The fall and fall of the great American heavyweight

As the tributes poured in, one of the many things we learned following the death of George Foreman was that his opponents were also his collaborators. We learned, for example, that it wasn’t possible to tell the story or explain the greatness of Big George without mentioning the following: Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and Michael Moorer. For the full picture, and a complete understanding, there were others too: Ken Norton, Ron Lyle, Jimmy Young, Evander Holyfield, Tommy Morrison, and so on.

Some of these men beat Foreman and some were beaten by him, one or two emphatically. Regardless, they all helped Foreman to build his legacy and were in turn enhanced by their association with him, however long or short.

Most of them, alas, are now dead, outlasted by Foreman in the greatest fight of all, yet a couple — that is, Holyfield and Moorer — are still upright and throwing, now relics from a time when Americans ruled the heavyweight division. Each of the collaborators mentioned, in fact, were American heavyweights. Not only that, such was the circuitous nature of George Foreman’s career, they happen to cover two distinct golden ages of American heavyweight boxing. For the 1970s, you have the likes of Ali, Frazier and Norton, and then, representing the ’90s, you have the likes of Holyfield, Moorer and Morrison.

Wherever Foreman looked, it seemed, American heavyweights were all he ever saw. Big ones, small ones, righties, lefties. No matter his age, and no matter the decade in which he competed, Foreman knew his greatest challenges would be countrymen, and he knew, moreover, that his target — the heavyweight champion of the world — would invariably speak the same language and wave the same flag.

Though never intended that way, Foreman’s first pro fight was against an American (Don Waldhelm), his last pro fight was against an American (Shannon Briggs), and everything in between served to highlight America’s dominance in heavyweight boxing. Back then the North American Boxing Federation (NABF) heavyweight title, on the line when Foreman beat both Frazier and Lyle, really meant something and was a belt a fighter actually wanted to win. After all, to be the best in America in those times was to be the best in the world.

Then, by the new millennium, everything changed. Evander Holyfield went from a rivalry with Lennox Lewis to a rivalry with John Ruiz, while Mike Tyson, himself a one-time Holyfield rival, was fresh out of jail and about to take his show on the road, flogging what was left of his snarl and stamina for a hefty fee. They both faded, in other words, as all of them do, only in this instance there were no young Americans coming up from behind to quicken the passing of the baton or tell them their time was up. Instead, as Tyson went to Britain to play the monster and Holyfield sought comfort in the arms of Ruiz for 36 rounds, the division moved on and looked elsewhere for both targets and inspiration.

Now the focus switched from Americans to a couple of Europeans, both of whom shared a surname and were dubbed the future of the heavyweights. One was called Vitali and the other Wladimir, and together the Klitschko brothers were going to not only take over the division, but take it in a new direction entirely. “Modern-day heavyweights,” they were called, and all this really meant was that they were bigger and presumably better than the heavyweights who came before them. Whereas Holyfield, a former cruiserweight, was no taller than 6-foot-3, and Tyson just 5-foot-10, the Klitschkos both surpassed the 6-foot-6 mark and weighed around 250 pounds. They didn’t just look different. They felt different. They sounded different. They were, in every conceivable way, something alien in a division long accustomed to seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices.

Still, despite the change, there was an occasional whiff of familiarity; a shot of nostalgia. Take Hasim Rahman, for instance. He shocked the world by dethroning Lennox Lewis in 2001 and for a brief period — between his fight-winning right hand and Lewis’ own in the rematch — there was a return to some sort of normality for American heavyweights. Everything, for a time, was back in its right place.

And yet, for all his good work in South Africa, Rahman was not a man of whom great things were expected, either as a prospect, contender, or heavyweight champion. Instead, the Rahman rise was more of a surprise than an inevitability, with his reign as heavyweight champion not only short, but a cruel reminder of both how things used to be for American heavyweights and how things had changed.

In the end, Rahman’s reign, which lasted all of seven months, was the boxing equivalent of seeing an old photo of a former flame. Albeit brief, it offered some pleasant feelings and sparked a bit of yearning, but ultimately had no bearing on one’s ability to return to that time, much less reconcile.

