"when we were kings" ... how wrong a view

[TheOneIsHere2008]

George Foreman is a great boxer and a good man... Muhammad Ali wanted the title back that he never lost in the ring...That was his raison d'etre...That was the reason for his return. George Foreman was 40-0 with 37 knockouts... He had just finished turning Joe Frazier and Ken Norton inside out in successive order...Few boxers, and certainly few of his contemporaries would have been able to beat them that night...He actually had done a good job of cutting off the ring and making Muhamad Ali fight his fight...But Muhammad Ali summoned all the strength he could muster, all the faith in himself and his God that was his anchor, and what skill he had left and beat George Foreman:

As the great Cus D'Amato said " It is the mark of a great fighter when he has character plus skill because a fighter with character and skill will often rise and beat a better fighter because of it..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYg5eFvR ... re=related

Ali and D'Amato were beautiful together...If you have time wactch the youtubes...You can tell they respected one another and had a great rapport...

[TheOneIsHere2008]

'older' Foreman was also more composed...and did not seem to
burn out with frustration. Though I always look to the Peralta
fight and that shows how adaptive and talented as a game player
that 'young' George could be.

I think after blowing Norton and Frazier away Foreman was convinced
he could knock every man out and when he did not, well he was not
happy.

When he returned George was a very smart and wise man. Possibly
one of the sports smartest fighters.

I always recall seeing a young Foreman leaving an Ali fight
saying that he never liked to watch fights and found them
boring. Yet years later as we know Foreman became a true
student and teacher of the sport and even a damned good
colour commentator. That in itself is a progressive difference.

If you read about George Foreman when he first started boxing he wanted to box like Muhammad Ali as Muhammad Ali wanted to box like Sugar Ray Robinson...That's part of the reason Ali and Moore never worked out as trainer and boxer because Archie had his own ways of training and teaching as was his right... Anyway, Foreman told Archie Moore he wanted to fight like Ali, but Archie convinced George it was to his advantage to use his overwhelming punching power, make short work of his opponent, and go home...

[Ambling Alp]

I am glad that someone is finally giving Foreman some credit for the Peralta fight. Incredibly, he gets ripped for this fight from time to time. It was a pretty good performance for a guy who had been a pro for less than 6 months! It showed that he could employ decent boxing skills if he had to and had decent stamina.

Foreman is in his prime was the hardest hitting heavyweight champion of all time. He was aggressive and every opponent from the Peralta fight to the Ali fight couldn't deal with the relentless power.

"Old Foreman" did fight smart. He knew he no longer had the ability to throw nearly as many punches so he picked his spots. Considering his age, he obviously did remarkably well. He was impressive in blowing out Cooney, gave Holyfield some trouble, and of course knocked out Moorer to win the title.
He also lost Tommy Morrison and (atleast officially) lost to Shannon Briggs. He also barely beat Alex Stewart, and got a very generous decision against Axel Schulz. None of these guys would have last past the 5th round against the prime Foreman.

Old foreman was hard puncher (though nowhere near as hard as he was in prime) but he couldn't followup when he had an opponent hurt. He wasn't as good at cutting off the ring because he had no speed at all with his legs. He also had vurtually no ability to get out of the way of his opponent's punches.

Old Foreman was a great story, no question about it.
Old Foreman was the best 40 something heavyweight of All-Time.
Old Foreman wasn't one of the Top 50 heavyweights of All-Time
Prime Foreman was one of the Top 10 heavyweights of All-time.
Prime Foreman would have jumped all over Old Foreman and stopped him before the bell rang ending the 2nd round.

[Robinson]

I think the old Foreman had a lot of good qualities and strengths,
but some of his performances were tainted by lack lustre desire.

The early fights in Foremans career especially when he was a
green horn gets way over looked because people just think of his
destructions of Norton, Frazier and neglect to appreciate before
then he was perhaps more disciplined and less power puncher-
slugger minded...I think Peralta was a pretty clever and slick
boxer that certainly gave Foreman a good test, and had he
fought more people in the upper ranks Peralta would have
given them some tough times and upsetting nights.

