¿Who was physically stronger between George Foreman and Jack Johnson?

He was considered being a strong man the way he was considered being a giant at 6 foot nothing.

Louis Monaco was stronger than Johnson.

 

If he competed in strongman events, he was certainly strong by the standards of a boxer in any era.

Some people here seem to completely discount the impact that grappling and/or strongman training have on general strength development, especially compared to those who train almost exclusively in boxing.

 

He was a pipsqueak. Just cuz he posed with a couple of horses...

 

Even I voted for Foreman on this one. It's obvious.

 

Guys I love Foreman but be real here, him being big and mugging people off the street doesn’t mean he is gonna beat a wrestler lmao. Any good wrestler above 200 lbs would ragdoll him and it frankly wouldn’t be close.

That being said Jack Johnson lived in the late 1800s / early 1900s, wrestling could be way too primitive back then to handle such a size and strength gap. Plus Im pretty sure Foreman himself had a bit of a grappling training.

 

Jack was certainly physically strong for his time, but George is a tough one to beat.

 

Wrestling back then was actually more hardcore than what people think of as amateur wrestling today. It was essentially like MMA, officially known as catch wrestling (catch-as-catch-can), which allowed submissions and joint locks in addition to pins. Look up guys like Frank Gotch to see the type of athlete involved back then; those are the kinds of guys Jack was training with.

Also, I’m not sure what huge size difference people are imagining between him and Foreman. I’m assuming they’re thinking of 1970s Foreman, not the 1990s version with all the extra belly weight.

 

His strong man exhibitions say otherwise.

 

Johnson weighed 208lbs in the Jeffries fight.

Foreman won the title at 218.

That is not a massive difference.

 

Well, if you're going to just pick the weights that fit your narrative, I'll do the same.

George won the title at 6-4, 250 lbs, the size of the average lumberjack at the bar down the hill from me.

Johnson won the title at 6- 1/2, 194 lbs, the size of the wife of the average lumberjack at the bar down the hill from me.

 

Did he ever bench 500 lbs? Louis Monaco did. So did Hasim Rahman.

 

Do we know that Johnson was trained to THAT extent? I've only seen one footage of Johnson wrestling and it wasn't really impressive tbh, he got out-wrestled and pinned down by some guy, didn't really show submission or joint lock attempts either, just regular wrestling. It seems more versatile with the ground-game involved but the actual wrestling aspect seems miles below than today's wrestling.

It's not that much I agree, but Foreman should still be about 30 lbs or so heavier naturally (they are close when in boxing-shape though, 10-20 lbs or so)

 

We are not comparing him to Marciano or Rahman.

 

Bottom line, the size difference is not enough to say who was stronger.

Thee are Olympic powerlifters the size of a middleweight who are stronger than Foreman