Gene Tunney vs 1973 George Foreman

Not sure if Tunney will even take this fight. Didn't Tunney turn down Godfrey?

 

Why would he? He beat the higher ranked Gibbons and was rated above Godfrey as a result.

 

Two guys with the most similar style to Tunney out of Foreman's catalogue, and yes although they do tell you a lot more than the Frazier or Norton fights, they do not tell you the full picture, as once again George was not at his best for either fight. Yes, George fought stupidly against Ali and Young, because Muhammad played mind games with him so bad in the lead up to the fight that Foreman didn't want to fight him- But rather kill him, he didn't fight like he did in any of his previous victories, he just came out to snap Ali's neck. And as for Jimmy, George wasn't paying attention, chose not to acclimate to the climate because he felt that the Young fight would be easy, was learning how to do "tricks" in the ring by some of the dumbasses training him, and still nearly beat Jimmy despite being nowhere near the A game he established- Even after the Ali loss!

If you want to see Foreman dismantling a boxer of a similar caliber, look no further than Gregorio Peralta, and George's first encounter with him. Foreman was 15 - 0 at the time, while Peralta was 73 - 5 - 7, with George going on to win by UD. Gregorio was a damn good defensive fighter and was only stopped three times in his entire career, with those being in his fourth ever bout to Mauro Mina, a stoppage on cuts against Willie Pastrano, and the TKO against Foreman. I'm sure that the second fight would be a much more brilliant display of technical proficiency, but we don't have the footage of the rematch.

And yes, Tunney had a phenomenal chin, but not at a 70's heavyweight level. He floated around 190 and had a good chin at that weight, and yet he was still dropped by Dempsey. So yes, a good chin, but not a phenomenal one, and surely one not iron enough to face up against men with multiple tens of pounds on him and power even beyond that.

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Peralta would've beaten Foreman... Simply by having a better right hand? Maybe Cooper would've beaten Ali if he had a better right hand, too.

 

Foreman wouldn’t recognise Tunney from a photograph afterwards - doubt he hit any harder then Dempsey, GF would be swinging at air all night, Tunney would be on the move like a ghost in the mist.
Leagues and leagues more slippery then Jimmy Young, Muhammad Ali and that Argentinian LHW, the gulf in class is the size of Godzilla.

 

I hear your words but I just can't agree.

 

The OP is going to have a heart attack when he realises this thread is evolving into a discussion rather than a public hanging.

Myself, I give Tunney about a 25% chance of victory.

 

So, Tunney, a guy whose best wins at heavy are a shot Dempsey over two 10 rounders (one of which he was actually KO'd in), a LHW Gibbons in his final fight and a nothing burger in Tom Heeney, a guy who never entered the ring against a black man, is going to beat the destroyer of Norton and Frazier and Lyle and Moorer?

Cool story, bro.

 

He was in good shape and young, that's pretty good enough. Unless a fighter is demonstrably past prime, past their mid 30s or grossly overweight, they are in good enough shape for the performance to be valid.

"but Muhammad say mean words so fight not valid doe" is not an argument i'll take seriously. He was fighting a living legend, the conqueror of Sonny Liston and someone who had just avenged both his only two losses the year leading up to the fight. If Foreman doesn't take that guy seriously, then why should I believe he takes Gene seriously? Overconfidence is a flaw and Tunney would be just the guy to exploit it.

So a 6'0 Peralta can go 20 rounds with Foreman and Lyle but 6'1 190 lbs Tunney can't?
Tunney was of a way, way higher caliber than Gregorio, as for him getting dropped by Dempsey, so what? Who wouldn't get dropped after getting hit by those punches? Tunney proved he could take Dempsey's best in the off chance he got caught and was fast and clever enough to last the entire round with Dempsey going after him. All it shows is that if Foreman catches him he pulls a Young on him and rides it out.
There's no reason to doubt Dempsey's power by the way, look at what he did to Willard and Firpo who were just as big as the biggest of the 70s, he utterly crushed them. Tunney was taking body punches from that guy and was holding up just fine, he isn't crumbling after tasting a couple of hooks to the torso from George.
Given that there's no reason to doubt Tunney's durability, and the pitiful performances against master boxers from George, it is reasonable to say that Tunney would out-maneuver him, out-think him and consequently outbox him on a way to a knockout victory.

