Marciano Frazier wrote:Ambling Alp wrote:Well, I'm glad you don't hold what Foster did above 175 against him when rating him as at 175. It really is common sense. I was staring to think that there a special "Bob Foster" law.
Foster could do things that were effective against guys at 175 that weren't against bigger fighters.
Most importantly, his power wasn't nearly as devastating against against bigger men. He also usually had less of a height and reach advantage against heavyweights than against light heavyweights.
This is really fairly simple. He wasn't able to use his major strengths against heavyweights. However, that doesn't diminish what he did at lightheavyweight. He had those strengths against lightheavyweights.
I agree that Foster couldn't "fall back on his crutch" against many heavyweights. However, my point is that he could against light heavyweights.
Some guys adapt better than others when moving up in weight.
Archie Moore was a great lightheavyweight as well. However, he lost to worse lightheavyweights than Foster had several close calls as well, was decked several times. A great lightheavyweight would have a serious chance against Moore.
At 175, a Foster-Moore fight is a pick 'em. If there is no weight limit, than I would go with Moore. That's my main point.
I don't know that it
is quite
that simple. An underlying point I am suggesting, here, is that it may be possible even at light heavyweight for an opponent with the right skills and know-how to exploit the same weaknesses that prevented Foster from succeeding at heavyweight. For example, as you discuss, Foster was heavily reliant on his height/reach and power (which both became much smaller advantages when he moved up in weight)- because of his heavyweight exploits, it seems evident that Foster did not have a great deal to fall back on when these advantages went away. Now, if he is facing someone. even at light heavyweight, who is very good at taking away opponents' height and dealing with their power, I think these heavyweight fights are very informative and do have what would have to be negative connotations about Foster's chances in such a match.
As for Folley-Williams-Machen vs Baker-Valdes-Satterfield (Which is not really on topic, but anyway):
The Williams-Satterfield fight is meaningless. Williams took the fight literally at the last minute. He didn't prepare at all for a fight. For all we know, he didn't have his normal trainer, his normal equipment, hadn't been in the gym for awhile, just ate a meal, etc. Even if he didn't have any of those problems, just the fact of taking a fight at the last moment you aren't going to be mentally prepared.
Satterfield was knocked by I believe 13 different guys. That's just embarrassing. Valdes and Baker also lost way too often. Take away Valdes win over a fading Charles and you don't have much. (This the part when Brocton lists heavyweights mediocre guys they beat and makes a big deal about it.) They weren't the best contenders of their era. They were are all overrated and apparently still are by some people.
Machen and Folley all had some good wins. Agree that Williams doesn't have a lot of quality wins but atleast he seldom lost to ordinary fighters like Satterfield, Baker, and Valdes often did. None of these three were legends but they were pretty good.
Which of Machen and Folley's wins distinguish their resumes as being better than Valdes' or Baker's? Machen's best wins would be: Hurricane Jackson (who Valdes also beat), Valdes (who was past his best), Mike DeJohn (who Valdes also beat), Doug Jones (who was a light heavyweight and who you would dismiss if he were on an early '50s heavyweight's resume) and what could be seen as a rather green Quarry. No, frankly, I don't believe Machen has a better resume than a Valdes or Baker- maybe not even as good. I admit that he does have something going for him, though, in that he didn't have as many ugly losses as some of the other guys being discussed here.
Folley, in turn, has maybe a little better resume, with wins over Machen, Cooper, Jones, Chuvalo, and a green Bonavena, and on the second tier Cleroux and DeJohn, but if you're adverse to ugly losses, he's not your man, as he also
lost to the likes of Cooper, Jones, journeyman Young Jack Johnson, Johnny Summerlin and
Moore KO victim Alejandro Lavorante. In large part, these guys seem to get credit for strength of resume by virtue of having fought in the same era as Ali. There's a sort of "trickle-down" effect at work, here; guys who fought in Marciano's time period tend to have their resumes poo-pooed, while ones from Ali's are pretty much automatically accredited with having faced great opposition and having numerous big wins to prove their pedigree, even when this is not the case. In reality- and you should agree with me on this if you objectively examine their records- guys like Folley, Machen and Williams (especially Williams) have pretty padded records and relatively shallow resumes when it actually comes to beating top fighters of their eras. On the other hand, guys like Valdes, Baker and Satterfield have uglier win-loss averages, but by and large this is a result of the fact that they were actually mixing it up with the other top guys on an extremely consistent basis, and in a sort of trade-off for the sparkling records their successors would boast, they do, in fact, have deep resumes (though people tend to scoff at this claim, at least in large part because it's the "Marciano era"). I absolutely believe, for example, that it is a reasonable claim that Jimmy Bivins (even an older one), Joe Baksi, Coley Wallace (twice), Rex Layne (three times), Nino Valdes (twice), and George Chuvalo- all wins of Bob Baker's- constitute a winning resume at least as strong as any of the late '50s through '60s guys we've brought up here.
There is a reason why Moore fought many heavyweights in the late 1950's but none of these three. (Though he found the time to fight journeyman heavyweight Howard King 5 times.)I don't think Moore would have beat them and he knew it.
Well, gee, Folley fought Howard King three times himself. Why do you assume that if a fight between Moore and a given top heavyweight didn't happen, it must be because Moore was doing the ducking and not the other way around? Have you looked through the kind of opposition Williams and Folley were fighting through most of the late '50s? You're not talking about some kind of dream team by a long shot, here; in fact, by and large, you're talking about a long string of ham-and-eggers, while Moore was at least facing gatekeepers at heavyweight and top contenders in defending his light heavyweight title.
Think about it: you're a young top heavyweight in the late '50s through early '60s, and there's a fellow around who is an extremely old light heavyweight, who already cleaned up on about half the top heavyweights of the previous generation and is still successfully defending his light heavyweight title and battering any heavyweights who will get in the ring with him. The guy is very old and relatively small, yet still extremely capable and dangerous. Think, then, from a risk/reward standpoint- if you should win, your win will be derided as picking on an extremely old smaller guy, and if you should lose, to much of the public it will be like a millstone around your neck to have been
beaten by an extremely old small guy. Unless you're extremely confident you're a champ and can take him out (though even then it won't be good for your public image), the wise choice is to stay the heck away from the guy. Given Archie Moore's track record- the guy was fighting anyone and everyone from clear back in the mid-1940s into the mid-50s and was even fighting future Hall-of-Famers through the last three fights of his career- it seems extremely presumptuous and unfair to assume that
Moore was ducking
someone else.
As to whether he would have beaten them, I would be confident in Moore beating these guys at his best (c. 1949-56), but he was slowing up some by this stage. Even still, Moore did as well or better than these guys did against pretty well every common opponent you can muster and is superior in resume, consistency and longevity to all of them. Even into the '60s, Moore brutalized Alejandro Lavorante within a year of Lavorante's KO over Zora Folley. Certainly a fair examination of his career indicates that- at heavyweight, not in some general sense- Moore was a superior fighter overall to any of these three, all of whom were vulnerable to defeat by journeymen, gatekeepers, and lesser contenders within that division, while Moore was astoundingly dominant over the field of heavyweight journeymen and contenders, though he fell to the absolute cream of the crop.
