Heavyweight champion of the world. George Foreman spoke the phrase so often in his life that it became a happy growl. He spoke it that way not just because he was proud of it, but because he could still hardly believe it. In his later years, as he said it, his blow-flattened face would melt into a broad smile.
Yet that title was a mixed bag, in truth. There was no college course to tell anyone how to carry it. In his case he felt the ghosts of Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, previous champions, rise back to life in him. He would walk into a room full of people and think, I am a man of men.
He certainly felt that way in 1973 when, with a knockout, he beat Joe Frazier for the title. He floored him in two rounds in less than five minutes. Frazier was a giant-killer but he, Big George, could punch as hard and viciously as anyone. His right fist had settled 37 pro contests by then, 33 by knockouts. People didn’t like him much. They called him a wrecking machine, and booed at his fights. He didn’t care. He was a bad fella, OK? He did his morning roadwork in company with a German Shepherd because no one else got on with him. But he was world champion now.
His technique was also more subtle than people thought. He had a good, quick left jab. Although he looked immobile, just waiting to land the punch, his long-arm tactics probed and pulled. As much as anything, it was his height that made opponents afraid. And many were very afraid indeed.
He held the title for almost two years before he lost it. The occasion was the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire, now Congo, perhaps the most famous boxing match in history. Sixty thousand people crowded in on that sweltering October night in 1974, and a billion watched on TV. His opponent was Muhammad Ali, a graceful, agile boxer with a big mouth. (“That all you got, George?” he would cry in his ear as they locked.) And Ali won. He vanquished him with a quick left and then a straight, fierce right, almost Foreman-style. And the title vanished away.
He had planned to have Ali, like Frazier, on the canvas in two rounds. When Ali lasted four, he was shocked. When he went to five, he was amazed. This was humiliation. Ali had a new trick, resting on the top rope and letting him punch him and punch him again until he was tired out. By the eighth round, George Foreman was no longer heavyweight champion of the world.
The loss of his title was worse than he could have imagined. He was not a man any more. For a fortnight he went to ground in a hotel in Paris, ashamed to show his face. He went on boxing, but after another stinging defeat three years later, to Jimmy Young in Puerto Rico, he decided to hang up his gloves for good.
It was a huge decision. Boxing was all he had. His fists had taken him from the Fifth Ward of Houston, Texas to the top of the world. Hitting people expressed what he felt, as a youth full of hunger and anger. The hunger was often the real sort, as his single mother struggled to feed seven children. One hamburger would do for all of them. Hunger fuelled his anger; outside the home he mugged and stole. His mother said he had too much of a temper to box. He ignored her, took it up at 17, and at 19 won Olympic heavyweight gold.
That was the best feeling he ever had, better even than the world title. He was briefly full of joy and benevolence. Boxing had sated his anger and was now undeniably his life. Could he ever live without it? In 1977 he determined to try. He had made millions with his fists, $5m from the Ali fight alone. A lot of it he had blown, but he had kept enough in a back pocket to pay for steak and potatoes. Besides, a new window had opened up for him.
After the fight with Young, stumbling back defeated to the dressing room, he had had an extraordinary experience. He was in the darkest place, in hell, or drowning in a deep sea with no boat or island near. Though he wasn’t religious, he started pleading with God, even offering his prize money to charity so as not to die. A loud voice replied: “I don’t want your money. I want you.” In answer, he became a street-corner preacher, then a minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Houston, and set up a centre for troubled youths. It gleamed with boxing rings, gloves and punchbags. But for ten years he himself did not even make a fist.
He turned out to be good at preaching. With no preparation, he just stood up and spoke. He was so affable and gentle that it was hard to believe he was the same man he had been before. But to do as much good work as he wanted to do, he needed more money. The solution was obvious: since boxing was an honorable profession, he should return to the ring.
In truth he had been wanting to for a while. That itch had not gone away. The fact that he was now really heavy was not a deterrent. He piled on the training, ten-mile runs rather than a lazy three, and took up a pasta-salad-and fasting diet. Then in 1994, to general astonishment, he beat Michael Moorer over ten rounds to become world champion again. He was 45, the oldest ever.
What a different champion he was now. He wore a blue apron and a jovial grin as he promoted millions of George Foreman electric portable fat-reducing grills. Well might he smile, when he had sold the rights to his name on them for $137.5m and got 40% of the profit from the sale of every one. All thanks to boxing.
At his mansion in Huffman, Texas, he indulged his fondness for animals. He had 18 German Shepherds now, plus horses and, at one stage, a lion and a tiger. More unexpected, though, was the screensaver on his computer. It showed Ali (now a friend) standing over him as he lay on the deck, stricken, at the end of their fight. He had his red shorts on. He had worn those shorts, though faded and not fitting so tight, when he beat Moorer 20 years later. There had been no stopping the once and future heavyweight champion of the world. ■