Bob goes through a steroid regimen and gains 25 pounds of muscle. That Foster could be interesting

 

There's loads of reasons why Fosters record at heavyweight is poor. It also gets overstated when a quick loook below the surface would provide context.

Physicality - For starters he had problems putting on meaningful weight, despite his promising frame. On top if this he never made a prolonged effort to campaign there, perhaps finding a way to settle into a stronger, higher weight. Compare him to Michael Spinks - even without campaigning there Spinks put on an extremely functional 25 pounds in just over 3 months to fight Holmes. By the rematch he'd slipped into an extra 5 pounds on top of that.

Style - Sure, Foster had the height, reach and ATG jab but the man was a stalker, a puncher. Combine this with his lack of physicality and he's well outside his comfort zone. Looking at Michael Spinks, again, and we see an extremely versatile fighter who was more than willing to play the part of matador despite being a horrifically hard punching light heavyweight who could boss your average contender and have elite level 175'ers extremely wary of said power. Spinks had the versatility to succeed higher up, Foster not so much.

Durability- Add the two factors above and we are looking at a guy lacking some robustness and durability against the big boys, particularly without stylistic adaptions. I think his durability was fine at 175, but at heavyweight it wasn't. Admittedly it was only his 17th fight but losing to Terrell by KO is mildly concerning. It was during a 14 fight run where Terrell only stopped two opponents (including Bob) and a few of them had pretty ordinary records. The other guy he stopped was like 14-10.

Still, his record at heavyweight isn't as bad as the average guy thinks. His loss against Jones came in just his 10th fight and 4 months later Jones was a top 4 heavyweight. He was also an extremely late substitute. He was never winning that, with context. Folley was way inside the top 10 and we don't need to talk about what monsters Ali and Frazier were at the time. He didn't win the light heavyweight title until years after he'd lost to Jones, Terrell and Folley which means the only heavyweights he ever lost to, in his prime, were Frazier and Ali.

It's fair to say we didn't see Foster at his best against any mid or even lower level heavyweight contenders. Would he have done much better? Probably but he definitely had a ceiling and it wasn’t all that high.

 

Good post.

Foster had really quick hands. Really underrated in terms of hand speed. And while he wasn't slow footed, he did not move especially fast with his feet. This had to do with him probably wanting to conserve energy when stalking his opponents and just having the bull mentality.

If Foster had the foot speed of , say a Larry Holmes, and the willingness to box on the outside, he could have had more success at heavy. He could have outboxed people at range and then caught them with big shots coming in. But then again, we are talking about a hypothetical fighter and not the real life version.

Bob was also 29 when he won the 175 lb title from Tiger. Spinks was 25 when he won the light-heavyweight championship. I think Foster was reluctant to campaign full time at heavy because he wanted to establish himself as a ATG light-heavy first. But when you are almost 30 when you win the championship, you don't have the luxury of establishing yourself as an ATG at light heavy and then moving onto full time campaign at heavy.

Hypothetically, Foster could have defended 10 times or so from 1968-72 and then bulked up to heavy and moved up to heavyweight full time with no option of moving back down due to weight gain. But he would have been 34-35 years old at this time in a division full of elites like Foreman, Ali, Norton etc. all of whom were 4-10 years younger.

Not every fighter is going to age like an Usyk or Moore or Hopkins. Those guys are so rare.

If Foster had won the 175 lb belt at 25 years old like Spinks, he could have moved up to heavy full time by the age of 30 and have a real go at success.