George Foreman was one amazing guy. Actually, he was two amazing guys. The second was a great guy. The first... less so.
George Edward Foreman was born on January 10, 1949 in Marshall, Texas, about 150 miles east of Dallas, 20 miles west of the Texas-Louisiana State Line, and 40 miles west of Shreveport. In 2015, George, former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw, and actors William Shatner and Henry Winkler, all already old men, traveled the world together, for an NBC miniseries titled Better Late Than Never. Most viewers knew they were contemporaries, but not that they were close friends. And yet, despite being identified with Houston, Foreman was born not that far from Shreveport native Bradshaw.
He grew up in the Fifth Ward of Houston, then nearly all-black, but now about evenly divided between black and Hispanic. Other notable natives include Congressmembers Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland, rap group Geto Boys, and baseball star Carl Crawford.
He was 1 of 6 siblings raised by his mother, Nancy, and her husband, J.D. Foreman. But, alone among his siblings, he was born before Nancy and J.D. were married. His younger siblings, in their Texas accents, called him "Mo'head." He thought they were saying he had a big head. It was a long time before he found out that his biological father was a man named Leroy Moorehead.
He later admitted that this is why he named all 5 of his own sons "George": "My sons are going to know who their father is."
He admitted, years later, that he was a bad kid. He dropped out of school at age 15, and made money by mugging smaller kids. At 16, he saw an ad for the Job Corps, and talked his mother into signing him up for it. He got his GED, and trained to become a carpenter and a bricklayer.
He learned to box, and in 1968, at the Olympics in Mexico City, he followed in the footsteps of future Heavyweight Champions Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali (then named Cassius Clay) and Joe Frazier, and won a Gold Medal.
After winning the final match, he walked around the ring, holding a small American flag. He was highly praised for this, with sportswriters thinking he was trying to contrast himself with the "Black Power Salute" of sprinting medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and the basketball boycott led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then named Lew Alcindor) and Elvin Hayes. George said it wasn't true: He wasn't even thinking about that. He was just proud to be an American and a Gold Medalist.
On December 18, 1969, the day I was born, George Foreman climbed into the ring at the Seattle Center Coliseum, against Gary "Hobo" Wiler. The fight was meant to go a maximum of 10 rounds. It didn't make it to the end of the 1st round. George was now 13-0 as a professional.
On January 22, 1973, he was 37-0, and he got his shot at the Heavyweight Championship of the World. His opponent would be Frazier, who was 29-0, and already thought to be one of the greatest fighters who ever lived. It was at the National Stadium (now named Independence Park) in Kingston, Jamaica.
In what was known as the Sunshine Showdown (despite taking place at night), Foreman dominated from the opening bell. The rule mandating the fight be ended in the event of 3 knockdowns in 1 round was waived for this fight. Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, who had also worked with Foreman, was seated at ringside, and, halfway through the 1st round, could be heard on ABC Sports' broadcast yelling, "Frazier's hurt!"
Sitting next to Dundee, Howard Cosell tried to tell the ABC audience what Dundee had said, but couldn't finish it, because Foreman delivered a knockdown blow: "Angie Dundee, Ali's trainer, right next to me, is saying it. You may hear it... Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! The Heavyweight Champion is taking the mandatory 8-count, and Foreman is as poised as can be in a neutral corner!"
Frazier got up at the count of 2, but took the 8-count, and resumed. With 16 seconds left in the 1st round, Foreman knocked Frazier down again. He got up. Just before the bell rang to end the round, Foreman knocked Frazier down for a 3rd time. There was no "saving by the bell": Had Frazier not gotten up, it would have been over then.
It should have been over then. Instead, referee Arthur Mercante, who had refereed the 1st Ali-Frazier fight in 1971, let the 2nd round begin. Frazier was knocked down a 4th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 5th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 6th time. Only then did Mercante stop it. Foreman was the Champion.
In his next fight, on September 1 at Budokan in Tokyo, Japan, Foreman knocked Puerto Rican fighter José "King" Roman out in the 1st round. Next up, on March 26, 1974 in Caracas, Venezuela, Foreman knocked Ken Norton out in the 2nd round.
Roman had never fought Ali. But, now, Foreman had destroyed the only 2 men to defeat Ali as professionals. Yet Ali wanted to fight him to regain the title. Ali was talking his usual trash, but most people thought he would lose. Indeed, there were some who feared that Ali would be killed in the ring. For a promotional video broadcast on ABC's Wide World of Sports, Ali stuck his finger and his face in the camera, bragging about how he was once again going to shock the world. Foreman just calmly said, "I'm gonna kill you." Then he smiled, to show that he wasn't serious about that.
But, at 40-0 (as opposed to Ali's 44-2), and 25 years old (in his prime, as opposed to Ali being 32), Foreman looked like an unbeatable monster.
