{"id":192097,"date":"2025-06-17T16:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T16:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/192097\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T16:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T16:20:09","slug":"heavyweight-legend-accused-george-foreman-of-ducking-him-he-wanted-no-part-of-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/192097\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavyweight Legend Accused George Foreman Of Ducking Him: “He Wanted No Part Of Me”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A retired heavyweight icon has accused George Foreman<\/a> of avoiding a showdown with him over three decades ago.<\/p>\n

Foreman exploded onto a bustling heavyweight scene at the end of the sixties, shortly after he captured an Olympic gold medal at the 1968 Games in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

He established himself as a household name in no time<\/a> at all and after five years as a professional he captured world honours for the first time when he knocked out Joe Frazier in their second round of their bout in 1973.<\/p>\n

Foreman went on to face Muhammad Ali<\/a> in their iconic showdown a year later, suffering the first defeat of his career to surrender his world titles to Ali in what is more commonly known as \u2018The Rumble In The Jungle\u2019.<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite locking horns with an abundance of generational greats, \u2018Big\u2019 George never ended up crossing paths with Larry Holmes at any point during his tenure, although there were rumours that the duo were in negotiations for a bout during the late 1970s followed by the mid 1990s.<\/p>\n

Speaking on All Access<\/a>, Holmes shared details of his failed negotiations with Foreman where he accuses \u2018Big\u2019 George of avoiding a bout with him despite his best efforts.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI keep telling them, I told George man I said \u2018Let\u2019s fight!\u2019, he didn\u2019t wanna fight me man. He\u2019s a nice guy [but] he can\u2019t carry the light around forever. The light will go out so you know he got what he wants, he done what he wants to do, he\u2019s happy and I\u2019m happy that he is happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish we could have fought together so we could have got a lot of people to shut their mouths \u2026 Everybody said \u2018what about George Foreman,\u2019 it ain\u2019t about that, George Foreman wanted no part of Larry Holmes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2018The Easton Assassin\u2019 reigned as the heavyweight champion for seven years between 1978 and 1985, but after he was dethroned by Michael Spinks he would continue fighting until 2002 and would win his 75th and final bout against Eric \u2018Butterbean\u2019 Esch, announcing his retirement from boxing a few months after, drawing the curtain on what was a glittering professional career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A retired heavyweight icon has accused George Foreman of avoiding a showdown with him over three decades ago.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-192097","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"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114699621072284535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}