GEORGE FOREMAN WAS A HERO TO SOME AND A HERO-SLAYER TO OTHERS – SOMETIMES BOTH – BUT THE SPORT AND THE WORLD LOST A GENUINE ICON AND AN UNDENIABLE ALL-TIME GREAT ON MARCH 21, 2025 By Wallace A. Matthews
NO MORE GRUDGES
O n the evening of January 22, 1973, my 16-year-old self despised George Foreman. He had just bounced Joe Frazier off the canvas six times to take the heavyweight title in a shocking upset. On October 30, 1974, my distaste for Foreman only deepened when he was knocked out by Muhammad Ali in an even more shocking upset. Over the course of those 19 months, Foreman had two opportunities to curry my favor and he let me down both times. The first time, he had humiliated my boyhood hero, and the second, he was himself humiliated by my hero’s superior. So when, in January 1986, Foreman confided to me over a telephone that he was planning to return to the ring after a 10-year absence, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or go break a window. “Now get this right,” he had said to me, using his richest and most commanding voice. “I’m coming back for life, liberty and the pursuit of MY happiness.” You could hear by the tone of his voice that the word “my” was in verbal italics. Clearly, there were people in Foreman’s
orbit who were against this idea. Just as clearly, it wasn’t going to matter. Foreman was coming back, whether I or anyone else liked it or not. By then, I was the boxing writer for Newsday in New York, and ostensibly unbiased toward the people I covered. As such, I was expected to put aside my personal animosity – which was lingering, I must admit – and report my stories fairly and unemotionally. Plus, as a fight fan and writer who recognized the precarious hold boxing had on the public – we were at the tail end of the Walking Zombies Era of heavyweight boxing and not yet into the Mike Tyson Experience – I instinctively realized that a Foreman comeback, even as a sideshow attraction, was likely to bring renewed attention to the sport. And not for nothing, I had to admit that the man I spoke to on the phone – we had never met face-to-face – was funny and likable and seemed nothing like the surly monster who had destroyed one of my idols and then failed in his chance to destroy his nemesis. Still, I wasn’t taking the idea of Foreman as an important
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Illustration by Chris Wormell
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