George Foreman, whose illustrious boxing legacy encompassed an Olympic gold medal, a commanding ascent to the heavyweight crown and a remarkable loss in the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle,” before mounting an extraordinary comeback to seize the title at 45 and transform into a beloved spokesperson for his signature Foreman Grill, passed away on Friday at 76, according to an Instagram post by his family.
Long before his entrepreneurial triumph, Foreman’s championship journey began with one of boxing’s most memorable commentary moments.
“Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!”
A wayward teenager who abandoned education at 15, Foreman transformed his circumstances after enrolling in the Job Corps and mastering carpentry and bricklaying. He gravitated towards boxing “merely to prove to my mates I had courage,” Foreman penned on his website. “Subsequently, 25 matches and twelve months later, I emerged an Olympic gold medallist.”
Subsequently, Foreman clinched victory in his first 37 professional bouts to secure a championship match against Joe Frazier, the overwhelmingly favoured undisputed champion, in “The Sunshine Showdown.”
Howard Cosell’s electrifying commentary in the 1972 classic mirrored the boxing community’s astonishment as Foreman outclassed Frazier with a second-round TKO after flooring the champion six times, compelling referee Arthur Mercante to halt proceedings.
In his first two defenses, Foreman established himself as a dominant champ with early finishes of José Roman and Ken Norton. That laid the foundation for one of the most revered bouts in boxing history.
The 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” between Foreman and Muhammad Ali was billed to be the greatest sporting event of the 20th century and delivered by every metric. Set in Kinshasa, Zaire, in front of 60,000 fans, the fight became famous for the arrival of Ali’s trash-talking poetry and rope-a-dope defense en route to Ali’s eighth-round knockout.
The bout was estimated to be the most-watched live television broadcast in history and inspired the 1996 Academy Award-winning documentary “When We Were Kings.”
But while Ali became immortalized as boxing’s icon, the loss marked a fork in Foreman’s career. He wouldn’t fight another professional bout for two years, and despite knocking out Frazier again in a 1976 rematch, Foreman announced his retirement in 1977 at 28 years old after a loss to Jimmy Young.
Foreman later said he became extremely ill after the loss, suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion in his locker room. There, he found God.
“That night in the dressing room after Jimmy Young, I was so tired and so hot, and I just couldn’t keep fight, fight, fighting for my life,” he said. “Then I heard a voice in that dressing room that asked, ‘Do you believe in God? Why are you ready to die?’ I had just been talking about God. I didn’t really believe in religion. I started fighting, trying to make a deal. Still, then, I wasn’t fighting anyone I knew. I said to the voice, ‘Look, I am George Foreman. I can give money to charity and for cancer,’ and the voice answered me back: ‘I don’t want your money, I want you.’”
