Did George Foreman duck anyone ?

Tyson didn't avoid Foreman. The fight wasn't made because Foreman didn't want to work with Don King.

 

Evander Holyfield (who Foreman fought) was recognized as the heavyweight champion for all or part of 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998 1999.

Michael Moorer (who Foreman fought) was recognized as the heavyweight champion for most of 1994.

George Foreman was recognized as the heavyweight champion in 1994 and 1995.

Saying he "missed" everyone is patently false.

He was the heavyweight champion. You kinda have to beat the heavyweight champion to become the heavyweight champion, which George did, twice in his career.

Foreman fought more young, top fighters in the 90s than Riddick Bowe did, for Christ's sake.

Unless I missed Bowe vs Tommy Morrison, Alex Stewart, Michael Moorer and Shannon Briggs.

 

If people look into the context of Foremans 90s title reign while he might have gotten all his belts stripped there was no "real" champ for him to fight either so he kept treading water. Moorer was the best belt holder for much of this time. No one else was holding on to their title until Lennox and Holyfield in 1997 so there really wasn't anyone Foreman needed to unify against. Foreman was going to fight Lennox if he'd beaten Briggs and that was really the earliest a big fight.

Lets unpack the reasons Foreman didn't get to the other top HWs.

Tyson was a great matchup for Foreman and Tyson was never going to fight him because getting knocked out by Foreman would have been embarassing.
Holyfield there was very little for Foreman to gain by fighting a second time and was seemingly not in the picture before being gifted the Tyson shot.
Holmes fight made little sense for either man because it would have been seen as the definitive answer to who would have won in their primes while their other fights had a built in semi asterisk.
Bowe didn't fight any of the champs of that era except Holyfield so hard to blame Foreman.
Lennox Foreman was going to fight if he'd beaten Briggs and only reganed a belt in 1997 there really wasn't a window in which to make this fight earlier.
Golota was tied up with the Bowe and Lennox fights at the time and never held a belt.

When looking at the top HWs of the 90s Holyfield fought all of them with mixed results and Bowe fought only Holyfield. But everyone else mainly only fought 2 of their peers. By top 90s HWs I mean Lennox, Bowe, Moorer, Holyfield, Foreman and Tyson. The guys who fought more than that tended to lose every single fight.

 

I agree. Foreman was making a comeback in his 40s two decades after he retired. I think we can give him a pass for some guys he missed out on at that age.

 

Second career he made it known he had no intention of ever fighting Lennox Lewis or Riddick Bowe. I feel he definitely would have fought Tyson if the match could have been made. He always seemed to feel it was a good stylistic match up for him ... Post Moorer he ducked everyone,

 

Except Foreman did sign to fight Holmes in his second career. Had the money not fallen through, it would have happened.

what would it have said about what would have happened had they fought back in the day? No idea. I do think the aging aspect might have favored Holmes — he had seemed to lose less of his original hand and foot speed than Foreman did.

But who knows. Would have been a fun one had it happened, as they were both way up there in terms of grandpa fighting ability. How many HWs have ever been as good as the two of them were past age 45? Foreman’s performance against Briggs? Holmes against Nielsen, and throw in against Butterbean? Holyfield against Nielsen also I guess?

 

If you replace Grimsley with just a generic top 10-15 HW theres nothing wrong with Foremans title reign at all. Grimsley might be the worst title contender ever. Briggs and Schulz both received multiple title fights after fighting George. Savarese was a USBA champ a belt that was a pipeline for title shots.

Foreman did the same thing at the end of his title reign that Holmes did in his, fighting green prospects with a good record.

 

You might reasonably think so until you read this forum

 

A 3 year title reigns without a single top 10 heavyweight is awful by the standards of the day which is why Foreman was stripped of his belts and lost recognition as champ with the boxing public. To claim otherwise is to ignore every other title reign of that time period.

These other easy defenses were between fights with top contenders which gave the reigns legitimacy.

Had Lewis or Holyfield spent 3 years fighting Savarese types they would have lost the respect of the public.

 

I wouldn't classify Stewart, Morrison, or Briggs as young top fighters. They were young journeyman level types.

Larry Donald is probably better than any of these guys and Bowe fought him.

 

Had they been aged 45-48 you’d have a point.

 

Post-Moorer?