Foreman as an older man had a lot better late stamina, but this
was perhaps at the sacrifice of speed and youthful zing.

The Morrison loss was an example fo Morrison being a very
smart fighter, not trying to bomb away with a gfuy that
as an older man had a damned iron chin and could counter
fire with heavy shots. He fought how Moorer should have
fought.

[man]

I am glad that someone is finally giving Foreman some credit for the Peralta fight. Incredibly, he gets ripped for this fight from time to time. It was a pretty good performance for a guy who had been a pro for less than 6 months! It showed that he could employ decent boxing skills if he had to and had decent stamina.

Foreman is in his prime was the hardest hitting heavyweight champion of all time. He was aggressive and every opponent from the Peralta fight to the Ali fight couldn't deal with the relentless power.

"Old Foreman" did fight smart. He knew he no longer had the ability to throw nearly as many punches so he picked his spots. Considering his age, he obviously did remarkably well. He was impressive in blowing out Cooney, gave Holyfield some trouble, and of course knocked out Moorer to win the title.
He also lost Tommy Morrison and (atleast officially) lost to Shannon Briggs. He also barely beat Alex Stewart, and got a very generous decision against Axel Schulz. None of these guys would have last past the 5th round against the prime Foreman.

Old foreman was hard puncher (though nowhere near as hard as he was in prime) but he couldn't followup when he had an opponent hurt. He wasn't as good at cutting off the ring because he had no speed at all with his legs. He also had vurtually no ability to get out of the way of his opponent's punches.

Old Foreman was a great story, no question about it.
Old Foreman was the best 40 something heavyweight of All-Time.
Old Foreman wasn't one of the Top 50 heavyweights of All-Time
Prime Foreman was one of the Top 10 heavyweights of All-time.
Prime Foreman would have jumped all over Old Foreman and stopped him before the bell rang ending the 2nd round.

smart post. but i have doubts about the last sentence. especially
young foreman was not the kind of guy that would take out oldF
in 2. two confident. oldF would just wait, get some on the chin
and occasionally stun with a counter hook. but i agree on your
analysis of the oldF's opponents and how youngF would have
done against them.

btw "prime" is quite difficult to determine with F. he was just 24
at the ali bout ...

which brings me to another thing that i disagree with: the age versus
youth argument. ali was 31. that was not really "age". and no ring
rust either, since the of the 3year break was already 3years before.
to me that was a next to prime ali. he didn't dance because he
decided not to, not because of age. that was two fighters quite near
their prime at the best of their game.

the whole situation is best illustrated by F's way to handle the loss.
his thing with several guys in toronto did not impress anyone in
the boxing world (at least i guess so). a smart boxer would have
known that and saved the effort (and the embarrassement).

[TheOneIsHere2008]

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17th, 1942...The match was held on October 30th , 1974...Muhammad Ali was thirty two years old, a scant seventy seven days short of his thirty third birthday... George Foreman was twenty four years old....

George Foreman came into the ring with a 40-0 record with thirty seven knockouts...He had just finished turning Ken Norton and Joe Frazier inside out in four rounds , something Muhammad Ali couldn't accomplish in a combined fifty one rounds... None of George Foreman's last eight opponents more lasted than two rounds before being put to sleep, literally or figuratively... He was a 3-1 to 4-1 favorite and not only were there worries he would beat Ali there were worries he would hurt him...

There is little dispute that an about to be thirty three year old Muhammad Ali was past his prime...His foot speed ,endurance and reflexes never returned to their pre-exile levels and his hand speed had suffered as well , although not to that level as the great Muhammad Ali hit George Foreman with twelve right hand leads in the first round...Throwing a right hand lead is almost an insult to your opponent because it takes so long to deliver and demonstrates the slowness of him...

