Why didn't Foreman get a rematch against Ali?

So, let's use the equivalent standard with Foreman. He deserved a shot after beating Lyle and Frazier, which brings us to June 1976.

Ali's next fight is Ken Norton, a guy who's on a decent winning streak and who's previous showings against Ali in non-title fights warrant him a shot. Norton's arguably as deserving as Foreman, and proven himself as no easy pickings for Ali.

Ali-Norton 3 is a hard fight for Ali, and he doesn't fight again for 8 months and when he does it's against a bum. But by that time Foreman has been eliminated by Jimmy Young.

 

He retired to get out of the fight and the 90 day demand from the WBC that he had to 'sign' to fight Foreman. Even if he signed to fight Foreman and beat a bum that would be more acceptable. But he didn't. His constant retirements were to dance around the mandatory edict.

In 1977 he signed to fight the winner of Norton-Bobick but the wrong man won, then he agreeed to fight the winner of Norton-Young, again the wrong man won. He then fortunately lost to Spinks (so he had an 8 fight pro to beat to create some kind of worthless 'history'.)

 

Well, that's between him and the WBC.
I dont understand how the WBC could recognize his "retirement" without the declaring the title vacant. They basically allowed him to fight whoever he wanted.

But that's irrelevant to me and (I assume) the vast majority of the world who simply recognized Ali as the champion, regardless of sanctioning body politics. The way I see it, Ali was champion and he was fighting too many bums and ducking rematches with a few good fighters. But his ducking of Foreman in particular wasn't severe at all, when you examine the timeline and the weakneses in Foreman's case.

 

I agree with this to a large degree.

In general, I would say that Ali's reign looked quite solid up until and including the rubber match with Norton. From there it started to slide. He only took on one worthwhile challenger (Shavers) for the remainder of his reign.

 

Ducking is ducking. Either you do or don't in my book. He did. And yes it was the WBC's fault for letting him get away with it. They were going to call an interim champ while he made his mind up what he was doing. He agreed to their demands only to renege and say "they don't tell me what to do".

 

When Foreman had a strong case, Ali fought Norton instead. That doesn't seem so bad.

He ducked Norton thereafter. That was bad.

 

Yeah, I feel that Young and Norton were the ones who were primarily screwed out of a rematch, not Foreman. Foreman was hardly undeserving of one in late '76 and early '77, however.

 

This is my whole point. Ali was left to cool his heels after FOTC, but did what a champion at heart would do: he got cracking, defeating all worthy contenders, got shocked along the way by little known Norton, avenged the loss, and continued to prove his relevance and hunger, his deserving of a title shot, racking up the wins. Foreman, on the other hand, retired. This set him back, deservedly so.

 

The point here is: Foreman had just come out of retirement, having lost his title convincingly. He comes back in Toronto against the 5, clearly diminished, particularly lacking in stamina. The unintended, but unequivocal message was he posed no greater threat to Ali than when he lost to him a year earlier.

 

Kindly read my earlier posts through where I address this. It's not as simple as: "Ali ignored Foreman all through 1975-1976." Had Foreman handled his defeat properly, he would have put greater pressure on for a rematch way earlier, there would have come a point it would have been unavoidable (as happened in the case of Ali-Norton III). But he was his own worst enemy by retiring, blowing it in San Juan and re-retiring.

Frazier, Norton, Lyle, Young, Shavers, Bugner...not a bad list of victims, along with the necessary soft touches. Under any circumstances, it is easy for armchair warriors to demand a champ make perilous defense after perilous defense. I don't see it that way. And we would all do the same thing these champions do: as Foreman himself has said on Champions Forever, the job of the champion is to make as much money as he can without risking. Of course! Elementary!

I am convinced Ali would have eventually faced Foreman, but Foreman made too many mistakes. It is the height of revisionism to label Ali a ducker.

 

:good

 

I remember a story on Bobick, where he said something to the effect that Spinks was a coward to not fight Ken Norton after he defeated Ali. That and Bobick referred to Ali as that 'god damned Cassisus Clay', and that he should have fought him.

 

Frazier had already lost to Foreman when this happened. Ali had actually gotten himself in real good shape the fight before (against Bugner) because he was preparing for the rematch he was promised he would get after Frazier had gotten past Foreman. But...