Quarry did a boxing exibition at Maverick Stadium in Adelanto CA in August of 1992. After the bout he met with fans, myself included. I over heard him claim to have beaten up Forman during a sparring session.
Of the house hold names, who was the most aggressive/nastiest guy you fought with? I mean like Tyson would do to partners, did any of them try to take your head off or anything?
I mean, at that level, you kind of go to get in work, you know? It's not really something you go slow and light to do. That stuff is necessary and great for rookies and young guys, but when you are trying to shape up for a title fight, for example, you've gotta go pretty hard, because it's just as much a cardio and leg workout as a boxing exercise, you want to prep your body. Tua gets after it. Hit's hard, really aggressive, not really all that merciful. Holyfield isn't all that formidable with headgear on, but I think he works on being sharp and precise and sort of holds off on throwing the big power for the fight. Just kind of goes into a different mode. They were all pretty rough. Everton Davis and I once got a bit miffed at each other and went to town. Pretty unprofessional on my part. I tried to avoid that kind of stuff. We also brought in some Russian kid to help me out some 6 or 7 years ago, he's doing really well now as a top ranked professional, but I cant for the life of me remember his name...That kid would come to the gym in the morning with the sole intention of getting into me and working till he hit daylight. He sparred like it was life or death. Reasonably certain his last name ended in -kov. Some of the worst I've ever had of it. If I had to answer your question as best I could, it'd be Tua and George. They didn't have an off gear unless they wanted to use it, which was rare. Tua because he was an old school banger who believed in a certain method of preparation, I think, and Foreman because he hits hard when he isn't even trying.
I heard a story about Mark Breland and a young -- age 15 or 16 -- Riddick Bowe sparring in a New York gym. Bowe, so it was told, started jawing at Breland and telling him what all he would do to the smaller but far more experienced hand. It went on until Mark invited him to spar. Mark, I was told, knocked Bowe clean out, really poured it on. A while later, Bowe's head has cleared and he verbally lights into Mark again, calling him out, saying it was a lucky punch and so on. Finally Mark has had enough and says you wanna do it again. They get on the gear and Mark knocks him out again. I had he occasion to ask Breland about it a couple of years ago and he denied it, but in a way that made me wonder.
I remember watching middleweight Tom"the Bomb" Bethea give 6"5 250lb Leroy Jones undefeated heavyweight a bad beating for a few rounds at the 28th street gym in NY and they let it go because of Leroy's big mouth and quiet Tom spoke with his fists, it was funny because Tom was about 5"7 and stocky and thick and he may have weighed about 165 vs 250 for Leroy
alot of these are just stories- also godfrey had his ribs broken by dempsey and missed a bout because of it. godfrey never knocked down dempsey. godfrey was damn good but he was not quite in dempseys class
Mark seemed to be one of the genuine good guys who did his fighting strictly in the ring. In an 80's write up a story came out where he was minding his own business washing his car and a cop came along and started hassling him (something to do with where the car was parked or some other similarly outlandish thing). Anyway, with Breland not mouthing but saying he'd move the car, the cop became more and more agitated. Said he was giving Breland a ticket. To which Mark replied "no problem officer. I'll pay it". This apparently made the cop see red and handcufed and arrested him. What a pity it wasn't Sonny Liston washing his car that day :bbb
Be interested to figure out who it was Russians Denis Boytsov Denis Bakhtov Aleksandr Ustinov Andrey Fedosov Ukrainians Oleg Platov (this is who i'm guessing, little raw but huge puncher) Vyacheslav Glazkov Platov vs Williams from back in 2008 [yt]tzmQV2btTtk[/yt]
Apparently Foreman avoided Jerry Quarry throughout his career because of a sparring session in 69 or 70 that Quarry dominated, hitting George like no other opponent before Ali did. Hilarious since Jerry Quarry claimed that he sparred George Foreman for one round and the only thing he remembered was Foreman was the strongest fighter he ever faced. Ali, Norton, and Frazier all stopped Quarry. Foreman stopped 2 of those fighters who stopped Quarry but Foreman was afraid of Quarry? Yeah you mean because how Foreman lies through his teeth about evenything now. His whole thing now is to kiss to the media. Be it praising fighters he knows the media like who putting himself down to make other fighters look better and you believe it right?
Tyson tore through sparring partners? You mean bums rights? Because Greg Page dropped him on his ass and was never allowed to spar against him again.