Ali, himself, said he didn't dance because he saw when he tried to dance , Foreman was taking one step to his three and he felt he would tire himself out against a much younger man... Eight years is a big difference when one athlete is about to turn 25 and the other athlete is 33 .

Is short, past his prime Ali turned primeGeorge Foreman inside out and every which way but loose , and all the revisionism in the world can not take away what Muhammad Ali did on that humid, overcast evening in Kinshasha, Zaire...

[man]

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17th, 1942...The match was held on October 30th , 1974...Muhammad Ali was thirty two years old, a scant seventy seven days short of his thirty third birthday... George Foreman was twenty four years old....

George Foreman came into the ring with a 40-0 record with thirty seven knockouts...He had just finished turning Ken Norton and Joe Frazier inside out in four rounds , something Muhammad Ali couldn't accomplish in a combined fifty one rounds... None of George Foreman's last eight opponents more lasted than two rounds before being put to sleep, literally or figuratively... He was a 3-1 to 4-1 favorite and not only were there worries he would beat Ali there were worries he would hurt him...

There is little dispute that an about to be thirty three year old Muhammad Ali was past his prime...His foot speed ,endurance and reflexes never returned to their pre-exile levels and his hand speed had suffered as well , although not to that level as the great Muhammad Ali hit George Foreman with twelve right hand leads in the first round...Throwing a right hand lead is almost an insult to your opponent because it takes so long to deliver and demonstrates the slowness of him...

Ali, himself, said he didn't dance because he saw when he tried to dance , Foreman was taking one step to his three and he felt he would tire himself out against a much younger man... Eight years is a big difference when one athlete is about to turn 25 and the other athlete is 33 .

Is short, past his prime Ali turned primeGeorge Foreman inside out and every which way but loose , and all the revisionism in the world can not take away what Muhammad Ali did on that humid, overcast evening in Kinshasha, Zaire...

you did better homework on the exact ages for your post than i did for
mine. i take that.

on the right hand leads: i counted 7 in the first round. and many
of them came out of a very square stance of ali.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyR7n3A5abo

look at 2:45 of the clip, the first right hand lead. ali really prepared
that shot. that definitely had no "extra distance". in my opinion not
foreman's inability to see these was his mistake; i think they were
simply too fast and at least some of them had only jab-distance to
travel. his mistake was that he could not counteract ali's openness
with counter left hooks. foreman was a boxer with very limited
defense skills. just consider someone with defense skills like roy jones
or PBF being presented with just one of such right hand leads ...
(sure, they are no heavy weights ...).

the great achievement of ali was that he out-thought foreman. if
ever in boxing history it displayed clearly why people call it "science",
though i still think "sweet" is a stretch ... :).

i said it before. seriously. no revisionism here in terms of ali's
achievement. he did it clear and straight, deserved it and would
have done more or less the same at any other night. and would
have taken him out, even if the knock down had not been ruled
as a knock out.

[TheOneIsHere2008]

Respectfully, that's the point...Ali would have never tried a right hand lead on a good defensive boxer...He did it to get "into Big George's head" or "under his skin" The first punch that landed was a right hand lead...


If we round off their ages Ali was 33 and Foreman was 25...Foreman certainly had the advantage of youth...

As the great Cus D'Amato said " It is the mark of a great fighter when he has character plus skill because a fighter with character and skill will often rise and beat a better fighter because of it..."

I am not saying George is without character...He's one of my five favorite boxers...But he had never been pushed...Ali pushed him...

[John Galt]

toih wrote - "If we round off their ages Ali was 33 and Foreman was 25...Foreman certainly had the advantage of youth..."

Foreman and Ali were born in January, Foreman on the tenth in either 1948 or 49, his birth year has changed over the years, Ali on the 17th in 1942. Ali is a little less than 6 or 7 years older than Foreman. How could Ali have been 33 and Foreman 25?

In 1974, Foreman was still using 1948 as his birth year, so in October he would have listed as 26, Ali as 32. If we use 1949, which Foreman uses now, he would have been 25 in 1974.

