Bob Foster vs Jorge Ahumada & Pierre Fourie II Highlights - Was Foster Toothless By This Time?

I think it was always generally accepted that he was never really the same after returning to 175 after the Ali fight.

 

Agreed, I recall reading that the only reason he took the Frazier and Ali bouts was for the money. He was paid 3 or 4 times as much as he would make for a light heavyweight defense .

 

Not so much a case of getting old as it was one of Ali beating the remaining prime out of him. It didn't help that Fourie and Ahumada were also two of the better fighters he defended against.

The Fourie fights (at least the first) weren't reported to be that competitive on the cards, but it was a shock that Foster couldn't force a stoppage against a small light heavy with no power who came into the fights weighing around 168 and had been a middlweight for the first four years of his career. Fourie was a classy, smart boxer with a great jab that would go on to give Galindez tough fights, but stylistically he seemed tailor made to get smashed up early-mid by Bob. Of course there was the thing about Fourie supposedly calling him "boy" and Foster deciding to give him a drawn out beating instead of knocking him out, but the fact he went the distance again in a tougher rematch makes that slightly dubious to me.

As far as how much he had left, I don't think he looked like a washed up fighter ready to be dethroned by anyone solid, just a fairly generic aging champ that had dropped a few levels. He was still showing a lot of tools against two guys that were bringing a lot to the table themselves. But for a fighter like Foster, once the balance and timing is eroded a few notches from wear and tear, suddenly it gets a lot harder to pull the trigger and follow through on the traps he set for those meticulously timed knockouts.

 

For the record, Fourie was very highly regarded locally. The fact that even a guy like Foster was less than destructive shouldn't be a huge surprise.