AN EPIC JOURNEY TO GLORY
B ill Caplan has lived through an extraordinary era of great heavyweights, working with Joe Louis and many others, but it was his longevity as George Foreman’s PR man for almost six decades that represented one of the most enduring bonds in pugilism. Unsurprisingly, Caplan, a legend himself in the media room, now proclaims that Big George is “unique” in boxing and that “no one has achieved what he did” in reference to Foreman’s incredible feats: The great heavyweight stands alone in his achievements. He left the sport – retired for 10 years from the age of 28 to 38 – then came back and won the world title 20 years after losing it, extraordinarily, at the age of 45. It beggars belief even recounting those facts. “No one, and I mean no one, has done that,” Caplan asserted to me in the latest of many conversations we’ve had over the last two and a half decades. “Or, in my mind, will ever do again.” Foreman passed on March 21, aged 76. Caplan was bereft over the death of his friend. Indeed, Caplan, now 89, talking to me from his home in Los Angeles as he has in media rooms around the world and over many, many dinners, recounted more stories about Foreman and their experiences over the years. And what years they were. The greatest adventure with Foreman, Caplan said, will always be “The Rumble In The Jungle,” the most watched fight of all time, against Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship of the world. More on that a little later. Caplan himself was brought up in Des Moines, Iowa, and was educated in boxing from a young age. He says he was lucky: “I was a fan before being with George. Since I was a child. I used to listen to the great Joe Louis, who was heavyweight champion for 11 and a half years. I used to listen to his fights on the radio, because my father – who was an immigrant from
Lithuania – was only interested in boxing. That was part of my growing- up process.” Caplan eventually found his way into the big time through a family member. “My brother-in-law, married to my older sister, was in the boxing business. There were six children in our family, and I am the youngest by far. [My brother-in-law] was 25 years older than I, took me to the fights and got me my first job with my boyhood hero, Joe Louis.” That was in 1963, with Louis then promoting fights in Hollywood. “My brother was involved in helping
him make matches, and he needed a publicist – so it was a thrill as I fell into the job. I was 27 years old at the time. All I did before that job was go to fights, get familiar with the sport and the fighters, go to training camps, go to dinner with fighters and trainers and hang around the business. “I’m so lucky, because my three all-time [favorite] fighters are Joe Louis, Oscar De La Hoya and George
Foreman. I’ve worked for and been involved with all three of those guys more than any other fighter.” But Caplan’s life changed when he met Foreman. And it is a narrative of work and friendship that endured until the day the great man passed. “I met George when he was 18, before he went to the Olympics,” Caplan explained. “To this day, I still consider myself to be George Foreman’s publicist. I had started with George when he was an amateur with only six fights. “It was a year later when he went to the Olympics and he won gold. He only had 21 fights when he went to the Olympics, which is nothing. He’s there, 19 years old, and he’s fighting
friends from that day. “He’s an ordained minister. He’s performed three weddings for my family. I am Jewish and he’s a Christian minister. It doesn’t matter. I can’t name anybody outside my family that I’m closer to in life than George Foreman. I love George Foreman. And I think he kind of liked me too.” Always very and fascinatingly honest, Caplan places Foreman at No. 5 in his all-time heavyweight list. “Joe Louis was my boyhood hero, so on my personal list of heavyweight champions, he’s number one. Ali is two and Larry Holmes is three, and my George Foreman is five and so on. Mike Tyson is 17. I did a top 20 list
kill Ali. They were worried. As it turned out, Ali did the rope-a-dope and let George punch himself out and survived all of that. “I got a phone call a few years ago from George, and Ali wasn’t speaking at the time, or at least publicly. I later learned that sometimes early in the day, for moments, he would be the old Ali. The articulate, entertaining Ali. He would do that at home. George called me and said, ‘You’ll never guess who I just talked to on the phone.’ I said, ‘OK, I can’t guess. Who?’ He said, ‘Ali called me.’ I said, ‘What was that about?’ He said he sounded like his old self. Ali said, ‘George, how many grandchildren do you have?’ George
Foreman and Caplan maintained a tight bond for more than half a century.
professional amateurs from the Soviet countries. Their profession was fighting. That’s what they did for a living. They were made officers in the army and provided money and a house and a car and expenses. They were professionals with years of experience. And here was this 19-year- old kid with this little American flag knocking them all out.
says, ‘I have seven.’ Ali says, ‘Ha! I have 10. I beat you again.’ In other words, he had that old spirit and that old sense of humor. George was so delighted, he had to call me and tell me.” There is, of course, the famous picture of when Ali knocked George down and Foreman went down in a spiral manner with one arm up in the air. Just before he
“He lost, I lost, but [The Rumble in the Jungle] was the greatest adventure of my career.”
for Ring Magazine once. People would ask me, ‘Why would you make Tyson number 17?’ Because he never came from behind to win a fight, he never got off the deck to win a fight. That’s why he’s 17th on my list. He had great tools: speed, power – intimidation was his great tool. But for some reason, what he was great at was being a frontrunner and never coming from behind.” Caplan has total recall on so many events, and he lights up when talking about the relationship between Big George and Ali: “They became very good friends. Ali gave him his first defeat in October of 1974, of course. George was undefeated at the time. George had knocked the people out who had beaten Ali. One was Ken Norton, the other Joe Frazier. George knocked them both out easily. When Ali and Foreman were fighting in Africa, people were praying that George didn’t
hit the deck, the famous picture was taken. Caplan explains: “I believe it was a double truck, which means two pages in Sports Illustrated. I had been with George when people asked him for an autograph, and they would have that magazine that they had saved. George would say, ‘Oh, listen, I’ll sign your autograph, but give me something else to sign.’ I saw that more than once. Then George built a new house. He lived in a fabulous house and built a new one and gave me the tour of his house one day, shortly after he’d moved into the new one, and we went into his office. In his office was a large monitor that he used for his computer, and on this big monitor his screensaver was that picture. I said, ‘George, you would never sign that picture. Why would you use that as your screensaver, something you have to look at every day?’ He said, ‘It keeps me humble, Bill.’ They had a
“By the way, the night I started with him, he lost his first amateur fight. It was his seventh fight. He wrote about this in his autobiography, which was a bestseller, called By George . He said in the book he was going to quit boxing, and then a celebrity came to the dressing room, a celebrity by the name of Bill Caplan, who patted him on the back and said, ‘Don’t worry about it, George. You’re going to be a good fighter one day.’ “That’s what really happened. We had had George’s amateur fight and then an intermission that separated them from the professional fights. I walked back to the dressing room, and here’s this kid sitting with his chin on his chest on the rubbing table, all alone. I tried to make him feel better, having no idea he was going to have the historic career he had. We became close
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