Foreman Comeback Gets First Significant Test Tonight

For George Foreman, tonight marks the end of his mannequin-of-the-month club.

The 39-year-old former heavyweight champion, attempting a comeback after a decade as a Houston preacher, has breezed by his first seven opponents, most of whom could walk unrecognized through their own hometowns.

Foreman has knocked them all out, adding the likes of Steve Zouski, Charles Hostetter and Bobby Crabtree to a list of KO victims that included Joe Frazier and Ken Norton back in the days when Foreman had hair on his head and youth on his side.

In the 10-round main event tonight at Caesars Palace, Foreman, 52-2 with 49 knockouts, takes on his first name opponent since his glory days.

In Dwight Muhammad Qawi, an opponent with a 28-5-1 record and 17 knockouts, Foreman will be facing a former World Boxing Council light-heavyweight and World Boxing Assn. junior-heavyweight champion. That doesn’t make him a bona fide heavyweight, but Qawi, who can list former heavyweight champion Leon Spinks among his knockout victims, should provide the first reasonable yardstick of how far back Foreman has come.

Qawi is trying to come back himself, having lost his last fight on a fourth-round knockout by Evander Holyfield in December in Atlantic City. It was Qawi’s second loss to Holyfield, who, a year earlier, had taken Qawi’s WBA title away on a 15-round decision.

Qawi, formerly Dwight Braxton, weighed in Friday at 222 pounds, 15 more than he has ever weighed for a fight.

Foreman, meanwhile, has been trying to push his weight in the opposite direction. He had ballooned to 315 pounds and was at 287 when he decided on a comeback. He weighed 267 when he returned to the ring a year ago. Friday, he weighed in at 235.

“I want to fight once or twice a month, until I clean up the whole heavyweight division, Mike Tyson included,” Foreman said.

For Michael Nunn of North Hollywood, the North American Boxing Federation middleweight champion, the road to a title fight is considerably shorter. Nunn, 28-0 with 18 knockouts, needs only to win tonight’s 12-round NABF title bout against Curtis Parker of Philadelphia to get a match against International Boxing Federation middleweight titleholder Frank Tate. Parker is 29-8 with 22 knockouts.

A Tate-Nunn fight, according to promoter Bob Arum, would be held around August 1, either in Detroit or Las Vegas.

Parker is on the Caesars card as a replacement for Doug DeWitt, who dropped out several weeks ago because of an ankle injury.

Also on the Caesars card are two other 12-round NABF title bouts: heavyweight champion Orlin Norris (15-1, 8 knockouts) of San Diego against Renaldo Snipes (28-6-1, 15 knockouts) of Yonkers, N.Y., and cruiserweight champ Bert Cooper (18-2, 15 knockouts) of Philadelphia against Tony Fulilangi (39-1-2, 36 knockouts) of Phoenix.

The fights, to be held in the 4,300-seat Caesars Pavilion, are being distributed to cable systems nationwide on pay-per-view.