on the backfoot? who knows but i'd put money he couldn't. his jab, cross and hook seemed rooted in being the aggressor. if he's not, i don't fancy his chances
This is a Foreman - Lyle redux. Sonny just too slow to overcome the bomb-barrage. And when hurt, Sonny never clinched.
It's easier to name those who foreman wouldn't walk through than vice versa. Liston is not a member of the former crew.
He may have looked the same to you, but the Foreman who came back from Zaire was not the same Foreman who demolished Frazier in two rounds. I've had this discussion before and not everyone agrees. But many do. The aura of invincibility that he had earlier possessed was gone. And that not only emboldened his opponents, it weakened big George.
I don't think that's completely fair to Lyle. Foreman went up against Lyle with the same ferocity during their exchanges as he had in many of the pre-Rumble fights. I think it's more that Lyle showed guys Foreman's size with comparable power could get to him.
"aura of invincibility that he had earlier possessed was gone." Defeat will do that to you. But an "aura" is not reality. If he were actually invincible he would not have lost.
Exactly. It's easy to look invincible against guys who aren't mounting much of an offense. How you look when guys start hitting you back and making you dig a bit deeper is where it's at. Saying GF was less a fighter post-Zaire is unsupportable. There's nothing discernibly "weakened" about him from what I can see.
Liston is the better technical fighter and has the stylistic edge imo but Foreman is Foreman. No one really knows how someone is going to deal with his power until the fight starts.