Two weeks on from the death of George Foreman, another American heavyweight, Richard Torrez Jr., will do that thing all American heavyweight prospects have done at some stage in their career: Step up. He does so knowing that many in the past have come unstuck in the process of trying and he also knows that no longer is it a given that an American heavyweight prospect will pass this test with flying colors.

His opponent on Saturday is one Guido Vianello, a solid 30-year-old Italian currently based in Las Vegas whose record reads 13-2-1 (11 KOs). Last year Vianello dropped a close 10-round decision against Efe Ajagba, another prospect, but rebounded from that loss to shock Arslanbek Makhmudov, who foolishly saw Vianello as a stepping stone rather than a threat. Makhmudov, the latest in a long line of scary Russian heavyweights, was duly stopped in eight rounds by Vianello, and now Vianello, with plenty of momentum, sees no reason why he cannot do something similar to Torrez this weekend.

Should Vianello succeed, it will mark a minor heavyweight upset. It would be considered minor rather than major not just because Vianello is a live underdog, but also because upsetting an unbeaten American heavyweight is not quite the feat of old. Now, if anything, the disrobing of an American heavyweight is as inevitable as their former dominance.

“This is something I’ve been working toward for a long time,” Torrez (12-0, 11 KOs) told Dan Rafael ahead of fight No. 13. “I want to prove that I’m the best heavyweight out there and show what American heavyweights are made of. When they offered me Guido, I didn’t hesitate. I’m ready to go.”

The idea of an American heavyweight feeling the pressure to “show what American heavyweights are made of” would have been unheard of back when Foreman flourished. In those days it was the other way around. In those days the rest of the world had to prove their worth at heavyweight; prove they belonged. The Americans, they had no doubts. Their confidence came from bodies and flags, the sheer volume of them. They did not need to look far for validation or proof of their worth. It was to their left. It was to their right.

Torrez, on the other hand, is, in 2025, one of only a few prominent American heavyweight prospects. Worse, there is a kind of generational trauma that now stalks him and his kind, for it is difficult, as an American heavyweight, to ignore how others have recently fared. Just a year ago, for example, Torrez was in competition with Jared Anderson for the tag of Next Big Thing in American heavyweight boxing, only for Anderson, in August, to come unstuck against Martin Bakole and lose his unbeaten record. In just five rounds Bakole managed to have everyone question their earlier lauding of Anderson and remind us again that heavyweight prospects, American or otherwise, are only as good as their matchmaker’s sagacity and their promoter’s patience.

Of course, such is the hunger for The Next Great American Heavyweight; staying patient is not always easy. In retrospect, Anderson, at age 25, should have perhaps avoided Bakole when he still had much to learn, but, keen to move fast, the dice was rolled. Similarly, people should not get too carried away with the form of Torrez, despite him winning silver at the 2020 Olympic Games and the fact that he has ended all 12 of his professional fights inside the distance (including a disqualification of Joey Dawejko).

The truth is, the amateur ranks are no longer the talent gauge of old, nor a breeding ground for American heavyweights. In fact, the last American Olympic super-heavyweight champion was Tyrell Biggs in 1984 and the last American Olympic heavyweight champion was Ray Mercer in 1988. Since then, the field has mostly been dominated by heavyweights from either the Eastern Bloc or Cuba, making Torrez’s silver-medal success in 2020 at least noteworthy. A sign of progress.

“I wish I knew where the next great American heavyweight will come from because right now the Russians are here,” said Don King during a 2006 publicity tour for Nikolai Valuev, his WBA heavyweight champion. “But I promise you, if there is one out there playing basketball or [American] football, I will find him.”

Almost 20 years on, we can safely say that King never did, with only Deontay Wilder, a former basketball player and WBC heavyweight champion, offering evidence to the contrary. Even Wilder, however, isn’t certain that transitioning is always the best way to go. “I am the exception,” he said to me in 2013. “Boxing takes more than just being tall or big. We’ve seen it with other guys who came over from football or basketball — when it comes down to it, they don’t have it. They don’t have that animal in them; that fighting instinct. The key, I think, is to get these guys before they go to basketball or football, not after the fact.”

