Comeback Foreman being nasty to his cornermen

This wasn’t anything new.

Foreman was a great fighter and his success speaks for itself and when I met him many years ago he seemed like a very nice guy.

That said even back in the day Foreman was known for having a short fuse and not fully appreciating his team, since after beating Frazier and making a career high payday was angry about having to pay Saddler a percentage of it and fired Saddler and decided to manage himself, which had mixed results.

Foreman later rehired Saddler, Moore, and Sandy Saddler as limited advisors for flat fees for both the Roman and Ali fights, but didn’t want them making any decisions without going through him or his brother.

After Foreman lost to Ali he blamed Saddler for not looking out for him like a good manager should, such as inspecting the ropes, etc..., but I always found this hypocritical, since Saddler wasn’t Foreman’s manager for over a year.

Foreman also blamed Moore for not coming up with a good strategy for Ali, but even Moore mentioned that during the camp he had to answer to Foreman’s brother, who ultimately came up with the fight strategy despite having no experience training a fighter.

 

Foreman’s nice guy image was meant to endear him to the public so he could get title shots and later sell grills.

he was anything but a nice guy. Great fighter but a life long bully. You can take the man out of the streets but not the streets out of the man.

If anything, it was Ali who was nice to people around him, perhaps too nice. Ditto for Frazier.

 

Nobody is perfect. I met George during a book signing and I can tell you that he is extremely gracious to his fans.

 

Ali might have disregarded Angie's advice at times but he would never embarrass him. He lept to Angie's defense when Don King dissed him.

 

The idea of not having Moore work on your fight plan is just... facepalm to the extreme. Talk about having an incredible resource like that and then ignoring it. Like, one of the jobs I'd have wanted Moore to do is watch every scrap of available film of my opponent, analyze it, tell me everything he's learned, help me come up with ways to exploit it.

 

I realize it may be at least in part due to sour grapes for the Foreman fight getting kiboshed, by Larry Holmes had some words for him. He said George was a phoney...a super nice guy until you said something he didn't like.

 

Arthur Mercante congratulated him at the hotel after the first Frazier bout in Kingston, and according to Mercante in his book, he didnt even look Mercante's way back.

 

He was nice to me when I went to get his autograph, He even picked up a coffee cup he had with his photo and name on it and signed it, free and without me asking him for it!

 

The referee in

If my memory is correct the referee for the Ali-Dunn fight got stiffed and Ali paid him. Dunn was the last fighter Ali knocked out. He wrote the round he would knock out Dunn and put it in his glove.

 

But did you venture so far as to tell George how he ****ed up in Zaire and detail to him exactly how he should’ve fought Muhammad?

I certainly wouldn’t have gone there - unless I wanted to take home a few more “souvenirs” than I bargained for.

Just the book and George’s signature would do me fine.

 

Foreman smiled for the cameras and acted like the lovable teddy bear but he definitely still had that mean streak in him.

ESPN Sportscentury talked about it a bit in the episode on George (5 minute mark.) I’m guessing that it’s not totally an act. He did change as a person (he went through some major changes and people usually will change as they age) and was nicer overall, but definitely still had the bully side to him.

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