The Loser Was Big Winner

My favorite prizefighter--the world’s favorite prizefighter--eased himself gingerly into the booth, smoothed out his 285-pound frame and studied the menu lovingly, like a monk reading the Bible.

“This is going to be good,” I thought as the waiter hovered. “Bring us everything on the right side of the menu.”

Then I suggested: “Why don’t we just start off with the rack of lamb, the chicken and the steak? Then we’ll see about a main course.”

“You’re expecting someone else?” the waiter asked airily. I shook my head. “That’s just for him,” I said, pointing at the former heavyweight champion of the world. “I’ll just have your tossed salad.”

Across the table, George Foreman sighed and folded his mammoth arms. “Me, too,” he said sadly. “Just your Caesar salad. What’s your soup today?”

I was thunderstruck. Soup and salad for Gorgeous George! It was like seeing a lion eating berries. He would waste away. To 270.

Of course, George Foreman can do anything he wants these days. He can by way of being America’s Sweetheart. You mention George Foreman and people smile. He makes them feel good. He comes into public focus as a cross between Santa Claus and George Washington. Or George Burns. Everybody’s Uncle George. John Candy gets the part in the movie.

Everybody loves a guy who gets up. Everybody loves a fighter who can take it, who keeps coming, who won’t stay down.

That’s George. George Foreman crept into America’s heart and minds last April 19 when he beat Evander Holyfield in 12 rounds at Atlantic City. Oh, I know, Holyfield got the decision of the judges. What do they know, anyway?

Foreman capped one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sports when he was still upright and carrying the fight to Holyfield at the finish. Put it this way: If he walks into a room with Evander Holyfield anywhere in the world today, Holyfield is going to think he just became invisible. Walking down the street with George is like joining a parade. He has the public approval of the Easter Bunny.

His life story was right out of a Disney flick. In 1974, at dawn one morning in the heart of Africa, George Foreman lost the only fight he had ever lost in his life. Muhammad Ali taunted him, tormented him, beat him to the punch and knocked him out and into virtual oblivion in eight disastrous rounds. George became a non-person, just another milepost in the glittering career of Ali, one of the instruments Ali orchestrated to make his own fame.

Foreman retired to Texas to become a preacher. He underwent a personality change. The dour, menacing pug he had long portrayed had nothing to do with the real George Foreman, who was as cuddly as a koala and really didn’t have a mean bone in his body--until the bell rang. Foreman became himself--friendly, gregarious, even jovial. And hungry.

People think George Foreman got back into boxing for a quick financial fix for his ministry. In a way, he did. “I had this young man wanted me to train him,” Foreman said. “I said no. I thought fighting and preaching didn’t mix. Then he got involved in a shooting in a holdup. The storekeeper shot the boy he was with. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t help him and boys like that, so I started to set up a foundation.

“I didn’t have a lot of money. I used to use coupons when I went to the store, that kind of thing. Buy things on layaway. My accountant told me if I put out money that way, I was going to go broke the Joe Louis route. I decided to box again.”

His “comeback” was treated with much derision by the media. “They wrote and broadcast that I was just taking on tomato cans for a quick fix,” George said with a grin. “They didn’t take it serious. But I had a plan right from the start. And that was to win the heavyweight title.”

The usual scam in plots like these, George reminds you, is to get ready for this one fight, make the score and hit the floor. It’s what Jim Jeffries did; Louis, in a sense; even Ali against Larry Holmes.

“After a 10-year layoff, it’s hard to get taken serious,” he admitted. “So, I decided to go in front of the toughest commission to get licensed--the (one in) California. I took CAT-scans, EKGs; I blew into balloons; they took pictures of my heart, and the doctors said I had the heart of a 20-year-old.

“You see, I used to talk to all these football players and these other athletes, like Earl Campbell, and they would say, ‘Gee, I’m 32 years old and I guess I ain’t got much more.’ It occurred to me, they were talking themselves into it. They were old because they were supposed to be old!

“I thought to myself, ‘Throw away that calendar. Go by how you feel, not how you’re supposed to feel.’ ”

The boxing press went pretty much by how Foreman looked. At 300 pounds, he looked more like something that should be floating over a parade than a ring. “Part of my plan was not to appear on television too much,” George said. “I knew how to keep people guessing. And I learned how to sell. Someone once told me if you learn how to sell, you’ll never go broke.”

Anyone who was at the Foreman-Holyfield title fight knows that George Foreman knows how to sell. As someone noted, George could sell oars to a shark. He was ubiquitous around the press room. George kept the fight on Page 1 and the 11 o’clock news almost by himself. You could hardly pass through the press buffet without finding George with a chicken wing in hand hustling the fight to whomever would listen.

At 42, Foreman shouldn’t be going the route with the heavyweight champion of the world. Any more than Nolan Ryan should be pitching no-hit games at 44.

George has been, temporarily, shunted aside by the proposed Holyfield-Mike Tyson title fight Nov. 8. As usual, George is not taking it lying down. He and Bob Arum are suing Holyfield and his management for $100 million in breach of contract. And George has just signed a new four-year deal with HBO to fight and do commentary on future programs.

“What will you do in the meantime?” George was asked.

“I believe I’ll have a piece of that banana cream cake, after all,” he said, spearing the whipped cream with his fork.