George Foreman once admitted that he avoided a showdown with a former world heavyweight champion during the later stages of his professional career.
‘Big George’ had a career to remember, winning the world heavyweight championship on two occasions prior to his permanent retirement from the sport back in 1997, shortly after he was beaten by Shannon Briggs.
Foreman’s crowning moment came in January of 1973 when he blasted out Joe Frazier in the second round of their showdown in Jamaica to capture the WBC and WBA heavyweight titles with a memorable performance.
His second reign as heavyweight champion began in November 1994, 21-years after the first, when he stopped countryman Michael Moorer to capture the WBA and IBF titles and become the oldest heavyweight champion of all time.
In an interview with Oxford Union, Foreman admitted that he actually refused to face WBA mandatory challenger Tony Tucker as he claims ‘TNT’ would have been ‘too tough’ of an opponent for him at that stage of his career.
“They tried to force me to fight Tony Tucker after I’d beaten Michael Moorer and I remember looking at Tony Tucker and saying ‘momma didn’t raise no fools’.”
“I’m not fighting him, and they took the titles. Some people I’m not going to fight. That’s the good reason, I didn’t want to fight him. Too tough. I’ve got to tell the truth.”
Tucker reigned as the IBF world heavyweight champion back in 1987 although the American’s reign would last just 64 days, the shortest in the history of heavyweight boxing.
