111.- RESULTADOS
2. COMPARABILIDAD ENTRE LA MUESTRA Y LA POBLACIÓN
During his three-and-a-half-year march to the title, George Foreman had fought 37 times, an average of almost a fight a month. But in the seven months that followed his crushing victory over Frazier, Foreman’s battles had taken place in the courtroom, not the ring.
Foreman’s current troubles had originated back in 1971, when manager Dick Sadler
decided it was time to earn some big bucks fast. Accordingly, Sadler struck a deal with Marty Erlichman. Erlichman was the manager of superstar singer/actress Barbra Streisand, and he was also apparently a keen judge of boxing talent.
Erlichman offered Sadler a $500,000 promotional deal. Foreman would receive
$100,000 upon signing, then $100,000 in 1972, followed by $25,000 annually for the ensuing 10 years. Some small benefits were included as well, such as personal public appearances with Streisand. In return, Foreman would grant Erlichman half of all ancillary rights for his fights over the next 10 years.42
Erlichman was gambling that Foreman was indeed a future champion. Sadler, so it seemed, was gambling that he wasn’t. How else could an agreement so disadvantageous to his fighter be explained?
“The deal was made before I knew it was in existence,” Foreman said in 1973. “I never wanted to sign that contract. But Dick believed in it so much that even before he told me about it, he had an agreement and took some money. I told him I didn’t want to sign, but he said he had accepted the man’s money. He was so determined, that I signed. I think that Marty Erlichman just promoted Dick Sadler.”43
Once Foreman signed to meet Frazier, he demanded a revision of the contract. When the consequent legal wrangling reached a point of absurdity, a disgusted Foreman threatened to forego the title shot and quit boxing altogether.
After some last-minute persuasion by an old friend and advisor named Colonel Barney Oldfield, Foreman decided to go through with the Frazier fight. He also accepted a com-promise agreement that would give Erlichman 25 percent of all rights instead of the original 50 percent. After winning the title, however, Foreman went to court in an effort to get the entire Erlichman contract nullified.
Meanwhile, the title-winning triumph in Jamaica had opened a second can of worms for the new champ. It seemed that in order to get the Frazier fight, Sadler had agreed that should Foreman win, he would make his first defense under the promotional banner of Mrs. Ludene Gilliam of Houston. Gilliam wanted a Foreman–Frazier rematch as George’s initial defense. An enraged Foreman swore he had no recollection of any such agreement.
But Gilliam was able to produce signed contracts.
Thus, no matter who he fought in his first defense, Foreman was legally bound to fight for Gilliam. While the Gilliam and Erlichman cases wound their way through the court system, Foreman’s title sat in suspended animation in the same way Frazier’s had in 1971, though not for the same reason.
In an eerie parallel to his idol, Sonny Liston, Foreman possessed the biggest money-making title in all professional sports, but wasn’t able to squeeze a dime out of it. Liston had fought Patterson for short money, only to see his purses tied up in liens and escrow.
“It’s not anything like I thought it would be,” Foreman lamented. “I’m the champion, but I can’t get any fights.”44
With his career in a shambles due to Sadler’s inept management, Foreman refused to renew his contract with his mentor when their agreement expired in the summer of 1973.
“I’ll never sign another contract with anyone,” Foreman declared. “Dick will always be in my corner. But our agreement will be verbal.”45
Despite all the legal entanglements, rumors of names, dates, locations, and purses for a Foreman title defense persisted throughout the spring and summer. First there was Ali, then Norton after he upset “The Greatest.” Then the names of Quarry and Bugner were mentioned. But nothing came of any of the rumors, and the title remained on ice.
As well, interest in the new champion began to wane. Foreman’s behavior didn’t help matters. He wasn’t an extroverted showman like Ali, but then, who was? On the other hand, Foreman didn’t come across as a solid family man like Frazier. Soon after he won the title, Foreman divorced his wife and began an epic round of carousing and womanizing.
Although he was personable at first, Foreman’s financial and contractual problems caused him to retreat into surly silence. His hopes of becoming a popular champion were not being realized.
