George Foreman took the idea of self-improvement to nearly absurd extremes. He was not so much interested in transforming himself as he was in outright reinvention. Born poor and raised hungry—he remembered nursing tiny bites of a shared hamburger as a child, beginning a lifelong food fetish—he died famously wealthy and well-fed, perhaps best known as the grinning pitchman for a kitchen appliance that actually cooked those hamburgers.
But that was the least ironic of his many conversions. In between, he was a novice roughneck who somehow won an Olympic gold medal, a fearsome pugilist-turned-preacher, a high school dropout who became a centimillionaire entrepreneur. And, of course, the undisciplined wild man who became a heavyweight champion. Twice.
Foreman died on Friday at the age of 76, his family announced.
And even his two title reigns, the one thread that seemed to connect all his different lives, were crazily different, representing significant upgrades in personal realization. The first, bracketed by a stunning win over Joe Frazier and an equally stunning loss to Muhammad Ali, was characterized by cruelty, a practiced surliness almost as dreaded as his right hand. The second, achieved at 45 out of economic desperation, was less improbable for the 20-year interim than its comic underpinnings. Foreman, so feared before, was now so beloved, his jack-o’-lantern grin having long since replaced his scowl, that he was given his own sitcom immediately afterward.
Such insistent overhaul is primarily unexplainable. And even Foreman had little to say that was helpful beyond admitting his abnormal sensitivity to epiphanies. And, boy, did he have a lot of them: Whether it was the sudden silencing of sirens after he prayed for deliverance (he was hiding from police in a muck-filled crawl space when he abruptly gave up his violent ways as muscle for a Fifth Ward gang in Houston); or the public service announcement he watched while dodging education (spots by Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown convinced him to leave the streets and join the Job Corps, in which he first laced up gloves); or the eerie vision he experienced after a loss to Jimmy Young, turning him out of boxing in favor of curbside preaching. Foreman, alone among us, always found a compelling reason for change.
Of course, we know him on these pages primarily because of his boxing career, which was dramatic enough. It was certainly accidental, considering his ambitions as a Houston hoodlum were jail time and a scar—teenage bona fides. “I was a bad boy,” he’d say of those early days. He would have gotten much worse if he hadn’t succumbed to those public service announcements and been airlifted out of those mean streets. In the Job Corps, trainer Doc Broadus took him under his wing and channeled Foreman’s constant dorm brawling into something more acceptable.
Foreman was nearly an instant boxer. After scarcely more than a dozen amateur fights, he was an Olympian and a gold medalist. His performance from the 1968 Olympics was remembered almost as a corrective to the youthful revolt that characterized much of it; the picture of him waving a tiny American flag in the ring (even if he meant it as a slam at the judges, not necessarily as a show of patriotism) became almost as iconic as the gloved fists of John Carlos and Tommie Smith.
And then it was on to nearly instant fame and riches when, barely five years later, he crushed heavyweight champion Joe Frazier for the title. That fight, where he flattened the heavily favored Frazier six times in two rounds, established his credentials as a thoroughly efficient destroyer of men. Add to that his perpetual scowl—he had taken many of his public relations cues from stablemate Sonny Liston (who had done prison time)—and he was considered a brutal enough package that, by the time a fight was arranged with Muhammad Ali in 1974, it was reasonable to fear for Ali’s life.
The Rumble in the Jungle, as the Zaire promotion was called, instead became famous as an example of profound befuddlement. Instead of engaging with the bigger man, Ali rested on the ropes—Rope-a-Dope—and allowed Foreman to pound away harmlessly. Eventually exhausted, Foreman became the helpless target and, probably as much out of surprise as anything, simply tipped over—the first time he was ever floored—in the eighth round.
Although Foreman persisted in his career, his comeback was aborted following a loss to Jimmy Young in 1977. Foreman may have suffered heat exhaustion after that fight, or he may have enjoyed a spiritual visitation, as he claimed. In any case, it was one more of his epiphanies, and he quit boxing to become an ordained preacher with a small congregation in Houston, as well as a youth coach with a small gym there for children.
And it might have ended on that note, surprisingly uplifting, if he hadn’t gone broke and, long removed from boxing and any semblance of physical conditioning, returned to the ring, rebooting himself again. The comeback was considered a joke, and Foreman was shrewd enough to play it for laughs, becoming a kind of anti-George. He was full of grace and wit (he named all five sons George) and never without that grin. Even when he lost to Evander Holyfield in 1991, at the age of 42, he came out a winner, as marketers began to exploit his new popularity. And then, persisting yet again, after he won the title from Michael Moorer in ‘94, now 45, the offers rolled in.
Chief among them was a chance to partner up on an electric grill, its main attraction that a newly cuddlesome Foreman stood behind it, grinning manically, on infomercials. The success of that effectively ended his boxing career—his monthly checks were now upwards of $5 million, exactly what he made for his humiliation in Africa. By the time the manufacturer decided to cash him out—buying his name for $137 million—money had long since ceased to be an issue. And so had boxing. This small-bit hoodlum had become a business brand.
The mystery of all these competing lives baffled almost everybody who knew him. It wasn’t that he got rich or that he got famous (although few have gotten so famous, so many times). How could you possibly reconcile that determined delinquent with a philanthropic preacher, that scowl with a teddy bear, that 300-pound frame with a heavyweight champion? But Foreman had a lifelong yearning to be better, to be somebody, a yearning that was so simple and so powerful that it was a miracle in itself.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Two-Time Heavyweight Title Holder George Foreman Championed Transformations.