Lets settle the did tyson duck foreman debate

Shannon Briggs is /was a joke.

Never ever won a meaningful fight..............the Foreman "win" dont count, beating a 50 year old Fossil aint no accomplishment ......Stewart/saverese/Schulz should have gotten the nod too but got shafted . Fact.

Briggs is the ultimate Tomatoe can crusher.......every single time he stepped up he lost...............he aint even punch thathard either...he never laid out a top opponent and the Tame Wolf dont count either, another club level Euro fighter.

 

if Foreman was not an ex champion, his performance against Holyfield would be forgotten. He lost that fight. It’s like Berbick losing to Holmes. It is a forgotten distance win for the champion.

I have always said the Coetzer win was legitimately impressive. He equaled Frank Bruno And Riddick Bowe. So yeah, that was one his few worthy comeback wins for sure.

This was another worthy win. But let’s not get carried away. Was Moorer better than Coetzer?. Moorer had only won the title by split decision after being decked twice by Holyfield. He had been decked twice by Bert Cooper too.

without the popularity and favouritism only the Rodriguez win and the Coetzer wins would have registered anyone else a ranking. So yeah, he would have made the rankings a couple of times. But there were not enough wins to keep him in the ranks.

A less popular fighter would have been outpointed or been stopped with his face as it was against Stewart. He lost to Morrison. The Schulz fight was a debacle. But sandwiched between two disasters was the win over Moorer. A win a few within the top ten would have replicated given the chance.

Leon was always a loose cannon. Even when he won fights he was partying. A natural athlete whilst young but nobody could keep him in the gym. Somehow he was still good enough to win enough fights.

Leon was crazy from day one. Problems were normal to him. That was his normality. He was never under control. Difference was, There was a window where Leon could win fights throughout his problems, at least until the candle fizzled out completely. Spinks was a weak champion because the champion he beat was bad enough to lose to him.

Moorer has not got a very good heavyweight resume has he? He was knocked flat by Foreman, a humiliation really. In a rematch with Holyfield he was up and down like drunken sailor. Tua skittled him in one round. A blow out. Against rated heavyweights his record is what? Not including split decisions his record against champions or rated fighters is 2-4. Cooper put him down twice, and he was probably the only rated heavyweight Moorer fought before he challenged Holyfield. Evander put him down twice in the fight that Moorer won. Only Frans Botha did he beat beyond dispute without being floored.

 

Gee whiz, last I checked he was counted among the lineal heavyweight Champs. Whether he beat Foreman or not (he didn't and we all know it) Shannon was that. It is an elite sports honor.

 

Foreman did have a exeptional chin. What else did you expect lighter punching, but quicker Holyfield to do? Did Foreman really do that well? I think he won about 2 rounds.

https://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Evander_Holyfield_vs._George_Foreman

He got outlandet by about 88% in general punches (355 total landed), and 280% in power pucnhes! Would be interesting to see the Holmes CompuBox in comp.
Anyway, Holyfield landet a wicked number of 225 power punches on Foreman, 65% of all thrown.
Compare that to Holyfield fighting Mercer (landed 125 in 10 rounds) and 159 against Moorer.
Against Morrison, he took another 260, against Schulz and Briggs another 22X.

Maybe some people now understand why some think Foreman had good advice not to fight better competition.

 

- A puncher is as good as a puncher is, as long he a) can deliver the punch on the spot b) fight in general. How much did Cooney and Cooper show, if one of them got stopped in 2 and the other quit that round? We don´t need these two to value Foreman´s chin, he proofed that beyond "punchers", who didn´t give him much of a fight.

- I´m saying Ruddock could punch and jab, whatever he chose or could show in two Tyson fights. It´s on tape he could move and could jab, not just one fight. Its also nonsense Tyson ran into his opponents like a moth into light. The exchanges often came assault-like from beyond jab range, clinch, rinse and repeat.

- The Norton fight was much closer as it should have been, the excuse of a hand injury came up. Sure, if Holmes lost his next title fight, nobody would suggest putting him into the top 5 H2H HWs. Of course there´s a range in telling the H2H-value due to how good a fighter did in a fight. Holmes showed grit (and gave us that information) that he wasn´t supposed to show. Thats exactly the same bull**** rating Tyson low @ H2H for not showing heart against opposition he basically steamrolled with no chance. Alot of things "boxing experts" tell do simply make no sense. They´d better check their logic. You might simply lack the grit information, but not the dominance in therms of capability. Foreman showed chin, but could get hit plenty against the Stewarts of the era.

