MIRACLE ON LAS VEGAS BOULEVARD
record, 76-5 (68 KOs) – and the fact Moorer had fought at 175 pounds less than four years earlier, although, in my mind, it was a small chance. Foreman’s weak performance against Morrison indicated to me that his days as a force in the heavyweight division were behind him. And most of the fight against Moorer bore that out. The left- handed titleholder landed his snapping right jab almost at will, which set up power punches – his right hook was particularly effective – and allowed him to control the action round after round. Foreman landed clean shots here and there and was never hurt by Moorer, but he couldn’t get anything
division has evolved into? … Everyone involved should be embarrassed.” You get the idea. I didn’t have precisely the same perspective, although I certainly couldn’t argue with my fellow journalist. I believed Foreman had a puncher’s chance at the opening bell, and I thought the same thing before the bell to start Round 10, but it looked bad for the underdog with nine minutes of boxing remaining. That’s one thing that made the ending so spectacular. At the time, it seemed to come out of nowhere. One second Foreman’s mission appeared to be impossible, the next he was champion.
question as I stood and held my head with my mouth wide open, like so many others: “DID that just happen?!” I couldn’t believe what I just saw. Foreman’s longtime publicist and future Hall of Famer Bill Caplan recently told me that he all but lost his mind after the final punch landed, a lapse of self-control that could’ve changed the course of boxing history. Caplan rushed to the ring and started up the steps to begin celebrating before Cortez had finished counting. Fortunately for him – and perhaps Foreman – he was stopped. “When George hit him with the right hand and knocked him back the way he did,” Caplan said, “I started to go
grateful, even humbled. The images that followed the knockout also are indelible. Cortez waving his arms as he stood over Moorer. Foreman, a bit stunned himself, looking skyward and then kneeling gracefully in a corner of the ring to thank his god amid the deafening din. His teammates mobbing him in that position, including his gleeful promoter, Bob Arum, who clinched Foreman as tightly as any opponent ever had in the ring. I remember glancing around me before I sat down to write, at both my colleagues near me and those in the crowd. Most of my fellow writers didn’t have time to take in the moment; they had deadlines to meet. Imagine putting into words one of the sport’s most important moments in a matter of minutes at what amounted to a wild party. Not easy.
done. He was too slow to defend himself, too slow to put enough punches together to turn the tide. And, perhaps remarkably, Moorer took everything thrown at him.
up the stairs, I think at the count of three. Two Vegas cops, the security in the corner, both grabbed me and yelled, ‘Hey, you can’t go now!’ and they set me down on the floor. Then, when the count reached 10, they helped me up the stairs and said, ‘OK, NOW you can go up!’ “Can you imagine how ridiculous that would’ve been? I could’ve gotten George disqualified. Those
“This fight should never have been made. This is a travesty, a 45-year-old has-been in the ring with a prime champion.”
It was a painfully one- sided fight, as the official scores after nine rounds indicated: Judges Chuck Giampa and Jerry Roth had it 88-83 (seven rounds to two) while Duane Ford somehow had a card of 86-85 (five rounds to four) for Moorer. I had Moorer ahead 89-82. The spectators in the arena – hoping for something monumental – also had their moments, screaming their approval whenever Foreman landed anything they could see. However, they were deflated and relatively quiet by the second half of the fight, as it appeared less and less likely that Foreman would give them what they came for. I’ve never seen so many disappointed faces. An accomplished sports columnist sitting directly to my right, seven or eight rows from the ring, openly bemoaned the mismatch from around the third round on. “This fight should never have been made,” he said. “This is a travesty, a 45-year-old has-been in the ring with a prime champion. … This is what the heavyweight
T he significance of Foreman’s victory over Moorer was manifold. He realized his goal of becoming the oldest boxer to win a world title, a feat that was topped when Bernard Hopkins won a belt at 46 years old 17 years later. Foreman regained the title almost exactly 20 years after he lost it to Ali, which exorcised ghosts that had harassed him for two decades. The achievement was so monumental that it removed any doubt – if there was any – about his place among the all-time greats. And, perhaps more important than anything else, it proved that one can accomplish great things at any age with enough grit. “It was never done before,” Caplan said. “And I’m not talking about just boxing. I’ve challenged my sportswriter friends by asking whether anyone else in a major sport has done this: return
Foreman’s right hand canceled out any advantage Moorer had on the scorecards.
The fans, almost all on their feet, were free to celebrate. They hollered, they beamed, they high-fived, they hugged. A few had tears in their eyes. And why not? It was a wonderful, fairy tale-like story, a theme Foreman embraced after the fight. The post-fight news conference quote I liked best – one I used near the top of my article – was a reference to the song “Over the Rainbow” in the film The Wizard of Oz : “Bluebirds fly over the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?” Obviously, Foreman had those words in the bank just in case he got his hand raised that night. And they were perfect, evoking the idea that one could surpass what seemed reasonable at the time. That’s exactly what Foreman did by never giving up on himself. Boxing never had a more memorable night.
Foreman carved his final niche in boxing lore with a textbook one-two: a left jab that opened Moorer’s guard and a vintage straight right hand to the chin that put him onto his back, after which Moorer struggled to get up but failed as referee Joe Cortez counted him out 2 minutes, 3 seconds into the 10th round. Of course, no one in the arena could hear Cortez counting. The moment he hit the canvas, the noise generated by the roaring fans must have rivaled that of a jet engine. I remember thinking afterward, “Man, I could have screamed at the top of my lungs and still not have heard myself.” I swear the casino shook. I would learn later about Lampley’s famous “It happened! It happened!” call on HBO. I had a similar first thought, but it came in the form of a
cops saved that from happening. In my 60-some years in boxing, that was my No. 1 thrill.” Ron Borges, a Boston Globe columnist at the time who also was destined to enter the Hall, sat a few rows in front of me that night. He knew immediately that Moorer wasn’t getting up. “I thought George was dangerous,” Borges told me recently, referring to his thoughts going into the fight. “That’s why [Mike] Tyson never fought him. Did I think he was going to beat Moorer? Not really. Moorer had a lot of skills. And as it was going along, Moorer won almost every minute of the fight. I [later] said that to George, that he lost every minute of that fight. He said, ‘Yes, except the last 10 seconds. And that’s all that matters.’”
from a 10-year layoff and regain a championship 20 years after you lost it. No one has been able to come up with a name. If anybody else has done something like that, I’d like to hear who it is.” Or as analyst Larry Merchant put it on the broadcast moments after the knockout: “This was a 2-to-1 fight, but in my mind it was gazillion-to-1 that George Foreman could ever win the heavyweight championship again. This is a really remarkable achievement. And it has to stand on its own.” The significance certainly wasn’t lost on Foreman, who needed 29 fights over seven years in his late 30s and 40s to do the impossible. He was outwardly
58 RINGMAGAZINE.COM
RINGMAGAZINE.COM 59
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker