Seeing This Is Too Much, by George

Overweight? Have trouble bending down to tie your shoes, do you? Clothes too tight? Wheeze when you climb stairs? Hard to get in and out of cars? Feet hurt from carrying around all that blubber?

Don’t worry about it. Have another taco. Load up on chocolate. Buy real whipped cream.

Here’s what you do: Go down to the nearest gym, buy a jump rope, work out on the light bag a couple of minutes, spar around with a couple of guys fatter than you are. Don’t overdo it.

And we’ll see about getting you a shot at the heavyweight championship of the world at $10 million to $12 million a pop.

You think that’s farfetched? Well, tell me, have you had a good look at George Foreman lately?

Maybe you saw George’s “bout” with a pug named Bert Cooper in Phoenix Thursday night. If you didn’t see it, don’t worry. Put on a Three Stooges cassette and watch it. Same thing. Everything but the seltzer bottle and a pneumatic blonde. A Professor Larbermacher skit was never funnier.

Bert Cooper didn’t come to fight. He had trouble escaping blows that came at him with the speed and trajectory of an iceberg.

George Foreman made his fight like a guy waiting for a bus. If it was outdoors, pigeons would have lit on him. Guys have moved faster in checkout lines at the market.

Far be it from me to say that Bert Cooper was there only to disappear at some convenient moment, but it’s interesting that the Arizona Athletic Commission announced even before the fighters had left the ring that they were holding up Cooper’s purse, $17,000. The suspicion persists this was not the only cash coming Cooper’s way for his contribution to the comedy skit.

After all, what we’re doing with George Foreman here is trying to persuade the public to disregard its eyes and trust the promoters that what they’re seeing is a devastating primal force and not a fat old party who throws punches like a shotputter or a guy who has forgotten to let go of a bowling ball.

Now, quitting in your corner is considered quite manly in certain sections of the world. It’s perfectly acceptable in Britain, for example. But custom calls for you to have absorbed a nosebleed or two, maybe a knockdown, before you call it a night. Cooper underwent two rounds of unseemly scampering and then, when he quit between rounds, was the only person in the arena not surprised by the action. As soon as the fight was called, he leaped off his stool with a broad smile and rushed over and embraced Foreman, who seemed the least bit embarrassed but, maybe, relieved.

Even in his prime, which was a long time ago, it was touch and go whether George Foreman could fight at top pitch for more than five rounds. He never had to. He first came into public consciousness as the Olympic heavyweight champ, master of the quick knockout and the three-round fight at most.

He came into public view at a time when some other Olympic athletes were waving black-gloved fists at their country’s flag and anthem on victory stands, and George endeared himself to the traditionalists by carrying a miniature American flag in his gloves to the ring. He stood stiffly at attention as they played the national anthem and they carried his Russian or German opponents out by the heels.

As a pro, he had only two fights that went the distance. He was a pulverizing puncher, he had arms like pythons and fists like paving blocks but his style was as uncomplicated as a slow freight on an uphill grade.

Unfortunately, he was made to order for Muhammad Ali. Ali could always throw the switch on those big slow-freight types and he derailed Foreman for good in a predawn fight in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974. When Foreman got knocked down in Round 8, Ali had him too exhausted to have a chance to get up at 10.

It was really the only fight that George ever lost. There was a gavotte with Jimmy Young he lost by decision just before he retired in 1977, but it was the knockout by Ali in Africa that drove George out of the ring and into a pulpit. He became, of all things, a preacher.

George hasn’t gotten his old act together for his assault on the title, he’s got a new one. The old Foreman, while affable enough, was generally a monosyllabic, reclusive character who made Gary Cooper seem garrulous. The new one has borrowed techniques he used to despise, those of Ali. When the two fought in Zaire, Ali was full of bombast, boast, hype and psych--the usual shticks of an Ali prefight promo. Foreman locked himself in his room and slept.

The new Foreman is wiser. He’s on his way to one more big score which can put the ministry of the Rev. George on its way to saving souls by the millions and George is onto it. His postfight utterances after he had disposed of Cooper were in the best oratorical traditions of Ali, Hulk Hogan, William Jennings Bryan.

“I am the hope of every man over 40,” boomed George. “I am the hope of everyone over 50, 60! I am fighting for old men everywhere. They see me and they know everything is possible.”

He’s also the hope of every guy who can’t tighten his belt any more.

But the pugilistic practice of dusting off an old, out-of-shape champion to take on the current holder is not new. In 1910, Jim Jeffries was five years retired. But the gimmick then was that America had a black champion. Jeffries was convinced that he had a holy mission to correct this menace.

The pathetic phrase, “the Great White Hope,” was born but the reluctant Jeff was pounded into a pulp on the Fourth of July by the Great Black Hunk, Jack Johnson, who appeared to be enjoying himself immensely doing it.

George may be the Great Fat Hope. If he could somehow win the title, he could set dieting back 50 years. But of course, he could set pugilism back to John L. Sullivan.