[TheOneIsHere2008]

Res ipsa loquitur

The fight was hold on October 30th 1974.

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942

George Foreman was born on January 10, 1949

Those are facts. They are part of the public record. Birth dates don't move...That would defy the laws of nature...However, the recording of birth dates is subject to human error...

Muhamad Ali was seventy seven days away from his thirty third birthday ... He was a lot closer to thirty three year old than thirty two years old or thirty one years old as recently suggested..

George Foreman was seventy days away from his twenty sixth birthday...He was lost closer to his twenty sixth birthday

The birth date argument is a canard or red herring...If Mr.X's birth date is August 25th, 1938 he's sixty nine years old today...But for all intents and purposes, he's a seventy year old man...


For instance, today, Muhammad Ali is sixty six years old and George Foreman is fifty nine years old... That's a fact...

Muhammad Ali was approaching his thirty third year of life and George Foreman was approaching his twenty sixth year of life on October 30, th 1974. Both gentlemen were substantially closer to the celebrating their next birthday than they were to celebrating the one before...That's a fact...

Here is my informed opinion...

There are physiological differences between a thirty three year old and a twenty six year old man...If you don't believe that there is nothing I can do to disabuse you of that notion...

In my opinion and in the opinion of most of the boxing world Muhammad Ali was past his prime and George Foreman was in it...That was the prism through which the fight was viewed prospectively and is viewed retrosepectively...However there is nothing to stop a lone group of eccentrics from trying to rewrite history...They can not change the fact that a past his prime Ali turned George Foreman inside out:

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

-John Adams




P.S. I accept a modicum of responsibilty for the confusion...I incorrectly said George Foreman was essentially 25 years old when he was essentially 26 years old...As already stated, Ali was essentially 33 years old...Facts matter to me...They are my gods...

[John Galt]

toih, take a look at your previous post in which you claim Ali is 8 years older than Foreman. He was not. He was either almost 6 or almost 7 years older.

If you can show me how Ali was 8 years older I'm interested. If not you just made a math mistake. No problem.

[TheOneIsHere2008]

I made a math mistake...

The bottom line was Muhammad Ali was nearing his thirty third birthday (less than three months away) and George Foreman was nearing his twenty sixth birthday (less than three months away)...

[man]

for me that is settled. i would believe that most male boxeres reach
their optimal balance between strength, speed, ring intelligence and
stamina between 25 and 30. i guess it finally comes to the individual.
but if i had to look for a "fact" in this respect i would look at the average
age of people becoming world champion. i took this list as a basis:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0112818.html

the average age of people becoming world champion is 28.75 and i
would think that this is quite intuitive. so according to this foreman
was threeSomthing years below that, with ali being threeSomething
above that. but clearly it is individual "prime" that counts ...

in this bout it seems to me that the experience and ring intelligence were
the primary factors. i could imagine (though that is purest of speculations)
that a 24 year old ali would not have defeated a 24 year old foreman that
convincingly. more dancing could have proven dangerous against foreman.

whatever, interesting discussions in this thread. appreciate it.

[man]

...Facts matter to me...They are my gods...

you should check out quantum physics. "facts" can be weird
at times ... :)

[TheOneIsHere2008]

for me that is settled. i would believe that most male boxeres reach
their optimal balance between strength, speed, ring intelligence and
stamina between 25 and 30. i guess it finally comes to the individual.
but if i had to look for a "fact" in this respect i would look at the average
age of people becoming world champion. i took this list as a basis:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0112818.html

the average age of people becoming world champion is 28.75 and i
would think that this is quite intuitive. so according to this foreman
was threeSomthing years below that, with ali being threeSomething
above that. but clearly it is individual "prime" that counts ...

in this bout it seems to me that the experience and ring intelligence were
the primary factors. i could imagine (though that is purest of speculations)
that a 24 year old ali would not have defeated a 24 year old foreman that
convincingly. more dancing could have proven dangerous against foreman.

whatever, interesting discussions in this thread. appreciate it.