Edit: Forgot to mention this, but take a look at Young's speed while surviving Foreman in round 7 and compare it to Tunney's speed when evading Dempsey:

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Foreman isn't catching him in a million years.

 

Surely you must know the difference that a mentality takes in a fight, not only in the way you approach it, but also the way you perform. Good physical shape simply isn't enough, as your mental state impacts the most important part of boxing, your skill. It was much more than simply just mean words, it was Ali's whole mentality that unnerved Foreman on top of all the things he said prefight, on top of the environment and the way he was toying with George and every single thing else. He got Foreman the same way that he got Liston, he got him irritated, put him in the mindset to plan for a short and easy fight, and pulled off a masterclass victory in the face of what seemed like definite defeat- Put yourself in George's shoes, Ali had just dropped decisions to two men that you beat the stuffing out of, and he's saying that he's gonna knock you out, and that you're nothing, you're just slow, plodding, nothing, are you saying that ISN'T going to get you into a certain headspace where you start planning irrationally? The same thing happened with Sonny, Ali was a total upstart rookie that was calling Liston ugly, saying that he was nothing, and he was gonna get knocked out when you fought. He showed up at your house at night, he followed you around to casinos and into your camp, and despite his motor mouth, he ends up winning. Without the mental aspect, these wins do not happen the same and have the potential to not even happen at all. Think about how much harder a time Ali would've had with George if he was using his jab and not trying to snap his neck from round one?

And no, overconfidence is not something that Foreman is gonna take into this fight, because we're talking about a peak George here. Not the version of Foreman with an inflated head that has to acclimate to a harsh environment and is being taught "tricks" to do in the ring. A prime George with Moore in his corner and winning on the mind, the same one that beat Norton, Frazier, Peralta, and Chuvalo.

Peralta went ten rounds with a very young Foreman in a tight match, whereas George seemed to eat Gregorio alive in the second bout, when he was still nigh two years from his peak- And yes, Peralta had a good chin, and was an almost exclusively defensively minded fighter, especially when he's fighting to leave against a young Foreman, think of Liston - Machen if you need to. And yes, Tunney was still the better fighter, but Gregorio is the best comparison we have with a prime George. The point is that if he's getting dropped by a strong puncher under the cruiserweight line who was on his last legs as a fighter, I have no doubt that he's gonna get ripped by Foreman.

I don't doubt Dempsey's power in full, I just doubt it compares to Foreman's. He has a very solid list of knockouts for the time and there's no denying that he was the genuine article, but I don't think he sizes up to who is typically considered #2 when it comes to all time heavyweight punchers. I'd compare his strength to be closer to Frazier's.

Yes, Willard and Firpo were just big as any other men from the seventies, but were they that good? I will disregard Luis' two early KOs because they are extremely early in his career, and it'd be unfair to compare him to anybody else when he's just four or five fights in, but just LOOK at his list of opponents up till Willard, do those guys look very impressive to you? Do you figure that anybody up until then had a good enough punch to topple him? And by the time he had got to Jess, he had had just one other fight before that after a four-year layoff after the Dempsey KO, not exactly prime fight material at that point. After that, he fights decent looking guys in Smith and Weinert, but they both have high KO loss rates, and I'd figure that most men in that era would lose to a man with a twenty-pound advantage easily unless they're greats like Jack or Gene. I don't think that Firpo has some sort of glass chin, but I think that any big man like him in an uncivilized age is going to get ripped apart in front of Dempsey. This all stands for Jess, too, despite the fact that they are AS big as men like Foreman or Ali, they are not AS skilled, and therefore the comparison doesn't count, especially when you're talking about men like George and Muhammad who had insane chins in their prime.

I will leave off section with this idea: If it was so easy to simply outmaneuver Foreman, why did Ali choose to make an entirely different strategy to beat him when he's one of the best heavyweight movers of all time? A prime, mentally well George is not going to simply get outboxed, especially when he can rock Tunney just as much as he could Young. Reminder, Jimmy was no glass chinner and he was at a similar weight to Gene, and the worst version (excluding green Foreman) of George almost knocked him out!

