Question about Foreman-Frazier II: Never heard of this in any other fight

According to Howard Cosell’s commentary, Foreman and Frazier wore different sized gloves in their second meeting.

Apparently this was somehow negotiated beforehand.

Frazier wore 8-ounce gloves (which is what heavyweights wore in those days — not sure when they changed it so the upper weights use 10s, middleweights can be either 8s or 10s and below middleweights is 8s.

Foreman, per Cosell, was wearing 8 1/2-ounce gloves. Half an ounce isn’t a whole lot, but still, it’s so strange as to be unfathomable that anyone would agree to wear larger gloves than the opponent.

No explanation as to why or how this came about.

Does anyone have any insight?

 

We could be talking about two different things here.

The ‘puncher’s gloves’ are Cleto Reyes brand or a design based on them (which other companies copied) and that has to do with the distribution of the padding. They’re eight or 10 ounces but they have less padding in the knuckle area.

I’m seeing some accounts here of fights where people are saying the fighters chose two different sizes but I’d have to know what they weighed — nowadays above middleweight there are no jurisdictions where fighters have the option to wear eight-ounce gloves … has to be 10s. I’ve never heard of anyone below middleweight wearing 10s.

I’m not aware of anyone fighting a true pro fight (not an exhibition or pubic sparring) in anything larger than 10-ounce gloves so I’d have to see a link telling us how much they weighed if so.

At middleweight, theoretically one side could choose eights and the others 10s and both be OK with the choices.

And I’ve never, ever heard of any glove manufactured at 8 1/2 ounces.

 

Great find here. So Cosell was right. George had ginormous hands so maybe the Everlasts were too constricting or he didn’t like the fit of them.

 

Well they have to be of some make and manufacture that passes all standards of the commission and they have to weigh what they’re supposed to weigh. One could presumably have custom-fit gloves but generally nowadays it’s either contracted (you wear this brand, I wear that) or they bring multiple makes and models (so to speak) and each camp goes through and collects a fight pair and a backup pair (for high-level championship fights at least … at the club level, generally the commission assigns you the pair of gloves you’re wearing and delivers them to the locker room).

I can’t remember which of Big George’s comeback fights on HBO it was, but they showed him getting gloved and it took two people pulling and tugging on it to get it over his hand. It was almost comical. Probably stretched the glove (and padding) to its limits — basically it was like taking a plastic surgeon’s glove and stretching it over a canned ham or a frozen turkey, haha. Not a lot of padding between his knuckles and the target.

 

Probably the truest cliche of all: Necessity is the mother of invention.