G eorge Foreman got quiet. It was unsettling, as any conversation with the iconic Hall of Famer was usually a voluble occasion as he fired off one-liners and used his self-effacing humor to put anyone at ease. But the topic of being one of the last men standing from an epic era of heavyweights had hit him hard. “I never did visualize a world without them. And when they started passing, it hurt,” Foreman told me in an interview for Boxing News back in 2012. “It’s like a part of me died.” The man he won the title from, Joe Frazier, along with previous opponents Ron Lyle and Scott LeDoux, had passed away the year before. Ken Norton would follow in 2013. And perhaps the Texan’s greatest rival, Muhammad Ali, died in 2016. Add in Jimmy Young (2005) and Jerry Quarry (1999), and it was a lonely time for one of the best heavyweights to ever lace up the gloves. And, despite being the owner of one of
A KING AMONG KINGS
the sport’s rare happy endings, he still had moments of sadness thinking of his fallen comrades. “When we were young, truly young and kings, we didn’t know how valuable we were to each other,” he said. “We just didn’t know.” Foreman spoke of the Champions Forever video he filmed in 1989 with Ali, Frazier, Norton and another heavyweight great, Larry Holmes, and how Frazier scoffed at Foreman helping Ali (who was already stricken by Parkinson’s disease) put his tie on. “All of us were together in London, and nobody was taking care of Muhammad,” recalled Foreman. “And Frazier was saying, ‘Why are you helping him? Don’t worry about it. What about all those guys he had all those years ago? Where are they now?’ And I remember saying to Joe, ‘Man, that’s his whole story – that he’s pretty. We gotta make certain that when he gets on the camera, he’s pretty.’ He says, ‘Don’t worry about
it,’ and I said, ‘No, no, no. We’ve got to worry about each other and take care of each other. You gotta be Smokin’ Joe, and he’s got to be pretty, and I gotta be ol’ Foreman.’ They just didn’t understand then.” Two years after London, Foreman was in the midst of his “second” career, and at 42, he was facing heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield. Before the opening bell, Ali and Frazier were introduced to the crowd at Convention Hall in Atlantic City. “Each of them was introduced in the ring, and they walked out, and that was the first time I realized, ‘What am I doing up here?’” said Foreman. “We were tied together like a chain. Frazier stepped out, Muhammad stepped out, and I should have stepped right on out,
Foreman won the title by annihilating Smokin’ Joe Frazier.
Muhammad Ali handed Foreman the first loss of his pro career.
too. (laughs) We were tied together, and there’s not a day that goes by, even now, that I think of life and Frazier and Ali are not in it.” Sadly, the world lost Foreman in March 2025 at the age of 76. Of the 42 heavyweights who earned a place in The Ring’s annual rankings from 1970 to 1979, only 13 remain with us. One of them is Gerry Cooney, the owner of a concussive left hook that most notably took him to a world title fight with Holmes in 1982. The Long Island native was even in the ring with three ’70s stalwarts – Young, Lyle and Norton – needing six combined rounds to defeat the trio in 1980 and 1981, and his final fight was against Foreman himself in 1990. But before that, he was just a popular amateur who turned pro in 1977 with stars in his eyes and a healthy respect for his peers in the shark tank. “I was in it at the end of it, and I loved watching those guys,” said Cooney. “Look at Norton breaking Ali’s jaw. Then when Ali fought Foreman, I
thought, ‘Oh my god. Please, Ali, don’t take this fight. Don’t fucking take it.’ But Ali knew differently. He was a master manipulator. He worked you out before you got in the ring. He had this psychological edge besides being such a great fighter.” When the ’70s began, Frazier was champion. Another Olympic gold medalist in Foreman was 13-0, and Ali, a third winner of Olympic gold, was about to return from his three- year exile – the result of his stance on the Vietnam War. When he did come back in October 1970, it wasn’t against an easy mark but a legitimate top five contender in California’s Quarry, who had already been in the ring with Frazier and held wins over Brian London, Floyd Patterson and Buster Mathis. Ali beat Quarry in three rounds, then defeated the ultra-tough Oscar Bonavena before the “Fight of the Century” on March 8, 1971, against Frazier. In a lot of ways, that’s when the ’70s truly began in what was always
boxing’s glamor division. “The heavyweight division used to hold up boxing,” said Cooney, and he’s right to a degree. When there are big fights, like the recent series between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury or the Fury-Deontay Wilder trilogy, the fistic world stops, and the mainstream world even tunes in. For the most part, though, it’s the lighter weight classes, featuring the likes of Canelo Alvarez, Terence Crawford, Gervonta Davis and Naoya Inoue, that are capturing the imagination of fight fans. It has been that way since the time of The Four Kings – Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran and Marvelous Marvin Hagler – took over the sport in the post-Ali era. There would be Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Holyfield having their moments in the sun,
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