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George Foreman - Difficult Years

The loss was a severe blow to Foreman's pride. He was devastated. "Now that he had lost for the first time, he lived with a quiet terror. He could not stop spending money or conquering women. Every day for the next 30 days he went to bed with a different woman—some days, two," wrote Sports Illustrated reporter Gary Smith. Foreman himself told Smith, "After I'd lost to Ali, I'd decided I needed more hate. I'd hit you in the kidneys or on the back of the head. I'd beat women as hard as I beat men. You psych yourself to become an animal to box, and that's what you become."

Awards and Accomplishments

1968 Gold medal, Mexico City Olympics, heavyweight boxing
1973 World Heavyweight Champion (until 1974)
1994 WBA and IBF Heavyweight Champion (until 1995)

Where Is He Now?

Though George Foreman continued to step into the ring from time totime, his matches never recaptured the magic of that 1994 comeback victo-ry. But George Foreman has not been quiet. In addition to his preaching andcharitable work, including building a spacious new athletic center for chil-dren in Houston, Foreman has become a familiar face. In 1992, ABClaunched a television series called George, in which he starred as an over-weight, middle-aged ex-boxer working with disadvantaged children. It onlylasted eight episodes. But recently, through pitching his low-fat-cooking George Foreman Grills on TV commercials, Foreman has become a familiarface to a new generation.

He lives with his fifth wife, Mary Joan, and he has nine children, includ-ing five sons named George. In July 2000, against her father's wishes, hisdaughter stepped into the ring, winning her first professional boxing matchwith a knockout. In addition to his autobiography, Foreman has also published George Foreman's Guide to Life: How to Get Up Off the Canvas When Life Knocks You Down. If anyone should know how, it's George Foreman.

When he lost a big match to Jimmy Young, on March 17, 1977, Foreman went into a strange cathartic state in the dressing room. He tried to look past the fight, toward other opportunities in his life. "But no matter how hard I focused on positives, my thinking was dominated by death," he wrote in his autobiography. "My pacing back and forth was no longer about cooling down; it was about staying alive.… As I fell to the floor of my dressing room, my leg crumpling beneath me, my nostrils filled with the stink of infection. I recognized it instantly as the smell of absolute despair and hopelessness." At that point, he underwent a real religious conversion, embracing Christianity for the first time in his life. He even saw the signs of crucifixion on his own body.

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