{"id":126300,"date":"2025-09-09T23:36:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T23:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/126300\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T23:36:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T23:36:06","slug":"heavyweight-icon-says-george-foreman-is-not-top-10-best-of-all-time-he-was-lucky-to-be-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/126300\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavyweight Icon Says George Foreman Is Not Top 10 Best Of All Time: “He Was Lucky To Be Champion”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former long-reigning world heavyweight champion once blasted the credentials of George Foreman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Foreman\u2019s storied professional career began back in 1969<\/a>, just a few months after he became an Olympic gold medallist at the 1968 Games in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

He would go on to reign as champion on two separate occasions along the way, with the first of these triumphs coming in January 1973 when he emphatically stopped Joe Frazier in the second round of their clash in Jamaica.<\/p>\n

Foreman\u2019s second world title reign began 21 years after the first, when he dethroned the previously unbeaten Michael Moorer in November 1994 to capture the unified WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles and become the divisions oldest titleholder in boxing history, a record that remains unbroken to this day.<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the outstanding success that \u2018Big George\u2019 achieved, one man that isn\u2019t quite as impressed as many of the sport\u2019s fans and analysts is Larry Holmes, who reigned as the world champion for seven years between 1978 and 1985.<\/p>\n

In a resurfaced interview<\/a>, Holmes expressed his disbelief at Foreman being ranked at number 8 the top ten greatest fighters of all time by sportswriter Bert Sugar, claiming the win over Moorer to regain the belt again at age 45 was \u2018lucky\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what I\u2019m so happy to be here to hear this from Bert because I respect all fighters and I think I\u2019m a pretty good analyst myself when it comes down to fighting. How can he have George Foreman rated number eight? George Foreman couldn\u2019t beat Jimmy Young, he couldn\u2019t beat Tommy Morrison and he couldn\u2019t beat Shannon Briggs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knocked Michael Moorer out and, I\u2019m gonna say this, a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then, and that\u2019s what George Foreman found, an acorn because all night long he was eating right hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis face was swelled up taking punches all day long, he was getting beat up now let\u2019s face the facts, he was getting beat up and he didn\u2019t short his punches up like Bert said he did, he was throwing looping long right hands. He got lucky, I wouldn\u2019t rate him number eight.\u201d<\/p>\n

A clash between Foreman and Holmes never did end up coming to fruition, much to the disappointment of boxing fans around the world, although it was reported that the legendary American duo were in negotiations to face each other during the mid 1990s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former long-reigning world heavyweight champion once blasted the credentials of George Foreman. Foreman\u2019s storied professional career began…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-126300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}