Stylistically Foster has the upper hand and could likely stop Qawi late. Foster's jab and power will make Qawi very cautious and at some point in the fight I see Foster landing a bomb that will end the fight emphatically.
Qawi on points or late stoppage. He wouldn’t find it particularly hard to get inside, but he’d have to watch out for the power on the way in. We don’t fully know how good Foster was at 175lbs, since the only semblance of a name that he beat was a 38 year old natural 160lbs guy in Dick Tiger, who gave him issues before the KO. Other than that, 175lbs was an absolute wasteland, so the only other fights we can go off to tell how good he was are his heavyweight fights, and if he’s as good as people rate him, he definitely should’ve done somewhat better. He even got beat up and KO’d against a fellow natural 175lbs guy in Doug Jones, so as far we know, that could’ve been Foster’s level since Doug Jones was probably better than a 38 year old Tiger at 175lbs. Ftr, Foster still deserves to be rated highly at 175lbs because he beat everyone that was around in the 175lbs division in his era, it’s not his fault the era was weak, but in my post I’m talking about H2H ability.
I think Foster wins if he employs the same safety 1st approach as he did in the Hank rematch. This content is protected
A fighter like Qawi has a chance against anyone at light heavyweight and cruiserweight in my opinion, but Foster was the big favorite, due to his style, his huge height and reach advantage, his jab, power and his distance control. In a fantasy match I see the sheriff of Albuquerque boxing Qawi from the outside all night long and winning comfortably on points.
I can see reasons why one might favor either one. Both could punch. Foster had height and reach but Qawi had the better chin and beat taller fighters before. Both had good wins. Both could go fifteen rounds. Tossup for me. Probably a very good fight though.
