The Fight of His Life : After Helping Rescue Family During Deadly Texas Floods, Foreman Sees Bout With Moorer as a Walk in the Park

George Foreman could not stop the rain, but it could not stop him, either.

It was Mother Nature vs. a man who, by some reports, is almost as old and maybe twice as stubborn, and it was a draw. And the 45-year-old heavyweight was rallying at the end.

Finally, the deluge ended, and although the muddy flatlands were still choked with water, Foreman felt triumphant.

The Great Flood of ’94 came, and a few days later, with the schools still closed, the roads still wet with overflow, Foreman was still training for his fight Saturday against Michael Moorer, the World Boxing Assn. and International Boxing Federation heavyweight champion.

Foreman remembered the rain falling all day and night, remembered the panic of being cut off from his children and parents. And, as a sweet smile distinctly apart from his 100-watt talk-show grin formed on his face, Foreman celebrated.

The waters closed in on the Kingwood neighborhood he calls home, and came within feet of swallowing his house. But Foreman, his family, and his chance to pull off one of sport’s more improbable dreams survived.

“In that flood, everything was over, what was I going to do?” Foreman said. “There was no way for me to get to my parents. . . . What am I supposed to do, say, ‘Oh, there’s no way.’ Or do I just make a way? Do you understand?”

Then Foreman, gaining momentum, turned the point to his courtroom struggle with the WBA to keep the bout alive after the WBA had said no, citing his age and recent 17-month layoff, to sanction it.

“Same way with this fight,” Foreman said. “It was over. That was it. But do you just sit there? Or do you make a way?”

Foreman and his promoter, Bob Arum, made their way by suing the WBA and winning in Nevada District Court, paving the way for the fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

After plunging into currents of raging flood water, carrying your children on your shoulders

for a few miles and spending a night in a shelter with your family, what, really, is the WBA, or even 27-year-old Michael Moorer, going to do that’s so fearsome?

“Here I am, I’m out of it, my legs are giving out, pulling this, carrying children,” Foreman said. “I had to carry two kids at a time, and keeping my parents from panicking.

“When I jumped out of the car, start going through that water, I thought, ‘Man, you’ve got a fight, you can’t be doing this.’ But I realized, ‘Are you kidding? You better be happy to go help your parents.’

“I spent a night in a shelter, just a few weeks before the most spectacular event in the country, but you start to realize how important it is just to have your family be safe. I’ve got my kids, my mother and father, my wife lying on the floor, that was good enough for me.

“That was my fight right there. That was a fight greater than anything I’ll ever see with Michael Moorer. A more important fight. I saved my mother and my family. So now I figure I’ve got a chance to do this stuff, I’m going to do everything.”

After an hour or two of rest at the shelter late on a Wednesday night, Foreman went back to the gym and trained. The next day, he trained again.

On Friday, though his three youngest children were hanging around because schools had not yet reopened, a rather skinny-legged Foreman--he won’t say but he appears to weigh a fit 250 pounds--sparred 12 rounds against five partners, with only five-second breaks between rounds.

“These last few days in Houston have been like nothing you could imagine,” said Foreman’s brother and constant companion, Roy. “I think any younger kid, any other athlete, probably would’ve used that excuse to say, ‘All right, I’ve got to take me a couple days,’ especially when he’d been working as hard as he has.

“He slept not on a cot but on a pad on the church floor. My back would’ve been killing me. But he said, ‘I’ve got to get back to the gym,’ and he did.”

Make way for George Foreman, churning toward higher ground.

“The struggle lives on,” the old fighter said. “It’s always going to be something. But if you sit back and you’re frightened of adversity, then once somebody hits you, you’re not going to be able to make it.

“What else could happen? Michael Moorer hits me with a jab? Believe me, I’m not worried about that now.”

*

For a man who has been famous for more than a quarter century, Foreman has a knack for popping up out of nowhere when everyone else’s attention is fixed on some new generation of ferocity.

This time, he has come out of limbo one more time to face Moorer, who was not yet 2 years old when Foreman walked around the ring with a U.S. flag after winning the Olympic gold medal in the turbulent 1968 Mexico City Games.

The last time he emerged, in 1987, Foreman, then almost 40, was stalking Mike Tyson, a fight that did not happen then, but might yet happen.

Foreman said he sees some of himself in the mean-spiritedness of Tyson before his jail sentence, and in the sarcasm and moodiness of Moorer, and in every young fighter who is embittered by the too-much, too-soon instant fame of being champion.

Why is he still around? Maybe because Foreman, already more famous now than any of the various champions, heavyweight or otherwise, sees too much of his old self in the champions of today.

“I was a bad guy, but I didn’t know any better,” Foreman said. “I was pushed into a corner, like with Moorer or something. He probably grew up admiring Mike Tyson, thinking that’s what you’re supposed to be.

“Tyson kind of got mixed up in the bad part of it too, in the same way. You can get in trouble. I was doing bad things behind people’s backs too, fighting people, taking over.

