How George Foreman found Jesus Christ and what stopped him from delivering the knockout punch against Muhammad Ali

Tributes flowed in from the boxing world with Mike Tyson saying Foreman’s “contribution to boxing and beyond will never be forgotten”. It’s an utterly fascinating life: at 15, living in the rough neighbourhood in Texas, he had become a mugger but found boxing to free himself from a life of crime, but it was the same sport that would induce another big life moment.

In 2019, he told The Indian Express about that life-turning moment.

Back in 1977, he was in the change room, having lost to Jimmy Young. “I was in a pool of sweat, blood, my face was swollen when I heard a voice, ‘You might as well die now’.” It was his own voice. The dark thoughts wouldn’t stop. “I couldn’t shake them off.” The blood trickled down his temple, “like a crown of thorns”. He began to babble. His team of handlers huddled in fear. “It were the passages from the Bible and I suddenly shouted out, ‘Jesus Christ is coming alive in me! Hallelujah! I am clean. Hallelujah!’ I felt like I was born again. The old Foreman died that day,” he said.

Pent-up rage 

That old Foreman was a tough, unrelenting boxer, who often seemed like he was looking to kill his opponents. “Yeah, a pretty nasty lil man,” Foreman laughed. “It was all pent-up rage in my childhood, this and that. Even my first biggest sporting moment hadn’t gone down as I had imagined.”

He won the 1968 Mexican Olympics gold as a 19-year old and waved the USA flag in the ring. But it was the year when black sportsmen were famously protesting against racism. The American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos had won medals and raised their fists in a Black Power salute. “I had become an enemy when I returned. I still remember my friend who said, ‘how can you lift the flag that way when brothers were doing their thing?’ That’s when it hit me, an Olympic champion and an outcast. I began to turn within, against the world, and it was easy for me to become the guy who everyone loved to hate’.

The Boxing writer Norman Lewis once wrote about the young Foreman: ‘He didn’t as much hit, but executed’.

Taking down Joe Frazier   

The great Joe Frazier would cop it in a heavyweight title bout billed as the ‘Sunshine Showdown’ in 1973 in Kingston. Foreman, the challenger, won via technical knockout in the second round to dethorne Frazier. Foreman detailed how he intimidated Frazier in the face-off moments before the first bell.  

FILE PHOTO: Boxers Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, raise fists at launch of film Champions Forever exploring their lives London. (Reuters)

“I was trained by Archie Moore for that fight and he was a mean fella; told me to stare at Joe and not move my face until I saw my face in Joe’s eyes. You know what that means? This is before the fight of course, and Joe was taken aback at the rage in my eyes I think. I shouted, ‘Shut up, don’t say another word’. And I didn’t even hate Joe; he had shown nothing but respect towards me, but that’s how I was those days. If he had shouted back, it would have been fine, instead, he walked away saying ‘you shouldn’t have told me to shut up’. That was a mistake; he shouldn’t have been so polite. And so I whupped him in that fight.”

But Frazier was not going to just roll over. Like a kids’ inflatable punching bag, Frazier came bouncing back each time he hit the canvas.

“They were crazy times. And Joe I hit him down five times but he would get up every time. Amazing. I knew he wasn’t going to give up and I told my men, “allright, I am going to kill him, that’s the only way to stop this fight. Luckily the sixth time he went down, they stopped the fight.” Foreman was 23, lacking “a true friend or moral direction”, and he knew he could kill anyone in the ring.

It was then Mohammad Ali entered his life in that famous fight in Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1974. “I had holed up at the Intercontinental hotel, hired 25 guards. It was Ali’s country; he was in the zone. I could feel everyone wanted me to lose. My rage kept increasing. I loved Ali in his later years, you know, he is one big warmhearted baby. Not in Zaire, though.” A bout of laughter escaped.

Ali’s rope-a-dope technique and legendary jabs got the better of Foreman.

“I kept pounding him with my punches; he had just one real offensive thing — that lightning-quick left jab and at times right, and even in the fight I was left wondering  ‘huh that’s quick’. But I kept pounding him but he just would cover himself up with his gloves, wriggle around on the ropes and survive to the next round. I will tell you about this one moment now that I still remember. Probably in the fourth round, I had just punched his neck and I knew it had hurt him. I needed just one more blow, the punch that should have ended the fight when from the corner of my eye I saw a ‘friend’ at ringside, right in my eyeline. He was screaming, ‘he hit him behind the neck, he is cheating’. My own friend. I was so shocked that I couldn’t land that blow.”

Then came that moment in the 8th round. As Foreman tried to pin him on the ropes, Ali bounced to his left. “Ali was still quick, you see! I was caught a bit off balanced as I turned and that’s when he gave me the one-two left-right jabs. Since I was leaning into him, and he was bouncing off the ropes, the punches had a whole lot of meat behind them. And as I went down, I remember thinking, “Boy I am going down!’. I think Muhammad was as surprised as I was!’

That night at Zaire, though, was a whole lot different from the defeat a few years later at Jimmy Young’s hands. “Anger, hate had been sucked out of my life. I went to my mom’s home, hugged her. I lived with her and one day when her friend came I recounted the whole tale of what happened. It was then my mom told me about a Bible story about Cornelius who saw an angel. It was a biblical experience. The lord’s giving you a calling.” And that’s what happened.

But 10 years later in 1987 at the age of 38, he would return again to the ring, this time with a shaved head and clean shaven face. “I needed the money for my youth centres that helped poor kids in troubled neighbourhoods. No one believed me that I could fight again; I wasn’t that lean mean machine but I pounded myself back into shape, and this time I was fighting for a cause. For the first time in life, I had a reason beyond myself.”

At the age of 45, in 1994, he defeated Michael Moore to become the oldest world champion ever, 20 years after he had lost the title to Ali.

“I celebrated it by becoming the face of George Foreman Grill!’ Thunderous laughter. Instead of a fee, he obtained a deal on sale profits; it’s estimated that 100 million Foreman grills have been sold worldwide. Foreman, the mean boxer, was long dead. The loveable champion had been at it for a while. And now he was the gregarious loveable family man who sold the lean meat fat machine. “And I was loved! That’s the only message I have for anyone – love and faith.”