Who has more fame Muhammad Ali or Oscar De La Hoya?

Ok then we just had different experiences regarding Tyson and Foreman. My experience is that everyone I talk to knows Mike Tyson is a boxer. Hardly anyone I talk to knows that Foreman was a boxer. They all call him that grill guy. That's been my experience. Without some scientific poll done by Gallup or Pew we won't have a definitive answer but the answer based on my experience is that as a boxer Mike Tyson is extremely famous, but less so than Ali and Foreman is hardly remembered for boxing but well known for his grill. The answer based on your experience is obviously different. I guess these things happen based on where you live and it us you actually talk to (boxing fans, non-boxing fans, ethnic group, gender, social economic status, geographic location etc...).

 

I agree, at one point Tyson was in the same worldwide fame league with Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. Ali was probably beyond that with his anti war stance, converting and such. Others are mere sporting figures. For example people who follow NFL thinks it's huge, but I'm absolutely not interested in it and I literally can't name 1 NFL player and I hardly know what Super Bowl is. But if an NFL player punches Obama in the face I'll know his name. That's the deal with people outside the particular sport.

 

Can't say I agree. Tyson was - and is- a cultural phenomenon. From the video game to the movie to the cartoon, Tyson is a transcendent figure.

Foreman, frankly, became more famous for his grills than his boxing career. He never transcended the sport during his peak, and never got much mainstream recognition for winning the title the second time, unless you consider a spot on Arrsenio mainstream recognition, lol.

If you ask random people to name as many heavyweights as possible, you would hear, in order, "Ali" "Tyson" and "uhhh".

I'll bet Joe Louis would get more mentions than Foreman. Probably Frazier too.

 

Yeah that's what I was trying to say. There are people (for example women) who don't watch boxing AT ALL. But they know Tyson, and they know Ali. Without offending it seems people have a hard time thinking outside of their own social circles (boxing fans and casual boxing fans for example) and tend to view things in that way. I am guilty of that from time to time as well.

 

I'm being cognizant of that inherent bias when I say that Foreman is equally as recognizable a name/face and cultural phenom.

For the record, I was born in the 80's and very much sucked into the mystique of Iron Mike. I like watching Tyson's fights a lot more than Foreman's, find him a sympathetic figure (if deeply flawed) to root for in life in general, and rate him a bit higher than Foreman h2h.

I have every reason to have pro-Tyson bias in this argument.

Fact is, having spoken with septuagenarian ladies, people's grannies and the like - they still remember all the hype about the Rumble. They may not, however, necessarily have been "connected" enough 25 years ago to catch onto Tyson's buzz. Why should they have been? Men and children who lived through his rise, yes, for the most part you'd expect they'd be aware of Iron Mike. Any woman born during, say, the Korean war or prior, though? Absolutely no reason to expect they know who Tyson is. Ali vs. Foreman, however, is something they would have encountered lots of chatter from among the menfolk when they were in the flower of their youth (and in a time when boxing was still king of sports and thus unavoidable in terms of banter, in a way that it wasn't anymore in Tyson's era, though his infamy did help bring it back to close to what it had been, in the late eighties)

You have to remember - as much as Tyson has movies, cartoons, reality TV shows, documentaries, touring spoken word specials directed for television by Spike Lee, and the like - Foreman has the benefit of factoring into virtually all media relating to Muhammad Ali, piggybacking off the notoriety of The Greatest. Every fictional portrayal of Ali's life is going to include the George Foreman character. Nearly every documentary - barring those specifically narrowing in about his rivalries with Frazier or Liston - is going to extensively feature the RITJ and its build-up.

When you consider that his name is very closely attached to Ali's, probably his most famous opponent (with Frazier as distant a second as Norton or maybe Liston is a distant third behind Frazier) and he was crossover famous even before they fought as the feared guy smashing the division to pieces and favored to smash Ali himself, and had that curiosity status when he returned years later making him the kind of boxing headline that was by the 90's growing increasingly rare in outlets such as ESPN, and had the bible-thumping self-reinvention and televangelism, and the product endorsements, and being a commentator on HBO - among the most discussed even years after his tenure ended - well...

