How was Foreman viewed before his comeback career?

By the mid-80s before George Foreman launched his comeback how was Foreman and his legacy viewed at that time by the boxing community? Was he seen as a great or more of a what-if/flash in the pan based on how his career ended?

It seems to me his comeback career really defined his boxing legacy and image as a whole despite it occurring after his prime, but how was he seen in the years following his first retirement?

 

That’s a great question.

During his 10 year hiatus there has to be numerous contemporary articles and ratings available that compartmentalised and assessed his first career.

Certainly, when George left the game in 1977, it appeared to be permanent, no hint of a comeback - and definitely not by the age he was when he did get back in there - initially as a one off to fund the church I believe.

Tbh, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes seeing Foreman back in the ring in 1987 - quite surreal actually. It was well received as I recall -

However he was ranked, Foreman had the well earned reputation as a murderous puncher - and Ali’s win over George was described as a Miracle victory.

 

@cross_trainer isn’t with us anymore on this Forum but in old books rating fighters Foreman was a mid tier champion according to CT and not held in that much esteem. I don’t know though and I might be misremembering…

 

Interesting.

Before he retired Foreman beat the following:
Frazier x 2
Norton
Lyle
Peralta x 2
Chuvalo
Wepner (in his 4th pro fight).

All of those fights were won by KO, except I think maybe the first Peralta one. Foreman was also an Olympic gold medalist.

Those wins alone would put him in the upper tier of champions.

 

I remember reading "THE 100 GREATEST BOXERS OF ALL TIMES" and wondering that Foreman, who had wins over Frazier and Norton, was not in there. Also, when the boxing magazines (we used to have those!) did their inevitable tournament of the great heavies articles, Foreman would only be in there about half the time.

So I would say he was viewed as a near great.

 

The great thing about the return of Foreman is that is absolutely proved that the era from Liston, through Ali, Norton, Frazier and Foreman up to and including Holmes is and will probably always be the greatest period of heavyweight boxing. For a pie-eating 45 year old to come back after 10 years out of the sport and beat the undefeated lineal champion will never happen again.

 

This is true. As an example, when World Boxing did a 16-man heavyweight knockout. tournament in the late 70s, he wasn’t considered. He was generally rated in most top 20s (but not top 10s) which is still a good achievement. Although he was always rated higher than that on a h2h basis.

 

I became a boxing fan in the mid-80s because my dad was a huge fan.
He took me to see “Rocky IV” at the movie theater in 1985, and on the way home told me that he thought Ivan Drago was based on Foreman.
He described Foreman as a big, powerful, intimidating fighter with almost murderous punching power, who was outpsyched and outfoxed by Ali with the rope-a-dope, and was never really the same again.
That stayed with me…and my mind was then blown when he came back!

 

The boxing mags and writers considered George Foreman an all-time great heavyweight before he returned to the ring.

But he'd retired at 28 and he'd retired pre-internet. There was no Boxrec where you could look up records of fighters. (That was back when people would write letters to boxing magazines asking of someone had fought someone else ... and then they'd wait four months to see if their question got published for an answer.)

ESPN Classic had either just started in 1987 or 1988 or hadn't come on the air yet and it wasn't available everywhere. So George Foreman fights really weren't around. You couldn't watch them. And the Ali-Foreman fight hadn't been shown on television since ABC rebroadcast it in early 1975.

If there were highlight shows of old fights, they usually just showed still photos from Ali-Foreman.

So you couldn't review his record and you couldn't watch his fights.

I remember making a VHS trade with a guy and I got Ali-Patterson 2 and Holmes-Shavers 2 and they had to have been like the 1000th copy of those fights (and, unlike digital copies now, VHS picture quality degraded with each copy ... which meant they were practically unwatchable). I don't even think the Ali fight was in color. (It started out that way, but the color was all washed out byt that point.) Trying to find an entire Foreman fight was nearly impossible.

So, most of Foreman's rep was based on the memories of people who saw him and how ferocious he'd been for a brief period. And, without recordings, people can remember a lot of things differently over 15 years.

 

Also, I then read up on him in my dads copy of Nat Fleischers “Pictorial History of Boxing”…and there really wasn’t much said about him.

 

I have that book.

 

Do you know what’s interesting?…Foreman’s comeback ,not only helped his own legacy ..,but Joe Frazier’s legacy as well

 

If he stayed retired…he would have been a footnote in boxing history as one writer put it

 

He was a boxing trivia question….” Who is the only Heavyweight champion to never have a title fight in the United States?

 

it seems hard not to view him as the best dominator/destroyer since Liston

things that imo could have landed him a better ranking, fighting Bonavena, fighting Frazier after Chuvalo in 70, a rematch with Lyle, a fight with Ali sometime before 1974 would have been nice too