American George Foreman, one of the great second acts in sports who reclaimed the heavyweight boxing title after coming out of retirement and became a celebrated product pitchman, died on Friday at age 76, his family said.
“A humanitarian, an Olympian, and two-time heavyweight champion of the world, he was deeply respected — a force for good, a man of discipline, conviction, and a protector of his legacy, fighting tirelessly to preserve his good name — for his family,” the family said, describing Foreman in a post on Instagram.
An intimidating, thunderous puncher who lost his first title to Muhammad Ali in their famous “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974, “Big George” was a more rotund, jovial figure when he knocked out Michael Moorer for his second crown two decades later.
Foreman’s comeback and the fortune he made selling fat-wicking electric cooking grills made him an icon of self-improvement and success for the Baby Boom generation.
Soon after his birth in Marshall, Texas on Jan 10, 1949, his family moved to Houston where he and his six siblings were raised by a single mother.
Growing up poor in the segregated American South, Foreman dropped out of junior high school and used his size and fists in street robberies.
The Job Corps, part of ex-president Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” reforms, “rescued me from the gutter”, Foreman later wrote. Through the programme, 16-year-old Foreman moved out of Texas and was encouraged to channel his rage and growing bulk into boxing.
At age 19 and in his 25th amateur fight, Foreman captured the heavyweight boxing gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Turning pro, he won 37 straight matches on his way to face reigning champion Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, winning by technical knockout in round two.
Foreman defended the belt twice more before meeting Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in one of the most celebrated boxing matches in history.
Ali had been stripped of his crown seven years prior for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War and came into the match a heavy underdog against the bigger, younger champion. But for seven rounds, Ali lay against the ropes and fended off Foreman’s clubbing blows, tiring and knocking him out in the eighth round.
“I was one strong heavyweight punching fighter,” Foreman told Reuters in 2007. “I was one punching machine, and that was the first time I delivered everything I had and nothing worked.”
The loss devastated Foreman. He took a year off before returning to the ring and then, after a second professional loss, retired in 1977 to become an ordained minister in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
