DAZN’s well-known broadcaster Ade Oladipo is facing scathing criticism on social media. A familiar face on Riyadh Season’s boxing events, Oladipo drew fans’ ire after he expressed his views on the late George Foreman as one of the sport’s biggest draws.

“That’s horrendous. That’s horrendous,” he said on BBC’s Punch Perfect podcast. “What? Because he (Foreman) can sell grills, all of a sudden he can fight?”

His comments, backed by co-host Emily Eubank, daughter of boxing legend Chris Eubank, came after co-host Liam Gough insisted on including Foreman’s name, based on marketability, among the show’s “Frankenstein GOAT,” a running bit where the trio builds a fictional ultimate fighter out of real boxers’ best traits.

To make his case, Gough pointed to how Foreman, alongside Muhammad Ali, played a central role in making their 1974 fight in Kinshasa, Zaire, globally known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” still one of the sport’s defining landmarks. But his co-hosts disagreed. Eubank argued the fight doesn’t even rank among the top 10 highest-grossing pay-per-view fights of all time, though that comparison is a little uneven since PPV as a format barely existed in 1974; the modern buy-based rankings only really begin in the mid-1990s. Oladipo, for his part, insisted the credit for elevating that fight into legend belongs almost entirely to Ali. 

“Muhammad Ali could have fought Joe Frazier there. He could fool anyone. It’s Muhammad Ali. ‘Ali boma ye’ [Ali, kill him]. I’d never heard anything about Foreman, that is all Muhammad Ali,” Oladipo argued.

Despite the disagreement over Foreman’s drawing power specifically, all three hosts still agreed he belonged among the sport’s all-time greatest punchers.

George Foreman comments put broadcaster in fans‘ crosshairs

As footage of the discussion circulated, plenty of fans took exception to what Oladipo said.

One user wrote, “40-0 Foreman with 37 finishes against Frazier, who split decisions with Ali, and a decision against Norton, and Foreman was a 4-1 favorite; no way that fight is the same with anyone else. How do they get paid to talk about boxing?”

Echoing the sentiment, another fan stated, “Boxing needs to be gatekept. People like this let Jake Paul in. The sport has too many guys like this & Bill Haney running around. The old timers are rolling in their graves seeing who’s involved w boxing at the moment.”

While his fights against Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and Ken Norton made him a household name in the 70s boxing scene, Foreman’s comeback in the 90s, when he became the oldest heavyweight champion, added another defining chapter to his legacy as one of the greatest boxers of all time.

What makes his case stronger is that he returned roughly ten years after he hung up his gloves following the 1977 loss to Jimmy Young.

A user added, “Grossly wrong … the reincarnation of George Foreman, Reverend Big George Foreman, was an INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR of #boxing. His numbers were huge, and his “Q rating,” his popularity as an athlete and celebrity, was off the charts. His grills were a reflection of his big box office. I know; I was one of the people paying him!”

Foreman’s first departure came after losses to Ali and later Young. However, instead of resting on his past accomplishments, he bounced back with a renewed belief in his faith and, more significantly, as a grill-making businessman. The move explains Foreman’s unyielding spirit, which few fighters show when going through setbacks.

A more measured take came from a fan, who said, “Back in 1991, only 16.5 million homes had potential access to the Foreman vs. Holyfield event on TVKO. 1.45 million households bought the PPV. The buy rate for the fight was 8.8 percent. That must be one of the highest buy rates of any pay-per-view event in history.”

The list of the top ten all-time highest PPV fights is dominated by Floyd Mayweather and Mike Tyson fights. Still, for 42-year-old Foreman to challenge a much younger opponent in Holyfield and attract an $8 million live gate and $55 million in PPV revenue stands out as one of the most remarkable achievements in boxing.

“I had to watch this twice to get my head around the fact they are trying to say Foreman had no marketability. He was (a) champ in the two golden eras of heavyweight boxing, arguably the second biggest star behind Ali. What the fuck are they talking about?” a fan offered a reality check.

To give Oladipo the benefit of the doubt, he may have simply meant that Foreman, while enormously popular, still needed Ali’s presence to turn any single fight into the kind of cultural event the Rumble in the Jungle became. Still, to most fans reacting online, the idea of Foreman as anything less than a genuine box-office draw doesn’t hold up, and with his death still relatively recent, his fights and his comeback story remain some of the most cherished chapters in boxing history.