Boxing seems a smaller and darker world now. George Foreman has gone and, with his death, he takes a little more of the fading light and lost glory of the ring with him. My own life in boxing, which stretches across 55 years, can be divided into stages and all of them carry markers Foreman left in the dirt and dust of the fight game.
From the malevolent force he personified when he became heavyweight champion of the world to the lovable old grandad making hundreds of millions as the face of a food grill business, Foreman could be easily caricatured. But he was always more complex and interesting than his contrasting personae suggested.
I was 11 years old when, in January 1973, I first became aware of Foreman. Boxing had already taken hold of me because, in our white South African suburb, we were smitten by Muhammad Ali. Who else was as funny and skilful, as beautiful and brave? But boxing was like nothing else on earth. In 1971, in the Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden, Ali had lost to the mighty Joe Frazier. Hunched over our inky newspapers I devoured the reports of the buildup to Frazier’s defence of his title in January 1973 – against Foreman. Frazier sounded relaxed at the prospect of facing the brooding Texan who never seemed to smile.
“I’m doing it for the money,” Frazier said. “It’s that simple. George won’t have any trouble finding me. I’m going to be up against his chest.”
The bout lasted just four minutes and 35 seconds and Smokin’ Joe was dropped six times before the referee rescued him. But that fight also imparted a graphic insight into the cold-hearted chicanery of boxing.
Don King had listened to the epic Ali-Frazier fight from his prison cell in Marion, Ohio. He was electrified by the grandeur and money that could be made from boxing and, being an ingenious hustler, King found himself promoting Frazier less than two years later. He arrived at the stadium with Frazier in a limousine and, a few hours later, he left in the company of Foreman, the new champion.
King thrilled us when he brought Foreman and Ali to Africa the following year. The Rumble in the Jungle took place in Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of Congo] but we feared for Ali. How could he, at the age of 32, withstand the bludgeoning might of Foreman? Ali still made us laugh. “George Foreman is nothing but a big mummy,” he chortled, as he mimicked an embalmed monster. “What you white reporters got to remember is this: black folk ain’t afraid of black folks the way that white folks are afraid of black folks.”
Foreman, meanwhile, locked himself away in a heavily armed compound. When he did appear he looked even more threatening than the snarling German shepherd dog that walked alongside him. In the early hours of 30 October 1974 I listened to the fight in bed. Dread and excitement churned through me as Ali absorbed every ruinous blow before, near the end of the eighth, a voice echoed in disbelief from my tiny radio: “Foreman is down! Foreman is down!”
I was deliriously happy for Ali and all my fear and suspicion of Foreman melted away. He was just an ordinary man after all.
Years later, Foreman provided Thomas Hauser, Ali’s biographer, with a layered account of his real self: “There was a time when I was sort of unfriendly, and Zaire was part of that period. I was going to knock Ali’s block off and the thought of doing it didn’t bother me.
“But, to be honest with you, Ali was important to me. I remember being in junior high and walking home with a friend who had a record of Cassius Clay [as Ali was originally known] reading poetry. We listened to the record and I just about fell in love with Ali.”
Foreman also told Hauser: “He won fair and square, and now I’m just proud to be part of the Ali legend. If people mention my name with his from time to time, that’s enough for me.”
When Big George made his comeback in 1987, after 10 years of retirement, he was charming rather than surly. Foreman was also courageous and I rose in the early hours of the morning to watch him challenge Evander Holyfield for the heavyweight title again. He was beaten clearly but I admired his stoical will.
In October 1993 I met Foreman briefly in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was in the dressing room with James Toney, who was then a world super-middleweight champion and close to being the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet for a brief period. We had 90 minutes to kill before Toney fought Tony Thornton. The locker room was quiet and tense and then, out of nowhere, Foremen walked in. He was dressed in a tuxedo and his face was wreathed with warmth.
Toney, a former crack dealer, cut an imposing figure. But he almost melted as he bumped fists with Foreman.
“George fucking Foreman,” Toney said softly to me as the old champion left for his television duties at ringside.
Incredibly, a year later, in November 1994, I was up at the dead of night to watch a 45-year-old Foreman win a version of the world heavyweight title again – 20 years after he had lost it to Ali. It was a feelgood story but, to snobs of the ring like me, it still seemed something of a charade. Hugh McIlvanney wrote of how Foreman “took advantage of the incompetence and porcelain jaw of Michael Moorer … Foreman has the IBF belt around his expanding waist, but he is a legend masquerading as an athlete, a bloated giant who moves as slowly as the seasons.”
In 1995, on our honeymoon in America, my wife and I watched Foreman defend his title against Axel Schulz. At the end his face was swollen and dejected. Across the ring, his 22-year-old German opponent looked fresh and unmarked. For twelve painful rounds, the young man had thudded blows into the grandad. Schulz was not a great fighter but he was competent.
Foreman was too proud to even think about going down, but Schulz was a decisive winner – until the scorecards were read out. It was a split decision win for Foreman.
That ludicrous verdict belonged to the dark business of boxing – but it was not Foreman’s fault. He fought three more times and left boxing a year later. Unlike Ali and Frazier, who were both so damaged, Foreman seemed unscathed.
A few years ago I was also in the dressing room with Regis Prograis on the night he became a two-time world champion. I asked him to name the fighter he most admired. He chose Foreman.
“George was happy with who he was outside boxing,” Prograis said. “He had a bunch of kids, made a lot of money and seemed so fulfilled. He is a legend but we think of him enjoying his life most of all.”
