The heavyweight division of boxing has seen many greats, one of them being George Foreman, who had a long 30-year career and was a two-time world champion.
Foreman has a special record in his record, after in November 1994 he became the oldest heavyweight champion in boxing history, after knocking out Michael Moorer and winning the WBA and IBF belts, when born in Marshall, Texas on January 10, 1949, he was 45 years and 299 days old.
Foreman became champion 20 years after his last conquest in 1974, but in the newspaper The Sun, they remembered that after beating Moorer, and after he had never been afraid of anyone, for the first time he refused to face a rival.
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Foreman avoided a rival and vacated his titles
The mandatory challenger for Foreman‘s WBA belt was Tony Tucker, a boxer who was known for his powerful punches. He had already been champion in 1987 and, although he did not win, he did put Mike Tyson in trouble when just over two months later he took the title from him.
Tucker would later lose to Lennox Lewis in an attempt to become champion again in 1993, but when it came time to face Foreman, he came in with an intimidating four-fight knockout streak, something that for George was enough for him at 45 years old to take a justified precaution.
“They tried to make me fight Tony Tucker after I beat Michael Moorer and I remember looking at Tony Tucker and saying ‘mama didn’t raise no fool,'” Foreman told the Oxford Union in a 2016 talk, in which he added that he told them: “I’m not going to fight him, and they took my titles away. There’s people I’m not going to fight. That’s the good reason, I didn’t want to fight him. He was too tough.”
Foreman retired from boxing at the age of 48 years and 316 days, his last fight was against Shannon Briggs and he hung up his gloves with 81 fights, in which he only suffered five defeats.