Built in 1952 under Belgian rule as the Stade Roi Baudouin, the site of the fight was renamed Stade du 20 Mai (for May 20, the anniversary of the founding of Zaire's ruling party) in 1967, and Stade Tata Raphaël (Father Raphael Stadium) in 1997, after the death of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
Through a months-long psychological campaign, including practically the entire black population of the continent of Africa in his favor and against the equally black Foreman – he had done something similar to Joe Frazier, who was puzzled by it: "I'm darker than he is!" – Ali had gotten into Foreman's head, just as he had done to Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, and just about everybody else he'd ever fought.
The referee was Zack Clayton, who had played in baseball's Negro Leagues, and for one of the great pre-NBA all-black teams, the New York Renaissance Five.
Ali fooled them all. People who say he just leaned against the ropes in his "rope-a-dope" strategy, and let Foreman tire himself out with punches, are fools. I've seen the tape of the fight a few times, and my opinion never changes: Ali got in a lot of punches, enough to win every round except for the 2nd and the 6th.
Foreman would later tell an interviewer that, at the end of the 6th, Ali yelled at him, "Is that all you got, George?" And Foreman had to admit, "Yup, that's about it."
In the 8th round, backed up against the ropes, Ali managed to turn an exhausted Foreman around, toss a few jabs, and knock him on his can. Foreman tried to get up, but he ran out of time, and Ali was the winner by a knockout. He proved that he really was "The Greatest... Of All Tiiiiiiiime!"
Ali was on top of the world again, the most beloved man in the world. Foreman was... he didn't really know where he was. He trained for a comeback, but didn't fight again for over a year. In 1976, he went to Las Vegas to fight Ron Lyle, who had been beaten by Ali the year before. It was an amazing fight, with each man knocking the other down, before Foreman knocked Lyle out in the 5th round.
He got a rematch with Frazier, at the Nassau Coliseum on June 15, 1976. Smokin' Joe had lost his 3rd fight with Ali the previous October, and seemed spent, so it didn't help Foreman's imagine much when he knocked Frazier out in the 5th. He won 3 more fights. On March 17, 1977, he went into the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and lost a unanimous decision to Jimmy Young. He was only 28, and at 45-2, he hardly seemed done as a fighter.
But what the crowd, and the TV audience, and boxing fans around the world didn't know was that he became ill in his dressing room after the fight. He was suffering from exhaustion and heatstroke, and stated he had a near-death experience. He spoke of being in a hellish, frightening place of nothingness and despair, and felt that he was in the midst of death.
Though not yet religious, he began to plead with God to help him. He explained that he sensed God asking him to change his life and ways, whereupon he said, "I don't care if this is death: I still believe there is a God!"
He stopped fighting, and became an ordained minister, initially preaching on street corners before becoming the minister of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Houston, and devoting himself to his family and his congregation. He also opened a youth center.
As sportswriter and boxing broadcaster Larry Merchant put it, "There was a transformation from a young, hard character who felt a heavyweight champion should carry himself with menace to a very affectionate personality."
He married 4 times, before marrying Mary Joan Martelly in 1985, a marriage that lasted for the rest of his life. He had 5 sons and 7 daughters. As I said, he named all of his sons George Edward Foreman, like himself. Fortunately, they all have nicknames: George Jr. is Junior, George III is Monk, George IV is Big Wheel, George V is Red, and George VI is Little Joey. His 7 daughters were named Courtney, Isabella, Georgetta, Michie, Freeda, Leola and Natalia. No, he didn't name them all Georgetta or Georgia, or variations thereof.
At one point, when Red was a baby, the 1st 5 Georges did a Doritos commercial together. The problem was, Georges V, IV, III and Jr. ate the entire bag, leaving Big George with nothing, and, using the classic line of a boxer who's been unfairly beaten, said, "I was robbed!" It a parody of the Trident chewing gum ad, talking about how many dentists recommended it, the narrator said, "IV out of V George Foremans agree!"
At any rate, Big George had become a better man, a champion at life for a lot longer than he was a champion in boxing. And if that had been the end of the story, it would still have been an amazing story.
*
But the story got better. When F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "There are no second acts in American life," he could not have foreseen George Foreman.
In 1987, at the age of 38 -- an age at which many boxers have never retired and just kept at it, or had retired and come back at least once -- George returned to boxing, to raise money for his church. Discovering that he still had some punching power, he kept at it. He won 7 straight matches, and got a matchup at Caesars Palace outside Las Vegas with Dwight Muhammad Qawi, a former Champion at the Light Heavyweight and Cruiserweight levels. George won by a 7th-round TKO. His comeback was no longer a joke: He had a major name on his revived record.
Over the next year and a half, he went 11-0. Early in 1990, he was paired up with Gerry Cooney, who had given Larry Holmes a tough title defense in 1982. The fight was set for Convention Hall (now named Boardwalk Hall) in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was billed as "The Preacher vs. the Puncher" and "The War at the Shore." But Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, who'd had George as a guest, noted that George was 41, and Cooney, while just 33, hadn't won a fight in nearly 4 years, and called it "Two Geezers at Caesars." (The Atlantic City version of Caesars is 2 blocks away.) George knocked Gerry out in the 2nd round. Gerry never fought again.