Your defintion of prime is a fair one and makes sense...If I was an athlete I'd prefer to be entering my prime or a bit before it than past it...

[man]

Your defintion of prime is a fair one and makes sense...If I was an athlete I'd prefer to be entering my prime or a bit before it than past it...

but by this standard "prime" stretches more towards thirty, since
it was the average of age when people gained (admittedly as well "re"-gained)
the title. it was not the average age of successful title defenses, which
would naturally be higher. i would think that the average age of a successfully
defending heavyweight champ over the last 120 years was about thirty or little
above that.

[TheOneIsHere2008]

Some random points...

1) For all the ring wisdom Old George accumulated Young George would have knocked him out within three rounds...

2) Young George wouldn't have lost to Tommy Morrison , Shannon Briggs, and needed a gift to beat a club fighter like Axel Schulz...Holyfield is still interesting... A cutesy fighter like Jimmy Young would have given Old George problems but a pre-Zaire George knocks out Young within two rounds...

3) Muhammad Ali was the underdog in their fight...There was not only concern that he might lose but that he might get seriously hurt...

4) All the obscurantism in the world isn't going to change the fact a twenty six year old man is closer to his physiological peak than a thirty three year old man... And everybody from Cus D'Amato to Bob Arum have opined that the post exile Ali wasn't the same fighter as the pre-exile one...

[Robinson]

The post exile Ali had his strengths, sure he was not
as youthful as his younger self..he still had
qualities that were lacking in his youth.

I dont see a post exile Ali being floored by Cooper
or Banks...

[TheOneIsHere2008]

He was knocked down by Chuck Wepner in his fight immediately after The Rumble...Most boxers get knocked down in their career...The great ones get up and come back to win the fight...

[Robinson]

Wepner was a big meaty man. Unlike a Sonny Banks
or a Henry Cooper.

[TheOneIsHere2008]

Wepner was a big meaty man. Unlike a Sonny Banks
or a Henry Cooper.

Ali was not even in his prime and Sir Henry Cooper was a European champion...The Ali fight was the first fight that Wepner , the journeyman, had the luxury of training full time for...

I know you gentlemen are desperate to make the battle between a soon to be twenty six year old George Foreman and a soon to be thirty three year old Muhammad Ali, a battle of two boxers in their prime but the facts suggest otherwise...

Foreman was thought to be invincible...If he was a cruise ship he would have been the Titanic...If he was a military barrier he would have been the Maginot Line...If he was a Indian chief he would have been Geronimo...If he was a general he would have been Robert E. Lee...

Muhammad Ali's defeat of him was nothing less than incredible...

[Robinson]

No they are just boxers, nothing more or less.

Ali went on to a pretty good showing against the
worlds heavyweight champion so, he must have been
close to his 'prime'.

No desperation here, I consider myself pretty neutral
on the Ali vs crowd....I aknowledge that Ali is easily
one of the greats, but at the same time I do not
subscribe to the notion of absolute supremacy that
you seem to.

What Foreman did show regardless of his career that
ended in 1977 is that he was a very inteligent man
who became a schooled master in the sport of boxing
losing to Ali was a part of this process.

I wish that the doco showed more balanced scenes
and was less a love in for the Ali camp.
Perhaps it should be titled "when Ali was a king" as
there is no "we" in it.

[TheOneIsHere2008]

Ali had passed his physical prime but had entered his emotional and spiritual prime and as I and Cus D'Amato have repeatedly said" It is the mark of a great fighter when he has character plus skill because a fighter with character and skill will often rise and beat a better fighter because of it..."

[Robinson]

Prime and peak is a myth.

[John Galt]

A 33 year old man who doesn't smoke, drink, or abuse drugs, who still trains, and is still motivated should not be past his prime. Lifestyle is a better indicator of conditioning than age. Age, by itself means little.