Since the turn of the century there have, for all the epitaphs and collective doom-mongering, still been some notable heavyweight champions from America. These include the aforementioned Rahman and Ruiz, of Puerto Rican descent, Chris Byrd, and also the following: Roy Jones Jr., Lamon Brewster, Shannon Briggs, Wilder, Charles Martin and Andy Ruiz.

In addition to nationality, the other thing this group of men have in common is the brevity of their title reign, with only Wilder making more than two defenses of a belt. The rest experienced success fleetingly — here today, gone tomorrow — and even Wilder, who accrued 10 defenses, was never at any point considered the No. 1 heavyweight in the world.

As for the American heavyweight prospects, a similar pattern emerges; the hype intense but ultimately short-lived. In this category you can find men like Michael Grant, perhaps the American heavyweight prospect to end all American heavyweight prospects, and also Dominick Guinn and Joe Mesi, with whom Torrez, the latest, has been compared.

In the case of Grant, his hand was held to 31-0 before fighting Lennox Lewis for the world heavyweight title in April 2000. By then he had been troubled only once, against Andrew Golota in his previous fight, and just barely got through that experience unscathed. It came as no surprise, therefore, when Lewis dropped Grant three times in the opening round of their fight and finished him in the second.

A year later Grant was beaten again, this time inside a round by Jameel McCline. Then, in 2003, he was stopped in seven rounds by Dominic Guinn, a 21-0 American prospect and The New Michael Grant.

Guinn, smaller than Grant but less stiff, was understated as far as American heavyweights go, but someone in whom a lot was invested. In March 2004, he appeared on the cover of “The Ring” alongside Mesi, the other big American heavyweight prospect, and Britain’s Audley Harrison, accompanied by the headline: “Who Will Replace Lewis, Tyson and Holyfield?”

Of those three cover stars, Guinn’s bubble was the first to burst, popped by hardscrabble heavyweight Monte Barrett shortly after Guinn’s cover shoot. “I fought three undefeated guys back-to-back, two of them so-called American prospects,” Barrett recalled. “I should have been 3-0 [against them], but I was 2-1. I fought Mesi, Guinn and [Owen] Beck. They were something like 75-0 combined, but that didn’t matter to me. They hadn’t been where I had been. They hadn’t been tested like I had. I took them all to places they hadn’t gone before and didn’t want to go and I exposed each of them. Guinn and Beck both sank and Mesi knew at the end that he was lucky to get the decision. None of them were the same after fighting me. Look at their records. You’ll see what happened.”

Sure enough, Guinn, after losing to Barrett, went on to lose five and draw one of his next 10 fights, while Mesi’s next fight against Vasiliy Jirov, a former IBF cruiserweight champion, was even tougher than the one Barrett felt he was fortunate to win. Again, Mesi benefited from a close 10-round decision, but the damage inflicted by Jirov left him in a far worse state than he would have been had he simply lost. Rather than derailed, you see, Mesi’s promising boxing career was now in danger of ending on account of an MRI scan which indicated he had suffered at least one subdural hematoma during the fight. Now, for Mesi, there was a fight of a different kind. Now he had to fight just to be allowed to fight.

The following year Mesi, his attorneys, and three doctors went before the Nevada Athletic Commission to argue that Mesi’s hematomas had healed and that he was “in no more danger than any other boxer.” However, the Mesi appeal was denied by a 5-0 vote, with his suspension prohibiting him from boxing anywhere in the United States under the premise of the full faith and credit clause. This ban remained in place until Mesi’s Nevada boxing license expired at the end of 2005. It was then, as an unlicenced boxer, he looked elsewhere for permission to fight, eventually finding it in 2006.

Coming to his rescue, for want of a better word, were boxing commissions in Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Arkansas and Michigan, all of which were happy to grant Mesi a license and allow him to fight. So, fight is what he did. He fought four times in 2006 and then another three times in 2007, winning each of those three fights inside a round.

After that, Joe Mesi never fought again. He retired with a perfect 37-0 record and became almost suspended in time, neither champion nor fraud, forever a prospect. It is for this reason, perhaps, that “Baby” Joe is still remembered and referenced while the others, those who once held a nation’s hope only to then drop it, are ridiculed, no sooner anointed than discarded, forgotten.