TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072489/07248900.042

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8KB | 147 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 8

Houston, Texas

A Slugger and A Dream


Experts say George Foreman has a fat chance at best of
regaining boxing's heavyweight crown. He thinks otherwise

By Richard Woodbury


    At 7:30 on a muggy Houston morning, George Foreman, the
heavyweight boxing champion of 15 years ago, is bundled in a
military shirt and heavy work pants, plodding up and down a
freeway embankment in the piney woods near his home. Foreman
isn't just climbing the steep hill. He is maneuvering up it
backward -- up and back, up and back -- a modern-day Sisyphus,
sweating and straining in the heavy grass. As he moves, the old
fighter hurls jabs and uppercuts at the blazing sun with his
prodigious arms.

    Strange as the sight might seem, Foreman's goal is even
odder. At the age of 40, after a full ten years layoff from the
ring and about 40 lbs. over his best fighting weight, the
slugger is in training once again. His objective -- some call
it an obsession -- is to recapture the heavyweight title he lost
by a knockout to Muhammad Ali in 1974. Exclaims the ex-champ:
"I'm ready, and I'm better than I ever was."

    Can Foreman be serious? What kind of odds would Vegas put
on him against Iron Mike Tyson, the current titleholder? Boxing
does not take kindly to reruns by its geriatric set. Witness Joe
Louis, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes and Ali. Foreman, the boxer
turned preacher, is older than the other ex-champs who tried in
vain to return. Some of them embarrassed themselves. Some of
them got flattened. Boxing experts snicker that there are only
two kinds of opponents Foreman can be counted on to defeat. One
kind is hooked up to a respirator. The other can be found lying
on a sesame-seed bun in the company of pickles and catsup.

    None of this bothers Foreman, who KO'd 42 opponents in
compiling a 45-2 record. He is all vigor and determination
these summer days, slugging at the bags and straining on the
iron. This is a new Foreman, he is quick to advise: "Forty is
no death sentence; age is only a problem if you make it one."
He looks as menacing as he did that night in 1973 when he
blockbusted Joe Frazier clear off the canvas to win the title.
His 19-in. biceps bulge with muscle, his thighs are thick as
saplings, his huge 48-in. chest heaves with power. He also has
the beginnings of a paunch. Explains Foreman: "The secret to my
winning is my eating." By which he means that he has been reborn
at the dinner table too. The Big Macs have been replaced by
broiled mackerel. For breakfast, the slugger still puts away a
dozen eggs, but first he excises the yolks.

    In 18 fights since he launched his comeback two years ago,
Foreman has knocked out every foe, leading him to crow, "I've
proved myself. I deserve a chance at Tyson. He can't say he's
the best as long as a 40-year-old man not from Mars is sitting
out here. He can't whup me." Foreman rambles on, branding Tyson
a "sneaky crybaby" and insisting, "My biggest job will be
catching him."

    Listening to this, a thought springs to mind: Is the old
slugger punch-drunk? This, after all, is the same George
Foreman who found religion in a San Juan, Puerto Rico, dressing
room in 1977, proclaimed boxing an affront to God and announced
he was quitting forever. This is the same Foreman who ballooned
to 320 lbs. from a fighting trim of 217, and even today at 255
is far beefier than anyone who wants to hold the title should
be. As for the recent wins, all were against unknowns or
retreads who will probably never get within spitting distance
of the Top Ten contenders.

    But Foreman keeps mowing them down. At Pride Pavillion in
Phoenix last month, Slab-of-Meat No. 18, a cruiserweight named
Bert Cooper, was served up. A Joe Frazier protege, Cooper was
billed as one of Foreman's toughest challenges yet. Midway in
the first round, the ex-champ caught him with a right to the
middle that pirouetted Cooper 90 degrees. The pummeling got
worse. When the bell rang for Round 3, Cooper sagely refused to
come out.

    "Tyson's next," Foreman bellowed, arms outstretched, to the
crowd. Every old man in the dim arena choked at the visage in
the crimson robe -- a middle-aged Rocky in their midst. Around
the stands signs shot up, echoing TYSON'S NEXT. In the dressing
room Foreman chortled, "Cooper tried to run, but the ring was
too small. They're all thinking, `What's George going to do to
me?'"

    These mismatches keep the adrenaline flowing and the
nostalgia and hopes burning for a flock of Foreman camp
followers. Archie Moore, who the record books say is 75, was
light-heavyweight champ until he was at least 48. Now Moore has
signed on as resident guru and gerontologist. "Ah, the wisdom
and cunning of age," Moore muses. "Make the young man take three
steps to your one. Smotin' power, that's what it comes down to.
George can still smote, oh yes he can." Moore also knows
something about losing weight. Eat all you like, he once
suggested, just don't swallow.

    In the bar of a Phoenix hotel, a gaggle of aging boxing
groupies watch the hulk as he works out. Foreman is like the
dynamo of old, steadily pounding home sledgehammer blows. Five
rounds later and barely sweating, he halts to regale the
faithful. "I should be carrying a cane," he jests. "My training
camp is Baskin-Robbins. But if Tyson wins, it's only
Lamborghinis and big houses for himself. Means nothing. If I
win, every man over 40 can grab his Geritol and have a toast."

    What is atop the summit if Foreman manages to conquer it
again? Money? "A lot of it," Foreman acknowledges. Not for
lavish houses in California, or Mercedes and Corvettes. Foreman
has had those. "For the kids," he explains. "I want to give them
the same shot I had." The ninth-grade dropout got his rebirth
in the Job Corps. Since 1984, he's dispensed his own good deeds
at the George Foreman Youth and Community Center on Houston's
north side. The small gym with its boxing ring and exercise gear
is an after-school haven for 400 youths, some of them too poor
to afford the $10-a-year dues.

    But there must be something else driving a man to run ten
miles a day in the Texas heat, fight in backwater towns and
suffer reporters' ridicule. Perhaps it is the memories, some to
be relished, others to be expunged: the glory of Jamaica, where
he hammered Smokin' Joe for the title in '73. Then, the next
year, the nightmare of Africa at 4 in the morning, and the
specter of Ali in the ropes, taunting him with a whisper, "Is
that all you got, George?" before knocking him out in the
eighth. Says his friend Norm Henry, a California fight promoter:
"He looks at Tyson, and he sees Frazier all over again."

    Down the road from the youth center is the tiny Church of
the Lord Jesus Christ, which evangelist Foreman helped found
nine years ago. With the fighter on the trumpet and cymbals,
Sunday services are rarely dull. His sermons sometimes seem
directed at himself. "Once you fall, you ain't comin back," he
advised the flock recently. "Make noise in a strange fashion,
or God may not notice you."

    The only noise that Foreman is eager for is the telephone,
ringing with Tyson's call. "We keep on winning, and that phone
will ring," assures Foreman's brother Roy, his manager. "One
day Tyson'll have to come to us." Until that happens, the old
slugger is content enough dreaming his dream. "Champeen of the
world," he beams. "Champeen. Great stuff there."