Could Bob Foster have beaten Johansson?

No, I think he gets stopped.

 

No.

Next question?

 

Ingo would have cornered and connected on Foster much like he did Machen, only I'm sure that there would have been a more compassionate, less sadistic referee....who would have counted unimpeded to "10".

 

No.

 

Ingo's Bingo puts him down for the count, sad to say.

 

Foster might go longer than Machen, being Foster would be more wary than #1 rated Machen.

Ingo by TKO / KO in 6rds.

 

"Hammer of Thor" meets Fosters jaw and it is goodnight sleep tight for Foster.

 

To be honest, you would have to have doubts picking Foster over any heavyweight ranked in the top five, in any era!

 

Down goes big Bob.

 

INGO’s BINGO scores an early KO!!!

 

no

 

7/6/1959 Sport Illustrated post Patterson fight:

Re: Ingo's 1959 Olympic disgrace
"To synopsize the sad but soul-uplifting saga, Ingemar Johansson, a Swede, had returned from the 1952 Olympics in disgrace. A Swedish newspaper headline damned him with: INGEMAR, FOR SHAME. He had, by all accounts, including those of expert eyewitnesses, shown a cowardly disinclination to fight an American named Ed Sanders. It was well known at the time that all American fighters, except freaks, are invincible and that all European fighters are lineal descendants of Phainting Phil Scott. Sanders was an amateur of some attainments as a puncher, and when Ingemar persistently faded away from him (as Ingemar was later to fade away from Patterson) it seemed only natural to disqualify him for not trying, as the referee soon did.

In these same finals Patterson, an invincible American, won his gold medal as a middleweight. Ingemar and Sweden were deprived of even a second-place award and he was not allowed to stand on the platform for the official bowing and picture-taking. He was, you might say, expunged. It was a dreadful disgrace, and some Swedes soon started a campaign to ban boxing as altogether too brutal to be borne, a national rationalization that has from time to time afflicted other European countries.

All Sweden was shamed and, to an extent, all the world, by this Olympic fiasco.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH

As the years passed, Ingemar, though sorely hurt, discussed the disaster with the serene assurance that comes from a clear conscience. Insistently, over the years, he pleaded innocence and pleaded it again to me last January in Goteborg, Sweden, when I was there observing the proceedings incident to the signing of his proposed match with Patterson.

It was a simple plea and it is now clearly the simple truth. His corner had advised Ingemar to make Sanders do all the leading and to counterpunch him. Sanders, a natural counterpuncher, had a somewhat similar idea. Neither fighter did any leading, and the referee kept pleading with them to fight. And then, in what must have been a classical magisterial fit of pique, he picked on Ingemar for disqualification. It took almost seven years for Ingemar to reverse the decision in prizefighting's only court of justice—the ring itself.

Thus was Ingemar's victory over the champion of the world, the man who had won the world's highest honors while Ingemar was winning disgrace, made honey-laden by the memory of that sour incident. Not until last Friday night was the Johansson version of the Olympic tragedy accepted universally. No one will deny it now. At ringside, just before the bell, it was used to demean him for the final time. You won't hear much about it any more.

 

Whenever someone says "by all accounts" they invite easy refutation by the presentation of even a single dissenting account. Those "experts" were nothing of the sort and the disqualification was nothing short of risible. The only case you could possibly make is that amateur boxing is in effect a completely different sport from what is practiced by the pros and with only three rounds a fighter needs to get down to business immediately.

If Johansson deserved to be disqualified, then Tommy Morrison deserved a lifetime ban for the Foreman fight. Thoroughgoing, unmitigated bulls***t. There aren't many instances where I will strenuously insist that reasonable people cannot disagree, but this is one of them.

 

Many people post 1975 probably don't remember that Ingo was disqualified in the 1952 Olympics....though it was an issue in the first Patterson fight "build-up".