P.S. It's fun arguing with you, Chef. Lol. I appreciate it.

 

So Foreman came into the ring mentally compromised because Ali made fun of him? Ali came into the ring while the world thought he was walking into his execution, when everybody kept telling him his life was in danger, when he saw his two toughest opponents get squashed like bugs by George, and Foreman is the one who gets excused for his mental state?
Jack Johnson was receiving death threats before fights.
Billy Conn had to go fight a prime Louis while everyone thought he was going to get blown out like Henry Lewis.
Would Patterson have beaten Liston if he was more confident?
Liston and Foreman have no excuses for their feelings about the fight, they were going in expected to destroy and they lost.
I can accept that mentality matters but if you are going to use it to say a fighter would have won this or that fight had they been more cautious, patient etc. then you can use the same argument for any fighter ever, and make a hypothetical fighter who would have never lost a fight.
If you dismiss Foreman's losses to Ali and Young then you dismiss all the losses he had in his prime and all you are left with is the Foreman who was thought of as being invincible. If you take any fighter and discard their losses, then they are unbeaten.
Mentality is every fighter's problem. Clay v Liston was almost cancelled because of Ali's dangerous elevated heart rate, yet Sonny had it rough because of Ali's mean words? Give me a break.
You are not talking about making exceptions for age, you are talking about making exceptions for how they felt, which is utterly nebulous. If all it takes to compromise a never-beatable monster is to insult them, then they were never going to remain unbeatable anyway.

It's the same Foreman who was in there with Young and Ali, only they weren't Norton, Frazier, Chuvalo and Peralta. They were the two great defensive boxers he fought and he lost to both of them, both exploiting similar flaws in his style.

You know who else Peralta compares to? Young and Ali.
As I said earlier, when you take a fighter and discard his losses you end up with a guy who hypothetically cannot lose, which is nonsensical. It's a fallacious form of thinking.

Contemporary experts considered Dempsey to be the hardest puncher the boxing world had seen. That's not a mere cruiserweight level puncher. That's guy who is going to bring down any man he can land a punch on, and what happened when that cruiserweight went up against over 6"3, 220+ lbs ranked fighters is that he beat them so bad the blood trail from their face down to their stomach is visible in black and white photos. Firpo's, Fulton's and Willard's records don't matter, they don't have to be illustrious to prove the point that Dempsey would hurt men far above the cruiserweight limit.
Tunney took the best punch from Jack and got up to beat him up in return, he isn't folding after getting hit by Foreman, not if Young and Ali did not. There was never a reason to doubt Tunney's durability, he was never knocked out.
By the way Frazier, whom you compare Dempsey's power to, knocked down Ali. George didn't. Tunney would have a much harder time with Frazier than he would with Foreman.

Ali proved that Foreman's wild looping swings were so predictable he could nulify them by shifting his weight in anticipation while stuck against the ropes. Tunney is using the whole ring and his footspeed allows him a lot more space to nulify those punches.
Young cut the momentum from George's blows by sticking to him, and George just would not back up to put Young into his preferred range. When Tunney throws his punches he can always get closer than Foreman's preferred range just as he did to Dempsey. It's what Pastor did to Louis and what Machen did to Liston, it's nothing new.

Likewise bud

 

Foreman gets decked and loses to Jimmy Young....but George is beating one of the most intelligent guys to ever step into the ring? A guy who was smart...a good chin...clever...good power...nah....don't think so. I'll take Tunney.

 

Styles make fights and Foreman did not perform well vs the two top boxers he faced. Ali knocked him out for a ten count and Young, aside from a very shaky 7th round, beat Foreman relatively easy by decision.

Tunney was always superbly conditioned and was the greater technical boxer as compared to either circa 1974 Ali or Young.

You have to go with Tunney to do what the other great boxers did to Foreman. 10-12 rounds it’s a U decision for Tunney in a bout that becomes increasingly one sided into the later rounds.

 

Hey, sorry for not responding in a bit. I plan on responding during the weekend, as I've been quite clogged now that I've got a job- But I'll get back to arguing with you and everyone else, then.