“I would’ve probably been in the same trouble Mike Tyson got himself into if people were reporting the things then like they are now. I’d get away with stuff like that.

“None of us can hide and be hypocrites about it. The same things he was doing, I did. He just ended up in jail. It could very well have happened to me.”

Foreman said this quickly, a middle-aged man remembering the distant demons.

“I got away with murder,” Foreman said. “A girl would come to your house, a girl people dream of, nice girls. And then they’d sit in your home and next thing you know, you’re saying, ‘C’mon girl,’ and it’s, ‘Naw, naw, I just came over to meet you.’ I said, ‘No, no, you know what you came over for.’

“And you become this cruel guy and you take advantage of people. You know what I’m saying? Man, I could’ve gotten in the same trouble because I did the same things. We just didn’t know any better.

“Then you get to be a man . . . I mean, I raise daughters now. I realize people are human beings, you have to treat them right. Tyson will probably understand that in another year.

“I had a lot of young ladies tell me, ‘You’re going to get it one day.’ ”

What did that matter to the most menacing fighter in the world, a man who walked around thinking of ways to kill somebody in the ring with one crushing blow to the temple?

“The average person’s walking around, thinking about going to the movies, and I’m walking around, thinking I’m going to kill one of these guys,” Foreman said.

But Foreman said that, even at the time, he knew something was not right.

Foreman won the title by knocking out Joe Frazier in 1973, lost it to Muhammad Ali in 1974, and was knocked out of boxing in 1977 by Jimmy Young, after which Foreman had a religious experience that took him into preaching.

And when he came back 10 years later, Foreman was a transformed man--gracious, garrulous and Gargantuan--at times, nearly 300 pounds.

“I think the mild-mannered guy you see now was always there inside of George,” said Jerry Bonney, a Houston attorney who grew up with Foreman in Houston’s infamous Fifth Ward. “But at the time, he might’ve felt he had something to prove and he was proving it with his fists.

“Now he’s proving his abilities to achieve with his mind. And now he’s gotten his religion and it makes him a different person. But I think that person was always there.”

Foreman worked his way back up, and four years and 20-plus fights into the comeback, got a title shot--a blistering decision loss to Evander Holyfield.

After a strange, listless performance against Tommy Morrison on June 7, 1993, Foreman was all but finished. He filmed dozens of commercials, tried his hand at acting in his own sitcom. But Roy Foreman knew better.

“I knew he couldn’t walk away from it totally,” Roy said. “He needed something to do. He tried it, I know he tried it. The TV show was a good sign to me that he tried to find something to do. But that wasn’t enough. Some people just need something to do every day, and that’s George.”

*

The restaurant is a barbecue pit near his training center, and George Foreman, it seems, is a frequent customer. His picture is on the wall, and as he ambles to the counter with a visitor, his order stuns the waitress.

“I need six all-you-can-eat rib plates, two whole chickens, two pounds of hot links . . . “

But Foreman is in training, and he limits himself to one rib and merry comments on the rest of the large dining company’s voracious appetites.

For this camp, preparing to fight a smallish champion that Foreman and many others consider a good match for his bulk and power, Foreman has declined to play Falstaff.

Most interviews were nixed, and jokes about cheeseburgers and fries do not roll out of his mouth.

Foreman got this fight almost solely because of his appeal to the mass audience--Baby Boomers looking for inspiration--but has refused to blow his chance at winning by letting his camp become a carnival.

“I don’t want to say it’s a lot more serious because George always trains hard,” Roy Foreman said. “But this time he’s a lot more stern. He ignores me. There are times I’ve always been like the laughing point in his life, but now he’s got his mind set.”

Why is Foreman still around? Maybe because he fervently believes that, in a ring, facing a foe who wants to beat you senseless, you find a truth in yourself you cannot find anywhere else.

In panic, keep working for higher ground.

“Muhammad (Ali), he’s been a boxer since he was 12 years old,” Foreman said. “Ever since that first bell rang, Muhammad would start moving. That tells you something about him. No matter how big the guy or how small he was, Muhammad would run. And he became great at it. Flawless with it. But he was reluctant. Tells you something. He always knew there was a great weakness within him. And look, he’s sick now.

“Joe Frazier, since he’s been a boxer, whenever the bell would ring, he’d smoke. That tells you something about him. It’s a reflection of our souls. What we have inside.”

And what does it say about George Foreman, 26 years removed from the winning of his gold medal?

“That I’m well able. I’ve always been well able. There’s nothing to be reluctant about, nothing to be fearful about, scared about.

“My soul has always been strong and I’ll probably always be like that. I’ll be 100 years old and my wife will be like, ‘George stop . . . it’s time to stop.’

“It keeps going. The idea is to outlive your critics. I would never be able to come back if Howard Cosell was still the top broadcaster. He goes off the scene, I’m back. You’ve got to let them all say, ‘He can’t do it! He can’t do it!’ then they fade away. . . .

“Like the story of Moses, he didn’t go back to Egypt until he heard Pharaoh was dead,” Foreman said. “Forty years. You see, 10 years is nothing.”