He Gives Weight to Value of Noble Heart

One of the hoariest maxims of the fight game is: “They never come back.”

It’s meant to apply to some pug who has spent two or three years out of the game, retired, but who decides to make a comeback at a comparatively young age. It was probably first applied to James J. Jeffries, who, against his will and inclinations, became that most pathetic of sport figures, the “Great White Hope” back in 1910.

Jeffries had been out of the ring five years when he was lured back to teach the great black hope, Jack Johnson, a lesson in Reno in 1910. The results were predictable. Johnson laughingly reduced him to a great bleeding hopeless, and a pugilistic axiom was born.

It was not even considered necessary to apply it to a prizefighter who had been out of the ring an entire decade, who was returning to the ring within a few months of being age 40 and who had apparently spent the intervening 10 years eating pie a la mode and double pork chops and had not eaten anything that wasn’t fried or smothered in gravy or that had lettuce in it in the interim.

George Foreman’s return made James J. Jeffries’ look like a calculated risk of pure logic by comparison. George had not only been out of the ring, he had been out of the notion. He had become the most peace-loving of creatures, a Bible packer, a reverend, a reformer. He had gone from battering his fellow human beings to saving their souls. He seemed as unlikely a candidate for the institutionalized mayhem of pugilism as St. Francis.

George’s return to the ring was based on the purest of motives. He wanted to raise money for a youth center. He wasn’t anybody’s “hope” but his own.

“I had to do something about the kids,” Foreman said from his home in Marshall, Tex., the other morning.

“But I was tired of begging. I could see these people were looking at me and thinking, ‘Hey! This big guy made millions from boxing--what does he need my money for?’ I decided then and there to get my own money.”

The fact that an overweight, overage George Foreman could return successfully to the ring after a 10-year layoff or that an overweight, overage Larry Holmes could return after a four-year layoff tells you all you have to know about the bankruptcy of the fight game. It is ruled by the mediocre.

George Foreman recalls he was amazed at the incompetence.

Originally, he was urged by his backers to take the James J. Jeffries route, i.e., sign up for one big fight, don’t risk any tuneups, take the money and run.

“They told me, ‘Just get in shape for a big-money fight and get out.’ I said ‘No, I want to start at the bottom, I don’t want to cheat anybody.’ ”

Foreman began a 22-fight preparation. He took on such household names as Rocky Sekorski, who bore no resemblance to Rocky Balboa (or Rocky Marciano, for all of that), Ladislas Mijandos, who bore no resemblance to anybody; but Foreman did upend Dwight Muhammad Qawi, Gerry Cooney and Bert Cooper (who was to give heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield one of his tougher fights).

By the time he got his title shot against Holyfield, Foreman had re-established most of his old skills. “You can’t get ready to fight in a gym, you have to do it in a ring,” he explained.

He didn’t come back because of the high level of incompetence he would face. “I didn’t know about it. I didn’t even watch boxing in the 10 years I was preaching. I couldn’t even tell you what color Gerry Cooney was.”

But, once back in the ring, he was shocked. “They didn’t know their craft. They hadn’t made a study of their own profession. I was shocked that somebody could become No. 1 and be as inexperienced as these young men were. They had youth, but no know-how.”

Foreman was also surprised by his public acceptance. “When I was younger, I used to be snarly and moody. I didn’t trust people. But you know something? Since I found Jesus, I have found that people are basically good. They do good things for you if you just meet them halfway. If you smile instead of scowl.”

A lot of people were surprised the title fight with Holyfield was such a close affair. Foreman was one of them. Except that he was surprised he didn’t win. “I coasted in the middle rounds,” he said.

How was Foreman able to do what other old heavyweight champions, such as Jeffries, couldn’t?

It is a matter of record that another past champion, Sonny Liston, became a contender at an indeterminate age, well past what should have been his prime. The fight mob marveled at his preservation of skills until it became known Liston had spent a lot of his formative years in prison, years during which he might have been running the ridges, combining with gangs, dissipating, abusing his body--all of which he began to do as soon as he became champion, with predictable results.

As a preacher, George Foreman had lived as clean a life as, if not a prisoner, at least a monk. “I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t run around. You know the toughest thing I had to do when I got back in the ring?” he demands. “It was to take my shirt off and put on boxing shorts again! I felt embarrassed. I had spent all my time with my collar buttoned up and even a tie on, and I had a hard time even baring my chest again.”

Foreman has made $25 million out of his comeback, millions of which he has used to subsidize his youth centers and scholarship funds. He became more than a cult figure. He became a combination of Santa Claus and everybody’s favorite uncle, more popular as a contender than he ever was as champion.

Foreman will fight Alex Stewart in Thomas & Mack Arena at Las Vegas April 11. Stewart is a dangerous opponent who has fought Holyfield, Mike Tyson and has 28 knockouts in 31 fights. But Foreman hopes, at 44, to get past him for one more shot at the title. This time he hopes it will not only be a triumph for clean-living and being pure of heart, but it will also shoot down another fight game myth. They do so come back--if they do it for nobler motives, and not even to become the Great Gray Hope.