COMMISSIONER’S CORNER Grumpy but Golden By Randy Gordon
Even in repose, Foreman was an intimidating presence in the ring.
Bob Spagnola, the coordinator of boxing for the HBA. We talked about the card. All the while, I was still wondering who it was I’d be working with on the air. Before I could question him, Spagnola asked, “Have you heard who your ringside partner will be?” “No, I haven’t!” I replied. “You guys at the HBA have turned who I’m working with into a tightly-guarded secret. Are you ready to tell me?” “We are,” he replied. “Go ahead,” I said. “It’s …” (he paused for two seconds) “… George Foreman.” “GEORGE FOREMAN!!??” I shouted. “GEORGE FOREMAN!!??” I was surprised. I was also a bit angry. “Great, huh!” said Spagnola. “Great!” I shot back, masking my disappointment at hearing Foreman’s name. “See you in Houston,” said Bob. I hung up the phone and shook my head. “George Foreman,” I thought. “Big ol‘ ornery George Foreman. How lucky I am!” I arrived in Houston shortly after dinner time on Sunday. I checked into the hotel and began calling the rooms of the fighters on the card. The ones I didn’t speak to on Sunday, I interviewed at the next morning’s weigh-in. On fight day, Foreman and I were asked by our producer to be at ringside by 6 p.m. Around 1 p.m., I was in my room reviewing the notes I had taken at the weigh-in a few hours earlier. The phone rang. When I answered, I heard, “Hello, Randy Gordon. This is George Foreman.” He sounded cheerful and friendly. We spoke for a few minutes. Then he asked, “Hey, wanna grab some lunch and go over the show?” “Sure. What time, George?” “Now!” he replied. “Give me 10 minutes,” I said. “OK. Meet me in the coffee shop,” he answered. As I stepped into the hall 10 minutes
later, the door directly across from mine opened. It was Foreman. We both laughed. He only knew me from seeing me on the USA Network and ESPN. I knew him because, well, he was George Foreman. But this was a much larger version of the one I remembered from his days as an up-and-coming contender and as champion. This George Foreman weighed, by his own admission, “at least 350 pounds.” We spent perhaps two hours talking, getting to know each other. He talked about his transformation from being George Foreman the fighter, to being a man of the cloth, the Rev. George Foreman. I felt his honesty. I felt his belief. Then we went back to our respective rooms. He said he was going to read the Bible. I was going to read my boxing notes. That night at ringside, we called six fights. One of them matched two slow heavyweights – Dennis Fikes (7-4-1) against Wesley Smith (2-5). During that fight, I watched Foreman more than I watched the two heavyweights. He was sitting there, announcing … and throwing punches at the same time. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said into the mic, “I wish all of you could see George Foreman as this heavyweight fight goes on. George is throwing punches as if he were in that ring.” I added, “George, I’ll bet you could beat BOTH of these guys tonight!” He responded by saying, “Oh, no, Randy. These guys are young, hungry pros. I am a fat, 36-year-old minister who has been out of the ring for years.” As he said that, I could see a sparkle in his eyes. He was saying one thing. However, I was certain he was thinking of another. At the end of the show, when we heard “That’s a wrap” from our producer, I gave George a hug. He then said, in his Houstonian twang, “Randy, you gave me an idear.” “What kind of idear did I give you, George?” I asked. He requested my phone number.
Remember, it was 1985. None of us had cell phones. I gave him my home number. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. I left on an early morning flight and was home on Long Island before noon. Around 5 p.m., my phone rang. It was George. “Remember that idear I said you gave me?” “I remember,” I said. “Well, today I drove to the local Army base, Fort Sam Houston,” Foreman said. “The MPs at the gate recognized me and let me in. I asked if they had a boxing team on the base. They said they did. I asked if they had a base heavyweight champion. They did. They received permission to let me in, then took me to the gym. A few minutes later, the base champion came in. He was around 6-foot-3, 240 pounds. We moved around for three rounds.” “How’d you do?” I asked excitedly. “I did very well,” Foreman told me. “I staggered him once with a jab and once with a right lead.” “How was your stamina?” I inquired. “Awful,” he laughed. “But I’ll work on that.” “Work on that? Why will you work on that?” I asked. “I’m coming back!” said Foreman. “You gave me the idear to come back last night.” We talked for around 15 minutes. He said he needed to lose more than 100 pounds and get back in shape. He also swore me to secrecy. I said nothing to anybody. Two years later, Big George Foreman launched the greatest comeback ever. During the course of his comeback, he sent me several George Foreman grills. He came on the SiriusXM show I co-host with Gerry Cooney on many occasions. Foreman always laughed when I told him I didn’t like him in “George Foreman: Act I.” I didn’t like him in “George Foreman: Act II,” either. I loved him! R.I.P., dear friend.
In early March 1985, Ms. Abercrombie called to give me dates for a few upcoming fights. The next one, she informed me, would be on Monday, March 18, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Houston. “Right now, you are working by yourself,” Ms. Abercrombie told me, “but I am putting something together with the person whom I believe will be your color analyst.” “Who might that be, Ms. Abercrombie?” I asked her. “I will let you know very soon,” she replied. I could tell by her voice it was someone big. I tried to pry the name out of her, but she wouldn’t budge. “Be patient,” she said. “I will let you know soon enough.” In the next few days, I received a press packet from the HBA. The packet included a history of the HBA and the HBA East (the New York division of the promotional company), a list of the projected bouts on the card and their associated bios. In the packet, it also said the fight was being taped for national broadcast in dozens of markets by what was then known as SportsChannel. It was mentioned that “blow-by-blow commentary will be provided by Randy Gordon, the former Editor-in-Chief of Ring Magazine and current announcer on the USA Network’s weekly boxing series.” The release also said “A big-name Color Analyst will be joining Gordon at ringside. The special-guest commentator will be present at a press conference at the Hyatt Regency on Thursday at 11:00 a.m.” I called Ms. Abercrombie one more time to find out who that big name was. She still wasn’t budging. “You’ll find out very soon,” she replied. The following day, I received a special delivery envelope. In it were my first- class tickets to and from New York’s JFK Airport and Houston. The day before leaving, I received a call from
I can honestly tell you I didn’t like George Foreman. He was nasty, surly, mean, grumpy, ornery and disrespectful. On a good day, he had the personality of a warthog on a bad day. It’s true. From the moment he turned pro on June 23, 1969 (beating my friend, Don Waldhelm), right up until he lost to Jimmy Young on March 17, 1977, I didn’t like him. When I heard he was going to retire after losing to Young (only his second loss – the first being to Muhammad Ali), I was thrilled. “Good riddance!” I thought. “Boxing will be better off without him!” Foreman walked away and returned to Houston, Texas. I didn’t look for him. Neither did boxing. “That first time around was all an
act,” Hall of Fame-enshrined announcer and HBO colleague Jim Lampley told me recently. “He got that from his days spent as a teenage sparring partner in the sixties with former heavyweight champ Sonny Liston. “Liston told George that he shouldn’t trust the media, that they are not your friends. He believed Liston. You saw the real George when he came back 10 years after losing to Jimmy Young.” That’s when I met him, in “George Foreman: Act II.” At the time, I was working as the USA Network’s boxing analyst. I was also working as an announcer for Sylvester Stallone’s syndicated boxing show, “Tiger Eye Boxing,” and as the blow- by-blow announcer for the Houston Boxing Association (HBA), owned by multimillionaire businesswoman Josephine Abercrombie.
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