After 4 more wins, making him 69-2, and 24-0 in his comeback, George got another shot at the title, facing Evander Holyfield at Boardwalk Hall on April 19, 1991. It was billed as "The Battle of the Ages": Foreman was 42, and Holyfield was 28 and very much in his prime.
Holyfield won: One judge had it as close as 115-112, but the others had it as 116-111 and 117-110. Nevertheless, Foreman went the distance, didn't get hurt, and didn't embarrass himself. Lots of people, myself included, thought he had proven his point, and that he should stop before he did get hurt.
He didn't stop. His next fight was against a former NFL linebacker named Jim Ellis. People began to wonder if George had taken so many punches to the head that he thought he was fighting Jimmy Ellis, a contender from early in his career. George knocked him out. He won a close decision over Alex Stewart, a Jamaican who had given Holyfield a tough time, but had gotten clobbered by Mike Tyson. He knocked out South African fighter Pierre Coetzer. In 1993, at the Thomas & Mack Center outside Las Vegas, he lost a decision to Tommy Morrison.
Still, George wouldn't give up. With the governing bodies for boxing once again disagreeing on who the real Champion was, he signed to fight WBA and IBF Champion Michael Moorer on November 5, 1994, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena outside Las Vegas.
Moore was not considered a great fighter -- he'd won the title 6 months earlier, in a controversial majority decision over Holyfield -- but it didn't matter: He was about to turn 27, while George was 45. The oldest Heavyweight Champion ever had been Jersey Joe Walcott, 38 when he was knocked out by Rocky Marciano in 1952.
Joe Cortez was the referee. A member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and a former Golden Gloves Champion from Harlem, New York City, he refereed over 900 fights in his career. This would be his 5th title fight in 1994 alone. Angelo Dundee, who had worked with both Ali and Foreman, was with Foreman this time. He wore the same trunks he'd worn against Ali in Zaire, 20 year earlier to the week.
George's strategy was to let Moorer fight his usual fight, while waiting for him to slip up. He felt that if he was able to wait, Moorer would leave himself open for a combination that would allow George to knock him out.
Moorer controlled the pace of the fight from the beginning and kept winning rounds. George took a lot of punches, and his left eye swelled, nearly shut. But he stayed on his feet. At this point, the only fighters ever to knock him down were Ali, Lyle and Young. Holyfield hadn't done it. And only Ali had knocked him out.
Still, after the 9th round, the judges had it 88-83, 88-83 and 86-85 in Moorer's favor. And with the fight set for a maximum of 12 rounds, time was running out. Before sending him out for the 10th round, Angie told George it would take a knockout to win.
George hit Moorer with a body punch that slowed him down, giving George the chance he needed to land some combinations. He finally caught Moorer with a right on the jaw, and Moorer fell flat on his back. Not until Cortez's count reached 5 did Moorer move. At 8, he tried to push himself up. He couldn't, and Cortez reached 10. At 45 years, 9 months and 26 days old, 20 years and 6 days after he'd last held the title, George Foreman was the Heavyweight Champion of the World.
This was also the year that George did something that made him richer and more famous than boxing did: His claim to have succeeded in a return to boxing by eating healthy, which didn't seem to make sense as he was a bit fat, led to him teaming up with Salton, Inc., which was working with Michael Boehm. He was an inventor who had created an indoor grill that cooked on both sides at once. He didn't get his name on the product, but he got as much money from it as George did, selling it through commercials for "The George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine." Everyone just called it "The George Foreman Grill." Even my mother bought one.
Five months after winning the title back, George defended it against German fighter Axel Schulz. It was a close decision, and the IBF ordered a rematch. George wouldn't give him one, and was stripped of the title. He fought 3 more times, the last a close decision to Shannon Briggs in Atlantic City in 1997. Finally hanging up the gloves for good at the age of 48, he was 76-5 -- 31-3 in his comeback.
In 2015, he (then 66 years old) and actors William Shatner (84) and Henry Winkler (70), and quarterback-turned-football analyst Terry Bradshaw (67), all close friends with each other (though most people didn't know that), got together for a special project for NBC. Better Late Than Never showed them traveling together to Asia for a 1st season, and then Europe for a 2nd season, and how they reacted to these different cultures. (A running gag was Shatner getting the others to try exotic food, often odd body parts of various animals.)
The European trip, in 2016. included a visit to Lithuania, from which Shatner's Jewish ancestors had come. But it was also the homeland of boxer Jonas Čepulis, who had competed for the Soviet Union, and lost to George in the heavyweight final at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Sadly, Čepulis had died the year before, but George got to meet his family, and pay his respects at his early opponent's grave.
In 2022, he competed on the U.S. version of The Masked Singer, as "Venus Fly Trap." He sang "Get Ready" by The Temptations, but was eliminated. He may have knocked Joe Frazier out, but he couldn't sing like him.
George Foreman passed away yesterday, March 21, 2025, in Houston, surrounded by his family. He was 76 years old. He lived two very colorful lives, one troubled, one glorious.
