Which of all his comeback fights were George Foreman's best?

That was a good showing. Saw it on USA network when it happened and I believe that was the last tuneup before meeting Holyfield. Anderson was nothing special but he could punch and George dropped him like a sack of potatoes. That was vitage comeback Foreman and a lot better than the one of later years who fought Stewart, Morrison, Schultz, Savarese, etc.

 

Holmes rarely trained or at least rarely trained hard late in his career. He always felt his jab would see him through.

 

If Foreman was so bad from 93-97 then how did he perform so well against a peak Briggs in his last fight where he should have been given the decision?

Also Foreman took out Bert Cooper within 2 rounds easily in 1989 - far better than a peak Holyfield or Moorer achieved

 

Because six to seven years earlier he would have done the same thing to Briggs that Daroll Wilson did.

 

Shannon Briggs : no one in the 1990s thought he was much good.

Then he became an old man, knocked out some flash-in-the-pan Russian or Ukrainian or Belorussian or Georgian or Azerbaijain or something whose name I can't remember (about 10 years ago) ... in the dying seconds of the fight .... developed a big mouth, and with American heavyweights becoming a dying breed, people started mistaking him for "a top HW fighter of the 1990s".

 

Couldn't have said it better myself. Briggs has a microculture of believers who think that his scoring back to back first round KO's over 16-12 journyeman makes him the second coming of Joe Louis.

 

And they forget that still young Briggs was KO'd by Darrol Wilson, schooled by McCline and even outboxed by the legendary Cedrick Fields

 

I was one of those believers. I was very high on Briggs, he was the next superstar. But beating 'the other' Jimmy Ellis does not make you star of 1990s Heavyweight boxing.

I could be crushed but still believe after the Wilson fight, all be it a belief 'in denial'. And after the fortune of the Foreman fight and brave but hopeless effort against Lewis; I still had a soft spot, after all I put a lot of emotional boxing investment into him. But even I snapped out of it after Fields and McCline, there comes a point where you have to cut your loses.

So anyone still believing in the cult of 'Shannon Briggs'; needs help; even the big man himself I am sure is just on an ironic wind up; trying to get one more big purse off the 'value' of his name.

 

think he looked great vs Qawi, he almost looked like his prime version....minus the hair.

Or was it Cooper?

I cant remember.

 

He looked good in a lot of his fights but some of the opponents were awful. Some of his better performances were-

George Foreman

KO7 Dwight Qawi (Foreman was down to 235 Lbs. for this fight and looked good physically, his timing was a little off but he got the job done. Holyfield and Foreman are the only two men who were able to stop Qawi)

KO2 Bert Cooper (Cooper would go on to beat Orlin Norris, give Ray Mercer hell, get stopped by R. Bowe in the 2nd round after fighting well in the 1st round, stop Joe Hipp, and eventually give Holyfield a scare before getting stopped in the 7th round)

KO2 GERRY C00NEY

KO2 Adilson Rodrigues (Holyfield had did the same about a year earlier)

L12 Holyfield (He fought very well but Holyfield fought a little better, what more could he really have done?)

KO8 Pierre Coetzer (Foreman dominated, he looked every bit as good as Bowe did vs. Coetzer... and Foreman fought clean, unlike Bowe)

KO10 Michael Moorer (Foreman actually looked awful until he stopped Moorer, he was in much better shape vs. Holyfield... but he won the HW World Title at age 46 in this one!)

W12 Axel Schulz (Schulz deserved it but Foreman fought better than most will remember, they should have fought again)

W12 Lou Savarese (a very good fight, solid performance by both but Foreman earned it IMO)

L12 Briggs (Foreman fought very well and got robbed)

To be honest from 1987-1997 he was probably at his best vs. Evander Holyfield.

 

George looked too stiff and mechanical against Holyfield. I actually think George looked more fluid and just better later in his comeback against guys like Savarese and Briggs. Granted, those two guys were not on Holyfield's level, so it would be easier to look good against them. But still: Foreman seemed to move better, punch better, and throw better combinations against those guys than he did against Holyfield. Against Holyfield, George looked incredibly slow and incredibly immobile. But again, the opponent had a lot to do with that. So, who really knows? But at age 47 and 48, George looked pretty good.

 

The problem was that George feasted on too many of those 'tune-up' types of fights and didn't fight enough (or any??) good, solid fighters on the way to a title shot. George went from blasting out D-level competition to challenging a prime, future great Evander Holyfield. The guys George feasted on did little to prepare him for such a skillful, fit champion. I know Foreman wanted to protect his unbeaten comeback record by avoiding any fighter with a pulse (and that made perfect business sense), but it didn't help him prepare to face a guy like Holyfield.

 

Yeah we've been through this several times before.

 

He was the first heavyweight to take a fully primed Evander the distance and managed to do so without gassing, being decked or sustaining any real injuries. While he lost the vast majority of the rounds, he still landed some meaningful shots which got Holy's attention and was widely applauded for his efforts when the affair was over. I really can't see how at 42 years of age and after taking 10 years off from the ring he could have done any better especially against a peaking great.