Well…it’s not that hard a question. His first career was better. As venerable trainer and BoxingScene mailbag writer Stephen “Breadman” Edwards describes him, George Foreman in the 1970s was the “the most destructive fighter in the history of boxing. The strongest fighter in the history of boxing, the best puncher.”

A high bar indeed. “I think he was a more settled fighter when he was older, but there are some people who say he was better when he was older. That’s just ridiculous,” Edwards told BoxingScene. “He wasn’t a better fighter when he was older. He was smart, but there’s no way in the world George Foreman of 1973 would lose to the George Foreman of 1994.”

If Edwards’ extensive boxing knowledge isn’t enough to convince, try the numbers: in his first career, he was 45-2 with 42 knockouts in a span of under eight years. In his return, he went 31-3 with 26 knockouts in just over a decade. 

Young Foreman was certainly more active and powerful in his first career, and had better names on the resume, too. He stopped Joe Frazier twice, demolished Ken Norton inside two rounds, and had his classic slugfest with Ron Lyle. Those fighters had better pedigrees than older Foreman’s scalps like Michael Moorer and Gerry Cooney.

William Dettloff, a former senior writer for Ring magazine and the former editor-in-chief of Ringside Seat magazine, is a lifelong Foreman aficionado. Inspired to start watching and even boxing himself by seeing a Foreman picture in Sports Illustrated as a nine-year-old, Dettloff has watched and written about plenty of Foreman fights. 

Dettloff has also co-written a book with Joe Frazier, another late heavyweight great. “He said the only thing he regretted about his career was taking the rematch with Foreman. He said, ‘I never should’ve done that,’” Dettloff recalls. 

“George Foreman struggled with guys in the ‘90s he would have murdered in the ‘70s,” Edwards says. That said, Foreman did improve certain things in his second career, even if he didn’t become a better fighter overall. After his decade away from the sport, Foreman didn’t have the same speed, power, or explosiveness. But he was older, wiser, and more patient. 

Though he agrees the younger Foreman was a better fighter, Dettloff says Foreman was a better boxer in his second career – and had improved on other aspects of his craft, too.

“He was so much more measured, and relied so much more on his jab than he had in his first career. And he was very calm. That’s the biggest thing. He wasn’t calm at all – he fought very hard and very fast in his first career.”

Bruce Trampler, a longtime matchmaker for Top Rank, grew close with Foreman over the years and watched his development. “He didn’t have a great deal of amateur experience,” Trampler told BoxingScene. “He was basically a guy who clubbed you, and thumped you, and destroyed you. Hit and get hit.

“The second incarnation, he was more intelligent. He was a boxer who could punch, rather than a puncher who tried to box.”

At times, being a puncher at his core could get young Foreman into trouble. In his famous summit with Muhammad Ali in Zaire – watching it back, it’s surreal to see them sharing a ring – Foreman closed the distance rapidly, got Ali up against the ropes, and let his fists fly. Convinced that nobody could take his power by his two-round demolitions of Frazier and Ken Norton, both of whom had beaten Ali, Frazier bounced his best blows off Ali’s teflon chin and punched himself out. 

Edwards offers that he doesn’t think Foreman could have done anything else that night. “He was a young guy, he was 25 years old, he beat two guys who beat Ali in Norton and Frazier. He’s thinking, nobody can take my punches. Nobody can deal with what I’m doing to them. In his mind, as Ali sits on the ropes, he’s gonna kill him. 

“It’s easy to go back and say, ‘he shouldn’t have punched himself out!’ He didn’t think Ali could stand up to that. Nobody thought Ali could stand up to that. Ali turned out to be the greatest thing we’ve ever seen. Nobody knew that at that time, or Ali wouldn’t have been the underdog in the fight! I don’t think there’s anything [Foreman] could’ve done while it was happening, because he was infatuated with power, and he had every right to be.”

Dettloff believes the older Foreman would have lost a decision to Ali. How would the younger Foreman have fared if also blessed with the older Foreman’s patience? Now, that’s a question. 

“Yeah,” Trampler says simply when asked if Foreman would have done better in this hypothetical scenario. “Ali, he’d been there already. He had all the experience. Knocking out Joe Frazier is wonderful – who else did that at the time – but it didn’t make [Foreman] a better fighter.”

Foreman’s greater patience in his second career might even have improved his chin. 

“His chin in his first career sucked,” Dettloff says bluntly. “He was off-balance a lot, and he was so tight. Ali knocked him out, Jimmy Young knocked him down. He was off-balance because he was charging in, and tight, and exhausted. He had a magnificent chin in his second career because he was relaxed and on balance. 

“The shots he took in the Holyfield fight, the Alex Stewart fight … the punches George took in that fight as a 40-year-old man, and kept wading in with his hands down… it’s just astounding.”

While there’s little debate over which version of George Foreman was better, which of his wins was most impressive is a better question. Foreman’s destruction of Frazier is his best win, naturally – given Frazier’s astonishing pedigree and the degree of ease with which Foreman blew him out, it’s hard to top for Foreman or any heavyweight. But his win over Michael Moorer was more improbable, given that Foreman was 45. Both Dettloff and Edwards spoke about how perfect and unlikely that finishing right hand was. 

“He wasn’t even hitting hard at that point in his career,” Dettloff says. “He landed a lot of punches on Moorer in that fight and never hurt him until that punch landed. Moorer did not have a great chin at heavyweight at all. Knocked out by Holyfield, knocked down four or five times by Holyfield. Knocked out in the first round by David Tua. 

“It shows just how perfect that punch was. It almost makes me believe in Jesus, it’s so perfect.” 

“In the bottom of the ninth inning, he pulled it out,” Trampler chuckles.

Dettloff said that when he first saw Moorer fall, he thought the fight had been fixed. (“Nothing happens like that. In boxing or in life. I can’t think of another thing that’s that perfect. So I said it’s too good to be true, it can’t be.”) Only on replay did he see the punch connect dead center on the target and that Moorer’s senses had been stripped from him rather than voluntarily surrendered in a sham. 

Edwards calls the punch “probably the greatest punch ever thrown… I don’t want to just overstate it, but it’s probably the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in the boxing ring.”

Underrated relative to that exceptional right hand is Foreman’s tactical nous during the fight. Edwards observes that Foreman threw a wide, looping left hook to the body throughout, slowly budging and scaring Moorer into the path of the right hand. 

It’s not as clean and violent a performance as the Frazier or Norton wipeouts, but Foreman regaining the heavyweight championship at 45 years old is his most improbable feat of them all.

“Frazier or Moorer…you can put them in a hat and just pick one and you can’t go wrong with which one was the best one,” Edwards says. 

Trampler feels the same: “you take your pick. Your opinion’s as valuable as anybody’s.”

As for Foreman’s two careers, perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is just that – he had two careers. The fearsome aggression in his first career might have produced the best version of Foreman, but to unravel his single minded pursuit of knockouts and return with more patience and humility is arguably even more impressive. 

One thing’s for sure: George Foreman’s career won’t be replicated for some time. Either of them.