George Foreman was a retired heavyweight when the World Champion Michael Moorer called George out for a one-off fight. Moorer picked him. Pulled him out of the broadcast booth for an easy payday. And Moorer got knocked cold.

George became World Champ while he was retired from boxing at age 45. Had the old trunks he wore from the Zaire fight let out so they'd fight around his waist. And knocked the nearly 20-years-younger, undefeated two division champ out cold.

45-year-olds don't "duck" people. They're essentially all retired. As was George.

Don't act like he was some young active fighter (like Riddick Bowe) refusing to fight others. George was retired. He'd fight if he felt like it. The orgs started demanding he make mandatory defenses, and he told them to go to hell.

George was just interested in making a Tyson fight for when Tyson got out of jail in 1995. It was supposed to be the first $100 million fight.

But Tyson steered clear of him. Signed a deal with the MGM Grand and Don King. And Foreman waited around until he didn't have any more belts to defend.

Bashing Foreman for not fighting guys like Riddick Bowe at 45 is ridiculous. He fought a lot of top young fighters during his comeback.

George faced more young fighters than Riddick Bowe did, and Bowe didn't have the added fights and wins in the 1970s that George had.

And, for the record, in late 1992, when George was active, Riddick Bowe AND Lennox Lewis BOTH announced they were going to fight George Foreman NEXT ... Bowe wanted to make his first defense against George. He said so in the ring after beating Holyfield the first time. HBO groaned. Then Lewis announced he was about to make a deal with George, to block Bowe from fighting him.

George was eager to fight either. And neither fight took place. Bowe fought Michael Dokes, instead. And Lennox Lewis accepted the WBC belt Bowe dropped in the trash and faced Tony Tucker, instead of George.

So it's easy to make the case that at the end of 1992, both Bowe and Lewis could easily have fought George, and BOTH of them opted to fight other former champs instead.

And it's easy to make the case that HBO all but sabotaged both Bowe-Foreman and Lewis-Foreman, because they didn't want to watch George fight anymore after the Stewart match.

Because both Bowe and Lewis were signed to HBO, and HBO didn't want to televise George against those guys, so they fought others instead.

George demolished Pierre Coetzer hoping it would make a fight with Bowe or Lewis easier to make. But they both swerved, probably because he looked pretty good in that one.

 

The issue is Foreman should've lost to Schultz that was a complete robbery.

Yes you can excuse Foreman's opposition at that age to some extent, but then again if he's a champion he should be defending his title atleast against some top 10 ranked contenders. Otherwise he's just stalling the division since Foreman at that stage in his career had no intention of fighting a ranked contender so what's the point of him holding on to a belt ?

I agree Holmes does deserve some stick for his opposition after Witherspoon, but atleast fighters like Williams, Bonecrusher, Bey, were ranked contenders. The likes of Savarese, Schultz, Grimsley, Briggs, were not ranked. And going 3 years without fighting a single ranked contender as champion is quite an alarming stat.

 

None of those guys were journeymen. Morrison was 24. He was 36-1. He was ranked in the Ring top 10. Briggs was 29-1 and 25 years old. Stewart was 27 years old. He was 28-3.

Journeymen were Jesse Ferguson, who Bowe fought. Or maybe you're thinking of Tony Morrison, who Bowe fought instead of Tommy Morrison.

 

George Foreman was retired. He won the World Heavyweight Title in a shocking KO.

He had no intention of fighting all his contenders and mandatories. He was retired. He just wanted to fight Mike Tyson when Mike Tyson got out of jail in 1995. He defended once in 1995 to hold a belt for Tyson's return. And when the Tyson fight was clearly not going to happen, he dropped the last belt.

So what are you guys complaining about? He didn't stall anything.

Holyfield was retired. Tyson was in jail. Oliver McCall had the WBC belt and he was trying to fight McNeely or Holmes (he got Holmes). Lennox Lewis was trying to get a rematch with McCall, fighting WBC eliminators. Bowe went after the WBO belt.

There were no fighters clamoring to face him except Tony Tucker. So, he gave up the belt so Tucker could win it (and he didn't).

Don't treat Foreman like he was some young champ sidestepping everyone. He was retired. He was called out for one title fight, which he WON.

And within eight months, when the Tyson fight clearly wasn't going to happen ... he'd vacated all the belts he won so Shulz and Tucker could fight for them. And they both lost, anyway.