Emanuel Steward talks about Heavyweight History

If Foreman did such things tho you don't think Ali would adapt?

 

Fair call, i just don't believe that at any point (certainly a bit prior to the finish) George thought he would lose.

 

Well.........first career he was (mostly) dumb lmao!

 

Or a lack of specific skills to adapt, give Einstein Foreman's body and he loses, because he hasn't learnt the required boxing skills, it doesn't make Einstein a ******. Foreman didn't have the skills but if his corner kept telling him to goto the body hes more effective

Bare in mind Ali was getting in his head, angering him and generally putting him off his game

 

there were certainly times yes but the mercer fight is a good example of when his opponent forced him to fight out of his comfort zone, where his opponent forced him to fight his kind of fight. lewis could be dragged into a brawl or a sloppy, slugfest as he was with rahman. i'd consider him adaptable, but not the tremendous ring general as is often suggested

 

I'll just mention Jimmy Young

 

Interesting read. Hard to argue with my of what Steward said and personally I thought the Forman strategy of purposely throwing wide punches and then short punches to where he thought the fighters head was going to be was interesting. I've seen many Foreman fights and I never watched them from that perspective. As far as Lewis goes, I do think his strength, vis'a' vis most fighters, and his ability to fight in the trenches is often overlooked.

The young Lewis was actually quite fast too, which most people don't associate with Lewis.

Essentially he was a very good boxing athlete, who had the tools to either go to war, or fight a technical fight. And I say "boxing" athlete to distinquish him from Wlad and perhaps others, who might be a better general athlete but not in the ring.

That said, I'm sure he's going to have lot to say about the K brothers in future interviews, especially Wlad.

 

This is pretty much how I see it. He could have used the jab a bit more perhaps, otherwise he didn't have many tools that he didn't use. Short, compact punching just wasn't part of his arsenal back then.

 

With Tyson there is no middle ground. The pro argument proclaims his 2 year stint of immortality and the con argument doubts his effectiveness against no more than capable fighters who sport a bit of reach.

Tyson never struck Ted Spoon as the 'blood and guts' warrior but there was an eagerness about him when he had his head screwed on. Frustrations came in the way of Tucker and Smith but he gutted them out. The making of Tyson was straight-forward enough. It was in the maintaining of him that lay the biggest battle.

He did seem to begin to mature, inside the ring that is. The problem was that he still was a very green boat which had not been introduced to different currents. Notwithstanding the circumstances, Douglas proved the iceberg.