True or False Foreman is the physically strongest heavyweight champion

True...he was. Nobody moved him backwards when he was actively trying to resist. Too many strong men between the 70s and 90s didn’t try to match his strength to try and assert their own strength for any length of time...and there wasn't another man out there who could muscle with him when they did go for it. Some tried, but all failed.

Chuvalo was an abundantly strong man. He was forced backwards. Frazier was tossed around easily. Norton was very strong. He ended up flat out bullied. Morrison opted to literally turn and get out of the way rather than attempt to hold his ground. Briggs was on the back foot for the duration of the fight.

Foreman is a guy who was a physical rarity. Others like Jeffries, Carnera, and Liston were also standouts, but Foreman proved his strength more than any other champ.

 

Probably

but Holyfield was freakishly strong pound for pound.
He pushed alot of bigger stronger guys back in clinches even Bowe.

I remember him at 205 pushing 225 Dokes back like a sled.

Ruiz and Rahman are also underrated in terms of strength up close but Holyfield pushed back both of them as well.

 

Basically the klitschko brothers are ectomorph bulked fighters.Considering this i strongly doubt their extreme power.
A natural strong athlete is strong without specific strength training or PED and the klitschkos are not natural strong men.

 

Bruno, joshua, carnera, Briggs or the klitchko brothers and ect might be able to lift more than George at the gym, but id have trouble seeing any of them being able to make him back up in the ring. he's definitely one of the physically strongest boxers ever lived, the real thing about foreman I'd say is that he's the most natural fighting man of all time, he could throw a punch and take a punch better than anyone and had natural functional real man strength.

 

Holyfield made a career fighting behemoths and did say foreman was the strongest out of all of them.

 

As a natural (and trying to ignore the inevitable "He was on steroids!" claims that automatically seem to dog muscular athletes - naturals do exist folks, deal with it), he probably was among the strongest HWs; obviously, without objective proof, it's hard to validate that, but we have enough photos and films of what he was capable of. I don't believe he even touched a weight until after his comeback, when he started weight training as part of his conditioning. Prior to that, it was all old-school: bag work, chopping wood, pulling cars (!) etc. Modern guys may be objectively stronger, but that's after years of pumping iron. Without touching a barbell, George was plenty strong.

 

You know, he was hitting an up against the ropes Ali to the ribs with blows like that!
Frightening really.

 

I would say that might have had something to do with the fact that Foreman was 260 pounds at that point. A good 35/40 more than his prime weight

 

IMHO

One of the strongest.

He 'naturally' stronger than lewis, wlad, joshua.

Tyson & liston up there too..

 

Lewis and Bowe both had 30+ pounds on Evander as well and we're close or in their respective primes as opposed to Foreman and he didn't rate their strength as highly as George's.

I'd say that says something for Foreman's strength comparitively anyway.

 

Comeback Foreman is certainly up there. Hard to say for sure if he was stronger than the Klits, Lewis, AJ etc, but nobody has ever looked as physically formidable to my eyes even against strong men such as Morrison, Briggs and Holyfield (yes, Holy wasn't big, but strong for his size and very hard to bully around).

 

Yeah, it was quite a thing to see a very young George toss Chuvalo around as he did.

 

In the first round Ali had real trouble hanging on, like I never seen him have before or since really. But after the first round George stopped fighting against Ali's clinching, probably because it cost too much energy.

 

Or cares ?
Its irrelevant. Was he stronger than Jimmy Young ? He probably was . So what .
Why not ask who had the best moustache?
Who was the best Heavyweight who wore red trunks with a white stripe ... ooh George !

 

Of course I would recognize George Foreman, Jeffries, Liston as among the strongest heavyweight champs but Hasim Rahman in terms of pure physical strength is underrated. 300lbs before boxing training and not really fat. I saw him bench press 400lbs for reps and he was not struggling under that weight at all. Rahman preferred to box and never really learned how to use his awesome physical strength to impose his style or in the clinches etc. It just wasn't his nature to maul people like Foreman, Marciano, even James Toney would. It would have been interesting to see him use his physical strength more in fights. I remember him dropping Trevor Berbick (another very physically strong heavy) so hard in the first round of their fight but then electing to box him him to a decision. Maybe Berbick's strength put him off being too aggressive? Come to think of it, Berbick was a former heavyweight champ and physically he belongs up there with the strongest guys to ever hold the title. He was physically very strong but also had a shaky chin. Interesting topic to speculate on. Physical strength and actually having the will/desire to impose it on an opponent are two very different things.