Once the leading contenders lost hope for an immediate title shot, they set about mak-ing money and jockeymak-ing for position in fights against each other. Ali and Norton signed contracts, and as well Ali had the Lubbers contract in his pocket far in advance of their fight date. Bugner signed with Frazier, and Quarry with Lyle and Shavers.
By the time Foreman emerged from his legal battles, his best opposition was already busy. But Foreman needed money, if not ring action. His legal fees and his expanded cham-pionship lifestyle required a heavy cash flow. Foreman had purchased the requisite clothes, cars, and a ranch in Texas where the livestock consisted of lions and tigers, rather than cattle. He needed to fight someone, anyone, soon.
Finally, Sadler announced that unless unforeseen circumstances intervened, Big George’s first defense would occur in Tokyo on September 1, against little-known Puerto Rican cham-pion Jose “King” Roman.
Roman wasn’t a Murphy Goodwin or Clarence Boone, to name two of the sorrier opponents Foreman had fought before meeting Frazier. But he wasn’t a Frazier, either.
Despite a credible 43–7–1 record, Roman was at best only a fringe contender, with no wins over rated heavyweights on his resume.
Beginning his career as a light heavyweight in New York City, Roman eventually moved back to his native Puerto Rico and built himself up to 190 pounds. But in the post–Patterson era, any heavyweight who weighed under 200 was “livin’ small.” Still, Roman was skillful enough to outpoint some of the division’s dinosaurs, including 6' 6", 250-pound Jack O’Hal-loran and 6'5", 225-pound Chuck Wepner.
Never one to kill himself training, Roman was a fun-loving, personable sort who, as Frank Iwama wrote in Sports Illustrated, “broke training rules at the drop of a glass.”
However, after an upset win over Basque strongman Jose Urtain in 1972, Roman real-ized his career could indeed go somewhere. Accordingly, he became more serious. “He’s hungry now,” trainer Al Braverman told anyone who would listen.
A pair of quick knockouts over cannon-fodder opponents Charlie Polite and Tony Ventura led Roman to a more important bout against former title challenger Terry Daniels.
Daniels had lost three consecutive fights since the Frazier disaster. Roman extended that slide to four with a 10-round decision on November 21, 1972.
A June 28, 1973, knockout of an unknown Elmo Brown lifted Roman to the position of challenging Foreman for the title.
Incredibly, Roman had been on the brink of a title shot before. His manager, Bill Daly, said they had been approached to fight Frazier for the championship in late 1972, but they turned it down on the money issue.
Given massive public interest in such summer spectaculars as Ali–Norton II and Fra-zier–Bugner, enthusiasm for Foreman–Roman was understandably low. In fact, the WBA refused to sanction the bout because they considered Roman an unworthy opponent.
The WBC, on the other hand, bumped the “King” up to the #10 position in its ratings, supposedly on the strength of Roman’s wins over Urtain and Daniels. But neither Urtain
nor Daniels was anywhere near the top ten, so Jose’s victories over them were scant grounds for advancement.
The ruling by then–WBC President Ramon Velasquez that shoehorned Roman into the top ten was reminiscent of Daniels’s great leap upward the year before. As such, it met with internal and external disfavor.
Madison Square Garden matchmaker Teddy Brenner called the decision “Terrible!”
He went on to say, “They can rate anybody they want, sanction a fight in a foreign country and then take a trip, with the tab picked up. Just a paid vacation. What do you expect from a bunch of politicians?”46
Likewise, Bob Turley, chairman of the WBC ratings committee, put in his two cents’
worth. He, too, felt that the WBC president raised Roman into title contention simply to get a free trip to Tokyo.
Others, however, were happy simply to see Foreman in action again, regardless of the identity or quality of his opposition. “I don’t care if Foreman’s fighting a one-armed Sumo wrestler,” Miami promoter Chris Dundee said. “Watch the interest in boxing boom.”47As if the Ali–Norton rivalry, Frazier’s comeback, and the resurgence of Quarry weren’t “boom”
enough.
Because his contractual problems still hadn’t been ironed out, Foreman was taking a legal if not a professional risk in fighting Roman. Ludene Gilliam actually filed an injunction in an attempt to stop the Tokyo title defense. Sadler said he and Foreman would ignore the injunction and go ahead with the fight.
