Despite the Loss, Give Him His Due

In any discussion of the great heavyweight champions, the hand of history lingers longest over Jack Johnson, Jim Corbett, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano or Muhammad Ali.

The name of George Foreman never comes up.

George lost his chance to become one of the top icons of the game one blustery 5 a.m. in Zaire when he fought an unintelligent, ill-prepared match against the cleverest, speediest--and maybe best--heavyweight who ever laced on a pair of gloves.

The fascinating fact about that loss is, if Foreman hadn’t lost that eerie, pre-dawn encounter to Muhammad Ali, he might never have lost at all. Marciano is the only heavyweight champion to have retired undefeated in his career. Tunney lost one fight.

The extraordinary thing about George Foreman is not that he fought for the heavyweight championship at the age of 43, it’s that he lost only three fights in 24 years.

You search through the ring books for a record like that.

The record for longevity usually settles on Archie Moore or Willie Pep. Moore fought, more or less, for 30 years from 1935 to 1965. He lost 24 times in that stretch. He got knocked out seven times, mostly by guys who were or would be heavyweight champions of the world--Marciano, Ezzard Charles, Floyd Patterson, Ali.

Willie Pep fought for 26 years (with a four-year hiatus) and lost 11 times, six by knockout and five by decision. The trick, of course, is that these fellows fought fights in the hundreds--Moore had 234 bouts, Pep 242. Foreman has had 74.

Still, his record commands awe when you consider that one of his losses came when he was 43 years old--against Evander Holyfield--and another one Foreman doesn’t consider a loss.

Even “great” champions have spottier records. Muhammad Ali lost five times, once by knockout, in 20 years. Joe Louis lost only three times in 17 years, twice by knockout. Jack Dempsey lost five decisions and one knockout. Even Jack Johnson got knocked out five times--twice when he was 50.

George Foreman is an American heirloom. There has never been anything like him. One of the hoariest cliches of the fight game is, “They never come back.” George came back. He won the heavyweight title in 1973, lost it in 1974 and fought for it again in 1991.

Is George that remarkable a specimen or has boxing deteriorated? Foreman laughs. “Well, considering I fought a former heavyweight champ when I was 26 and got knocked out, and fought a reigning champ in 1991 and he was hanging on at the finish, you would have to say George has come when boxing has went.”

Foreman, who will turn 45 in a week, will be fighting South Africa’s Pierre Coetzer in Reno on Saturday, as part of a three-fight multimillion-dollar deal he has with HBO. George is not about to make it his fourth defeat in 24 years, he assures himself.

Actually, Foreman considers his only lifetime losses were to Ali and Holyfield. His 1977 loss to the cute, banjo-hitting Jimmy Young in Puerto Rico, he tots up to showmanship: “Before the fight, the promoter, Don King, came up to me and says, ‘George, you been knocking out these guys too quick for television. Carry this guy for a while.’ ” George carried him. For 12 rounds. Young got the decision. “By the time I got around to trying to knock him out, I couldn’t find him. He disappeared.”

Actually, George admits his heart wasn’t in it any more. His defeat by Ali dispirited him. He felt violated. And even a card on which he fought five guys the same night couldn’t restore his old zest. He left the game for eight years.

This week’s fight will mark the 30th in his comeback. What was regarded as a stunt at first, a kind of complicated fund-raising for Foreman’s ministerial career, became startlingly real when he began knocking out fighters like Dwight Muhammad Qawi, Bert Cooper and Gerry Cooney.

Foreman is quite obviously one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Looked at one way, he came within one fight of being the greatest. He deserves to be remembered as something besides one of Ali’s opponents.