Did George Foreman duck anyone ?

Ferguson was a journeyman at that stage in his career but he also upset Mercer to get his shot at Bowe so he atleast had a credible win to get his shot.

Mercer blew his chance vs Bowe that's on him.

Briggs the year before he fought Foreman got blown away in 3 rounds by Darrol Wilson and then fought a bunch of no hopers. Yes he had a 29-1 record but he'd beaten absolutely no one of note his best win at that time was against journeyman Marion Wilson.

 

Foreman vacated all the titles he won from Moorer within eight months of knocking out Moorer. I have no idea where you're getting three years.

 

Shannon Briggs got upset on HBO's Night of the Heavyweights card, that's true. But Briggs was a big name at heavyweight back then as he was a top New York amateur and was a hot commodity upon turning pro.

Briggs was a 25-year-old, 30-fight pro when he fought Foreman. All his pro fights had been televised. A good many of his amateur fights had been televised in the US, too.

Everyone following boxing back then knew who Shannon Briggs was. He was NO JOURNEYMAN. I have no idea where anyone got that.

 

This is patantly false. Foreman was stripped of his belts for not rematching Schulz or fighting Tony Tucker. Not for fighting Grimsley and Savarese which came nearly 18 months after losing his non lineal belts.

The IBF ended up replacing Foreman with Moorer and gave Schulz 2 shots in a row after losing to George. The WBA ended up replacing Foreman with Bruce Seldon who promptly defended against the legendary Joe Hipp. So no he was not stripped cause his competition "sucked" they had no problem with that.

If Foreman had lost recognition as champ there was no clear replacement. Lennox and Holyfield emerged in 1997. At the end of 1996 the only champ to defend their belt twice during Foremans reign was......George Foreman. In March 1997 he'd be joined by Moorer then Lennox in October then two weeks before fighting Briggs he'd be joined by Holyfield. At which point Foreman had 3 defenses and would have added a fourth if he'd gotten the nod against Briggs.

Tyson and Holyfield were probably considered the champ by much of the boxing public but that had nothing to do with boxing. Speaking of Tyson he received his first post prison title shot for beating Buster Mathis Jr. Savarese also got his title shot for beating Buster Mathis Jr. I'm sure Bruce Seldon lost the respect of the boxing public for giving Tyson a title shot.

 

So you're admitting Foreman avoided Tucker ?

Actually an interesting stat for you Tucker was denied two shots at the Lineal Title when Spinks and Foreman both avoided him.

And i don't even like Tucker much but that's a damn shame.

 

Foreman vacated his WBA belt in March 1995, four months after beating Moorer. He vacated the IBF belt in June 1995, seven months after knocking out Moorer.

In fact, Tucker fought for the vacant WBA belt and Shulz fought for the vacant IBF belt in 1995 after Foreman dropped them.

Foreman wasn't stripped of anything three years later. I have no idea where you're getting this three-years stuff.

 

He didn't duck anyone. He won the title. Wanted to fight Tyson. The Tyson fight didn't come off, so he vacated.

He was 46 and re-retired when he vacated. Not 26.

You guys don't seem to understand the circumstances.

There aren't any apples to apples comparisons. But it would be like if 48-year-old Wlad Klitschko came out of retirement for one fight with Usyk, knocked him cold.

And then Wlad wanted a rematch with Tyson Fury ... and when it's clear it isn't happening .. Wlad drops all the belts within eight months.

Something along those lines.

You wouldn't say "He's ducking Bakole!" (I guess, some would.)

 

I'm not saying Briggs was a journeyman i'd say he was a prospect at that time, but he certainly didn't deserve a shot at the title he had no credible wins at that point and he got destroyed by Darroll Wilson just the year before.

But in a funny sort of way it worked out best Foreman ended up going out on his shield in a credible performance in a fight alot of people felt he won. Lewis could then fight Briggs for the title and then it set up the unification vs Holyfield not long after.

Everyone's a winner.

 

The rules are different here in the Bermuda Triangle. 36-year-old Holmes is washed up, but 46-year-old Foreman should’ve been fighting contenders, damn it.

 

Right.

 

Everyone knows you're Tuckers number one fan!

Hard to get too upset about it knowing Tucker was about to lose to Seldon and Foremans Foreman. But Foreman v Tucker would have been preferable to Foreman v Schulz even in 1995.

 

"Deserve a shot" at what title?

Die-Hard fans (like me) recognized George as the Lineal champ. But George had no belts. He vacated the WBA and IBF belt years before. Ring Magazine didn't even hand out belts in the 90s. George wasn't RING champ in the 90s. There weren't any Ring champs in any division in the 90s.

They stopped naming Ring champs in 1989 and didn't start again until 2001.

We called him the World champ because he won it in the ring and hadn't lost it in the ring. But there was no 'title belt" to defend. There were no requirements the 48-year-old Foreman had to adhere to at that point.

He was just fighting at that point to help sell his grilling machines. He was making more doing that.

 

But hold on a minute Foreman avoided the Tucker fight in 1995 correct ? Foreman had a fight vs Schultz in April 1995 who was not that highly regarded at the time. So why would Foreman choose not to fight Tucker and then choose to fight Schultz ? i'm not really understanding that.

I can understand Foreman wanting to pursue a Tyson fight but Tyson only got released from prison in March 1995 correct ? so that's not matching up with the timeline of Foreman avoiding Tucker and Foreman choosing to fight Schultz in April 1995.

Unless you're saying as soon as Tyson got released from prison there were talks of Tyson's first opponent being Foreman ?

 

I don't hate him i just think he gets a bit overrated honestly, but i would definitely of preferred to of seen Tucker vs Spinks & Tucker vs Foreman rather than the fights we actually got.

 

If ducking is fighting someone you should be fighting as far as defending a title or sorting out who should get a title shot, even then, maybe. If it's just not wanting to fight someone for whatever reason and you don't owe anybody a fight, really, you can chuck in some extra names. I agree that Foreman says randomly overly modest things about other fighters like Shavers because he's Foremanning at the time, as he normally is Foremanning. But he had people that showed what he was doing on the way to title shots and in keeping a title, particularly later in life. The Holmes thing is something that I always thought would be a bad style match for Foreman.

It wasn't that he owed Holmes the fight or was afraid of it on top of that. I think he just didn't want to scuttle that marketing strategy of being the top old man. He was doing it with power and durability and Holmes was doing it more by craft and grit. But I do not believe the styles favoured George and even if it was like a 60-40 likelihood of Foreman losing a decision, that would've been much worse for his campaign than dropping really any decision to any younger guy who was thought to be less skillfull than Holmes like a Duke might be. If Holmes had been his one way to one title, it's not as if Foreman wouldn't have wound up in the ring with him, but there's a path to least resistance idea there too.