My dreamfight: Prime Jerry Quarry vs Prime George Foreman!

:think
:-verysad


And besides , I thought you liked Quarry too much to want him fight in such a fight.

 

Foreman wanted no part of Quarry. Quarry did very well against the big sluggers of the era...Ron Lyle, Earnie Shavers, and Mac Foster. That said, it's hard for me to envision Quarry surviving foreman in a ******* early. Especially if foreman shows up at a peak 217lb.

 

Lo, frankenfrank has at last sanitized his avatar.

 

Jerry Quarry musta spit on your mother if this your fantasy matchup. Quarry gets raped.

 

Glad the fight never took place...Quarry may have been respected by Foreman, but he was too small, cut too easily and liked to mix it up when in trouble...all signs of death against Foreman.

 

Foreman would have knocked him out

 

OK , so you are not whom I suspected. I think I will change my suspicions now.

 

Part of the reason George wanted no part of Jerry was their sparring experience. There are two people who intimidated him by virtue of having previously shared the ring with him-Liston and Quarry.

JQ had self doubts about his stamina, but he'd go in with Foreman having no concerns over his ability to outlast this particular bigger man.

Styles make fights. Jerry loved suckering stalkers into the ropes and corners where he could work his brand of counter punching. His edge in speed and quickness would be obscene here. George was not the sort of puncher who typically opened up cuts. In this particular instance, it might actually be the wide open Foreman who winds up tasting his own blood, or has an eye swell up.

Nobody starched JQ out of the gate, not Mac Foster, Shavers or Lyle. This one's going into the later rounds, where Foreman did not measure up to the likes of Ali and Frazier.

The prefight stare down itself would be entertaining. This time, George is the one who blinks.

Foreman has the fact Jerry was pushed early into the professional ranks to thank for his 1968 Gold Medal. Does he even get to Mexico City with Quarry in the way?

Now, this is prime for prime. I'll take the defensively elusive and mobile Jerry of the 12 round Spencer masterclass who continually beat Thad to the punch over any version of Big George. Peralta proved twice that JQ would not have been too small to compete with Foreman, and Jerry dominated, yes dominated, plenty of big powerful heavyweights. He decked and thrashed a 234 pound Mathis (a very reasonable weight for him) fresh off his own 12 round brutalization of Chuvalo. People forget that this was the best prepared version of Buster to ever step foot in the ring. (Footage of Mathis-Chuvalo has been on youtube, and ought to help put in perspective just what kind of contender Jerry beat by a margin of 10-1-1 in rounds.) JQ ruined his career. 20-1-1 Larry Middleton was 6'4." Again, Jerry sent a promising contender into full tailspin.

Maybe Foreman does manage to knock him silly, or even deck him. (This isn't likely, as JQ would see everything coming via Western Union.) Jerry could be incredibly dangerous when dazed like this, as Joe Alexander found out. Three times in his career, he came off the floor to stop his opponent in short order, twice in the very next round. He came from far behind to crumble a suddenly gassed and inert Mac Foster who had produced perhaps his finest career work through the opening rounds. (Mac was known for his hook, but both his jab and right were cooking in this one. Didn't matter.)

I'm guessing that Foreman does not get to the final bell. George could take a punch, but Jerry had the late round power necessary to get a fatigued Foreman out of there. If he couldn't though, he'd have the scoring sewed up. He was faster, quicker, and would have had an enormous target he couldn't miss, especially with his body punching.

 

What George says now is one thing, but the hesitant and evasive way he responded to being asked about matching against Jerry during post fight interviews during the early 1970s supports his later claims of deliberate avoidance. (Liston, by contrast, expresses enthusiasm for meeting JQ after stopping Henry Clark.)

First of all, he claims he was afraid to fight Frazier in 1973, but whether or not he was, the fact is that Smoke was the champion, so he had to face him win the title. (What kind of contender ducks a title bid?:huh) Jerry was discussed by broadcasters as the next challenger for Foreman after Lyle and Shavers were stopped by him. Instead, George defended against Roman. Do you truly believe Roman was a more lucrative and worthy challenger for the heavyweight title than Quarry?

ukkeComments like that have no place in a classy forum like this. Take your race card to the Lounge or General Forum.

My top five heavyweights (in chronological order) are Dempsey, who was one quarter Cherokee and another part Chocktaw, Louis, who was also one quarter of Cherokee descent like Dempsey (in fact, Jimmy Bivins called Louis, "Big Red"), Ali (who is part Irish), Frazier and Holmes. In the past, I've actually made a case for Larry as the top man over all the others, something you would know if you were familiar with my posting history.

Everybody knows that Quarry made a mental mistake against Chuvalo based upon poorly worded instructions from referee Zach Clayton. The next time he was dropped, by Alexander, he got right back up. Nobody questions who would have won if Clayton had articulated better, nor who would have come out on top in a rematch. Jerry was slow? Even Ali lauded his quickness. Quarry is respected by Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Ellis, Shavers, and other top heavyweights of the era. Did he beat Lyle, Mathis, Middleton, Shavers and Spencer because he was white?

All right. Then what was his prime weight? He weighed 213 and 216 for Peralta, 215 when he shut out Forte over ten, 217 when he dethroned Frazier in Jamaica, 226 when he drunkenly foundered around the ring with Lyle, and 229 when Young ended his first career. What do you consider his prime weight to be, 224 for Norton? The fact is that he did not demonstrate resurgent power beyond round five in any match during his first career until stunning Young in round seven. (And his only clean knockouts as late as round five were against O'Halloran, and Lyle. He was aided somewhat against Ron by the fact of an earlier round being abbreviated by one full minute.)

Premature stoppage wins against Chuvalo and Peralta did the development of his competitive stamina no great favors. Foreman was missing an awful lot of haymakers and getting tired when Chuvalo, riding out the storm, was betrayed by his over reactive cornerman Irving Ungerman, or else Foreman might well have joined Quarry as a late round Chuvalo knockout victim. He needed to go the 15 round limit with Peralta in their rematch, or at least earn a legitimate late round stoppage on his own, without the overreactionary intervention of referee Elmer Costa. The experience of decisioning Peralta over the championship distance for Leotis Martin's vacated NABF Title could have had huge ramifications for his defense against Ali.

Lennox, Wlad and company would weigh considerably less if the championship distance had not been abolished in favor of the gay, pussified 12 round limit. Those three amputated rounds set the men apart from the boys, as the Ring Record book makes clear, and poses a significantly greater demand on muscular endurance and aerobic conditioning. The use of muscle building steroids would become a liability, not an asset.

Just as there was no way Dempsey would beat Willard, Fulton, Morris, or Firpo, or Louis beating Carnera, Buddy Baer, Max Baer, or Abe Simon, or JQ himself beating Mathis, Lyle, Mac Foster, all time hardest puncher Shavers, 6'5" 233 pound Stamford Harris, or 170 pound Bob Fitzsimmons knocking out 6'3" 260 pound Ed Dunkhorst?

 

I would pick Foreman, but if the version showed up that was against Perralta, Quarry wins. Also, Big George fought a whole heaping of shitty fighters in the early 70's. It's easy to overestimate his true abilities. His game still had a lot of holes in it.

Nice play of the race card, by the way. Always good for entertainment.

 

Sure. But be did knockout Joe Frazier 2x, Ken Norton, and Ron Lyle. Those are 3 very good heavyweights of the 70s. I think he proved this worth.