George Foreman vs Gerry Cooney

Any Foreman beats any stage of Cooney though

 

I disagree.

Ali was well-prepared against Berbick too, but looked **** nonetheless.

Cooney was the only opponent that Foreman put away in pretty much one-sided fashion, within two rounds during his entire comeback. The likes of Savarese, Schulz and Stewart are all fringe-contenders at best and gave Foreman hell in fights some of them should perhaps have won.
Cooney did worse than all of them, i.e. he did worse than 3 fringe contenders. A 5'7 fat cruiserweight also did a lot better. That, combined with his 3 year layoff, beaten up mentality and the stuff up his nose should give you an image of how washed up he really was.

A good "name" win, but more hype than substance.

 

It wasn't the worst version of Cooney, no...but that styles matchup is a 99% guarantee for early Foreman KO, every single time, so it really didn't prove anything.

 

I think that you're forgetting a couple of key points...

The Foreman that fought Cooney was quite a bit younger than the Foreman that fought Schultz and Savarese. He was three years removed from his difficult (although, in my opinion, justified) decision over Stewart. And, at that point, he was better than the version that fought those fighters.

And, though Cooney had been off for three years, he had looked good in sparring, and a LOT of experts were picking him to win rather easiily over Big George.

Besides, it's not like Cooney did that poorly in the fight. He won the first round going away, and wobbled Foreman pretty badly with a left hook. In fact, the first round was won so comprehensively, that it made Foreman's decimation in the second round that much more impressive. Foreman cranked up the pressure because he KNEW that he couldn't let Cooney hang around that long...not because he was the dominant figure to that point.

Yes, Foreman struggled against Qawi, but the latter was still a slick, tricky fighter who for the most part was fighting just to smother George, and, after a while, just to survive. A fighter like that was going to last longer than a fighter like Cooney, who elected to punch with Foreman.

And, it wasn't like Cooney was the only fighter that George spanked in the early rounds during his comeback. Adilson Rodrigues (a Top 10 contender who had been active) was also starched in the second round, and that fight was considerably more one-sided than the fight with Cooney had been.

It was a good result for George...not great, but the first indication that his comeback might have been something more than a sideshow attraction.

 

I think it was a joke fight! Foreman and his team knew exactly what they were doing when they selected Gerry Cooney as an opponent. George was on the comeback trail and had about twenty fights under his belt by the time he fought Cooney. If George was looking to prove his worth as a fighter or to make some kind of a statement to the boxing world, why not select a good, strong, and ACTIVE fighter to fight? There were other fighters around at the time who would have loved to have fought George. George could have fought Bonecrusher Smith or Tony Tucker or even Orlin Norris at the time. Those guys weren't exactly world beaters, but they were capable and active and would have been a good test for George Foreman. But George opted to fight an inactive former drug abuser who, even at his absolute best, was not the most durable of fighters.

The Cooney fight was a public relations ploy inended to get George maximum exposure and publicity by fighting a "safe" name opponent

 

The fact that you need to pull out a name like Rodriguez should tell you enough how low you have to go to find a similar leveled opponent. I cannot remember him being ranked in the top10, if he was then it must have been for only a very short period of time. His record is like Foreman's around that time: wins over nobodies, one-sided loss to a good fighter (Holyfield).

And so what if he looked good during sparring. That doesn't mean ****. Jeffries looked good during sparring before fighting a real opponent (Johnson) too. Ali looked **** in sparring, yet he always performed. Sparring doesn't mean much. Ring records do. Cooney fought a mere two times during a 5 year period and lost both. His was ****ed up mentally and on drugs. Go figure.

 

Of course there are differences. But the thing is that "looking good in sparring" doesn't mean ****. It's the fighting that counts. And in fighting, Cooney accounted for very little over the past 5 years.

Alright, so that makes a grand total of 2 out of something like 10 "good to very good" opponents. And he did worse than every single one of them except for Rodriguez, who was a no-name contender anyway. He accomplished nothing to speak of if we're talking about quality fighters.

By the way, being ranked by the WBC doesn't really mean much. Let's go by ring magazine ratings; they're more objective.

The Schulz fights was a robbery. Stewart and Savarese weren't, but let's just say they weren't decisive wins. Of course Foreman ran from the well-deserved rematches (as well as real top contenders).

Interestingly, i don't think Foreman declined very much between '89 and '95. He was slow as **** anyway. Stamina was still there as shown by the Moorer KO. Truely a freak of nature that he was able to compete at that age, but looking at it objectively, he struggled with a lot of lesser fighters of that era and lost to the better ones, with only one exception.

No i do not. But the point remains that he was **** mentally and had not won a fight in 5 years !!!! How can you try to polish this "name" win into something big?

 

Fair enough, i only have disagreements with these few points:

Yes, but those fighters didn't build their resume on Tillis. He was just another name on it besides contenders they fought and beat.
Foreman's resume was built on Cooney.

He fought Morrison to obtain or re-win the title. Same with Holyfield and Moorer: they were necessairy evils. Stewart was demolished in one round by Tyson and came off losses to Holyfield, he was a fringe contender at best. Same with Savarese and Schulz. Grimsley was even less than that. Briggs had beaten a string of tomato cans and got knocked out in three by a journeyman.

They were good fighters, but they didn't compare to the top fighters who should've gotten a shot, let's say Lewis, Bowe, Tyson, Holyfield, Golota, , Tua, etc.