- As I told in the last posts, Foreman DID get hit plenty in alomost any higher tier fight he was involved, THAT´s why I don´t like to see him fighting the big bangers like very heavy handed Bruno and Ruddock, Bowe or LL. Sure, Bruno wouldn´t go that aggresive due to Foremans heavy hands too, and Foreman could beat him, but we can turn it around and around and around, he was slow and did get hit plenty. Thats why me and others think he was no fool and gave the better punchers a wide berth. Morrison is basically the only puncher argument against this (as I told why Cokney and Quitter are not), and he fought noboys after the Mercer debacle, had another close one against Hipp and got put on the floor against Williams again. I´ve basically claimed before why I think Morrison wasn´t the same risk as fighting him like Mercer.

We basically won´t figure out whether and when Tyson was in the position to duck him, the clip I´ve posted shows Tyson at least mentioning his name.

 

At the end of the day both Foreman and Leon beat lineal champions and both also defeated top 10 contenders. Both were also in the top 10 for a decent length of time.

 

Re the Norton-Holmes fight, I am of the mind with some other posters that Larry won that fight decisively (I have him ahead by three points). Norton put up an incredible fight and imo made himself into a conceivable ATG even moreso than the Ali fights. It was an incredible war, but Larry overall dominated. A few heavy punches in a round does not make up for Holmes' consistent combinations and bravura jab.

 

This is the bottom line.

 

Waiting on a response to this:

Tyson's promoter, Don King, fearful that the former champion might end their boxing relationship as a result of a Holyfield-Foreman rematch, finally agreed to accept a $15 million guarantee for Tyson. Holyfield will get $30 million.

Finkel said last week that the terms of the Holyfield-Tyson agreement call for Foreman to fight the winner. But King said this was a fabrication.

Arum said the $100 million suit was based on "treble damages."

He said: "We passed up a $20 million offer for George to fight Tyson. We would have shared in the site fee and pay-per-view promotion. We also have to figure on lost revenue if George had whipped Holyfield. But, to be honest, we'd settle for $50 million."

As Weathers told the New York Post this week: "George wants to fight, not sue people. We laughed, then cried when we found out about Holyfield-Tyson. You've got to protect yourself more outside the ring than in it. It's a tough business, and George is just protecting himself now."

Neither Duva nor Finkel was available for comment yesterday. Foreman, however, drew little sympathy from King or his advisers.

"George tried to be a 'cutie-pie' and got outfoxed," said King's matchmaker, Al Braverman.

"We had offered him $20 million to fight Tyson and he turned it down. That was his biggest boo-boo. Plus he was guaranteed $10 million for two other fights on HBO this year. Actually, I think George was afraid of getting his butt kicked by Tyson."

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1991-07-18-1991199099-story.html

How exactly is that Tyson ducking Foreman?

 

I've been watching a lot of comeback George and looking up articles regarding the Tyson fight. George even said as a ring announcer that he was in talks to fight Mike, and I think it was Merchant who asked "are you mentally prepared to fight Tyson" to which BG said "I'm much more worried about Don King than I ever will be about Mike".

Had Don King not been involved, the fight would have happened. And Mike, after probably having a great, Lyle-level of success against George in the first round, would have been bounced off the canvas and stopped shortly after.

 

Foreman tweeted on Friday "I totally agree with you. I talked a good fight, but I didn't want any part of Tyson nor Lewis"

Guess that's settled then.

 

All respect, but do you have a link to that tweet? Nothing is showing for me of that tweet on Twitter.

I should also mention: shortly after George won the title again he became what could be construed as excessively kind to other fighters (for instance, on television when Lewis beat Tyson he gushed "LL is the greatest heavyweight champion of all time!").

Tyson is that way too. Only Holmes is really critical of other fighters in his old age.

 

There really isn't a resolution to this topic, and we're probably all getting a little foolish to try after sixteen pages.

Au fond, there's no way we can know.

A pearl of wisdom that might be gained here is from a relatively recent interview with Evander. When asked about the chances of other fighters against each other he defaults to "I don't know, can't know. They never fought".

 

Yeah, the bottom line is Leon Spinks and Comeback Foreman managed to beat champions who were bad enough to lose to them.

 

Im in work at the moment, but ill try and dig it out when I get home. I did take a screenshot as well.

He tweeted it at 1:31am 02/08/2019