 

Oh, and I realize that mentioning his time as HBO commentator might again seem on its surface to be reverting to selection bias within the "boxing circle" - but really, I think you need to not go too far in the other direction of assuming that boxing (as much as it has undoubtedly become a niche sport), or at very least HBO WCB, exists in a vacuum and that of the untold HBO subscribers of the last few decades, none but diehard 'boxing people' ever flipped channels enough to be aware that famous George Foreman was a color analyst for big fights, along with "that guy" (Lampley) and "that other guy, the old guy" (Merchant). I watched the odd HBO WCB broadcast myself, in whole or in part, long before I became more than a casual fan of boxing. Not to mention HBO always cross-advertised its content, so people would see & hear clips of Foreman, Lampley & Merchant calling or discussing fights on promo spots in between watching movies all hours of the day and times during the week.

 

I don't doubt that you've had boxing conversations with a vast array of individuals encompassing different age groups ***es and races. I hope you do realize though that septuagenarians and octogenarians are but small slice of the population. Also the most important factor is that mentioned earlier by another gentleman. He alluded to our America centrist we are. An example I give are the immigrants in little siagon they inform me that both Tyson and Ali are well known back in Vietnam. These are some the many people I talk to that refer to Foreman as that grill guy. Also I've come across the same thing among Korean, Armenian, Thai, and if course Latino immigrants (whom I spend the most time with) in reference to their homelands and boxers. Of course none of this is scientific, and it's just my personal experience, but it is the basis for my opinion on Ali, Tyson, and Foreman's fame from boxing. Who knows which one of us is truly correct, as I said before a scientific poll conducted by reputable polling agencies might give us a clearer picture. But, then again it might not give us a global perspective.

 

I didn't think this forum could get any dumber, but this thread proves I was wrong.

 

It's not even close. Even women know who Ali is.

Outside of the USA and Mexico, nobody knows Oscar besides boxing fans. Most people know Ali though.

 

:good

When he was active, in his peak, his name might have rung a bell with the average person as "some kind of sportsman" - the same way Jose Canseco's would have even for people who didn't follow baseball, or the way Mayweather's or Pacquiao's does now. (though, unlike Ali, SRL, Tyson or even recent examples like DLH, both of them benefit from their fame breaking in the midst of the social media and celeb-culture over-saturation era...)

Since retiring and taking a backseat role as first the nominal figurehead and now, after Schaeffer's ousting, the actual hands-on honcho of GBP, his name is still very much on the lips of boxing fans but his overall fame has diminished a great deal. His reality show was a complete flop and canceled immediately (with almost the same format as The Contender, which starred Ray Leonard and was quite successful and ran for a few seasons), his music sucked, and he never parlayed his PPV box office draw status into movie roles or anything else that would help entrench him in the masses' consciousness as crossover star. The only mainstream press he got after losing to Pacquiao really was of a negative and embarrassing nature, with those fishnet pics...and even then it was "Hey, remember Oscar De La Hoya, the boxer? (maybe you do, maybe you don't) - anyway, he dressed like a GIRL! LOLOLOL"

 

Muhammad Ali was the most recognizable face on the planet Everyone knew Ali. He transcended boxing & sport as a whole. All I know is that after my marriage & births of my daughters my greatest moment in life I when I had the pleasure of meeting THE Greatest Muhammad Ali & shaking his hand
I was like a kid in a candy store I'd met my hero

 

I'm not sure about Leonard having more fame... Oscar is still relevant today and is part of pop culture. That's 23 years of having the spot light.. and it's not stopping. Leonard is a guest commentator if he's lucky. Foreman without the grill is also not as famous.

 

Leonard is a PBC commentator, hosted The Contender, has been on Hollywood Squares and **** like that a bunch of times.

Oscar is...who again? Relevant how? To us boxing fans, yeah, he's a big deal as the head of GBP.

For the mainstream public, though? Maybe they remember him being the most famous non-heavyweight of the late 90's and turn of the millennium period, but more likely they don't. If they're under 30, not a boxing diehard, and not Mexican-American (specifically Californian), he's probably outside the zeitgeist.

Leonard still has broader and longer-lasting celebrity. Walk into any bookstore, peruse the athletic section, and you'll see tomes upon tomes on Leonard & his three main rivals. Sure, a couple of volumes on DLH too, but not as many.

 

I'm from an Asian country where pro boxing is banned and not popular but armature boxing is well spread. I'm an amateur boxer myself

People here knows Ali n Tyson but not De la hoya. Its a fact since I use to ask around people to know how much they are into boxing.

Ali is more than Boxing.

 

Heck, boxers at my gym don't even know who Floyd is.