Tokyo fans had been burned by foreign heavyweights once before, when Muhammad Ali and Mac Foster waltzed for 15 rounds in 1972. With Foreman–Roman, they would be burned again, this time with merciful quickness.
Roman and Braverman came into the fight with a sound game plan. Jose would use his superior speed to keep away from Foreman in the early rounds, then strike hard in the late going once the big man had worn himself out. That plan had worked well against Wep-ner and O’Halloran.
Unfortunately for Roman, Foreman was light years ahead of those two, who were, ironically enough, common opponents for both the title contestants. Roman had outsmarted Wepner and O’Halloran to win decisions. Foreman simply punched their lights out.
Although Roman’s weight of 1961⁄2was heavy by his standards, he appeared puny along-side the 2191⁄2-pound champion. As the fight commenced, it became painfully apparent that Roman had no business being in the same country as Foreman, never mind the same ring.
Big George wasted little time getting Roman against the ropes, where he unleashed his customary brand of mayhem. Roman hit the canvas at about 1:10 of the first round. Then, inadvertently or not, Foreman hit the challenger while he was still down, a clear violation of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.
Braverman yelled protests concerning the obvious foul. But the thought of Jose Roman winning the heavyweight title via disqualification never crossed Referee Jay Edson’s mind;
Foreman wasn’t even given a warning. Edson took heat from the crowd and Daly for not penalizing the champ for his infraction. “It’s hard to stop a punch once you have started it unless you’re a magician or something,” Edson reasoned. “It was not a foul.”48
The groggy Roman struggled to his feet, only to be floored again 20 seconds later. He got up again, and promptly dropped again under Foreman’s furious assault. This time, he stayed down for the 10 count, which came at the 2:00 mark of the round.
Afterward, the customary excuses flowed from the loser’s camp. In this case, however,
Roman’s people had a legitimate grievance. Foreman did hit Roman when he was down the first time. “That’s what put him on queer street,” Bill Daly complained. “He had dead aim at him with a hook.”49
Daly was overlooking what was obvious to everyone else: even without the extra punch, Roman would have been annihilated anyway. The Puerto Rican simply didn’t possess the endurance necessary to survive Foreman’s early-rounds offense.
Roman recovered from the beating and went on to a busy career as a trial horse. Fore-man, who stood to earn the easiest million dollars of his career for disposing of RoFore-man, soon learned that his purse would be tied up by the Ludene Gilliam lawsuit. The title he had won so convincingly from Frazier had become a millstone around Big George’s neck.
At the end of 1973, there was no shortage of legitimate challengers eager to relieve Foreman of his burden. Seldom had there ever been a year of such intense competition among the top fighters in the division. In the end, however, only two had been eliminated as title threats: Ellis and Shavers.
Jerry Quarry clearly enjoyed the best year of all. His manager, Gil Clancy, made dogged and persistent attempts to secure a title shot for his fighter. At every opportunity, he badgered Foreman and Sadler, hoping to embarrass them into signing a contract. But the Foreman team’s assurances were only verbal.
Frazier had shown he was still a formidable fighter. But his victory over Bugner did little to indicate that he could regain his title from Foreman.
Although Ali was able to avenge his defeat at the hands of Ken Norton, it was becoming painfully clear that the skills and reflexes that had carried him to the top in the 1960s were beginning to decline. If he had to struggle to beat Norton, what were his chances against a dreadnought like Foreman?
Norton’s two split-decision contests with Ali had established his position in the front ranks of the division. But there were some who continued to question the quality of his chin, an essential asset for any Foreman challenger.
Lyle was still in the running, but the Quarry fight had shown that he had a lot to learn in a short amount of time. He had a puncher’s chance against anyone. But he had difficulty landing decisive blows against fighters with any knowledge of defense.
Bugner had done well against Ali and Frazier, but the bottom line was that he’d lost both fights. He was still the youngest fighter in the top ten, though, and had plenty of time to continue his development.
The queue of deserving, competitive contenders was long and restless. In 1974, Foreman would have to fight or get off the pot.