Johnny Bos: Large in Life, A Cult Figure in Death (A TSS Classic by Randy Gordon)

Published

4 years ago

October 7, 2020

Johnny-Bos-Large-in-Life-A-Cult-Figure-in-Death-A-TSS-Classic-by-Randy-Gordon

On a blustery autumn afternoon in October, 1979, Johnny Bos stepped off the elevator into my office at Ring Magazine. He was wearing a full-length white mink coat, large-rimmed sunglasses and a white ski cap. He wore jeans and a Gerry Cooney T-shirt. His coat was open, revealing a baseball-sized boxing glove which hung from one of several chains around his neck. He was unshaven, but his blond mustache stood out.

As he stepped off the elevator, he ran into Bert Sugar and me, who were heading to O’Reilly’s Pub, the birthplace for so many of the classic Ring Magazines Bert and I put out. As Johnny looked at us and as we looked at him, Bert exclaimed, “What the hell are you dressed up as!!??”

Johnny just looked at Bert, in his black Fedora, paisley pants, blue denim shirt, a tie which matched nothing he was wearing plus a long cigar and said, “Look who’s talking…Mr. Fashion Statement himself.” We had a good laugh, then Bert said, “Come with us, we’re working on the next issue. I’ll buy you a drink.” That was around noon when we headed to O’Reilly’s. We didn’t walk out of O’Reilly’s until midnight, but our next magazine was all but put together. Bert bought Johnny more than one drink. He even offered to pay him. Johnny accepted the drinks—each one a rum and Coke. He refused to take the money. He said helping us put together the story ideas for an issue of The Ring—our Ring—was worth it. He was always there for us.

“Today, November 17, 2012, is 26 years I have been straight & sober. I might be the only person who went from being a successful alcoholic to (being) a sober bum.” — Bos

* * *

I met Johnny in late 1976, in front of Sunnyside Garden Arena in Sunnyside, Queens, N.Y. We were there to catch a fight card featuring light heavyweight contender Bobby Cassidy against Luis Vinales. Also on the card was a rematch between my friend, Paddy Dolan, and Gerald Odum, who had beaten me eight months earlier in my pro debut.

Johnny and I were introduced by Malcolm “Flash” Gordon, who stood in front of the arena and sold his boxing newsletters, “Tonight’s Boxing Program.”

“You guys will get along great,” said Flash. “You are two of the biggest boxing junkies I know.”

Flash was right. Over the next 20 years, I watched Johnny move from being a gym rat (he loved spending time at Gil Clancy’s Gym on 28^th Street in Manhattan) to being one of the most sought after matchmakers and booking agents in the country. In the early 1980’s, while on a trip to a fight card in Atlantic City, I took the 2 ½ hour ride from New York City to Atlantic City with Hall of Fame matchmaker Teddy Brenner. When the talk came to matchmakers, he said, “I want you to watch three young matchmakers. They are going to be three of the best ever.” The names he mentioned were Bruce Trampler, Ron Katz and Johnny Bos. Trampler already has been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Katz is on his way there. Hopefully, so is Bos.

October 16, 2012—They took everything away from me, but my name will only get bigger and bigger as time goes on, even after I’m gone. Gottttttttttttttttta Gooooooooooooooooo. With Love, from Bos. Ccccccccyaaaaa!

* * *

Johnny, whose given name was Bosdal, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was a student of boxing, but little else, and left school before 11^th grade. He took a job in a department store, then went to work on the graveyard shift for the U.S. Postal Service. Being up all night probably honed him for his oncoming career as a matchmaker/booking agent, as he did his best work between the hours of 11:00 p.m.-5:00 a.m.

When fledgling boxing managers Mike Jones and Dennis Rappaport signed two promising fighters from Long Island, New York—Howard Davis Jr. and Gerry Cooney—in the mid-1970’s, they had the money to make things happen, but not the boxing knowledge. What they lacked in that department they more than made up for by hiring Bos to make matches for Olympic champion Davis and the towering left hook artist from Huntington, L.I. The talents of Davis and Cooney, along with the expert matchmaking of Bos, helped to quickly move each fighter into title contention.

Quickly, other managers and promoters saw what a matchmaking genius Bos was, and he became the busiest matchmaker in the boxing world. In the late 1970’s, at a fight card—where else—Bos met a young matchmaker from White Plains, N.Y., Ron Katz. The two became close friends. Young Katz quickly began learning from Bos, and soon the boxing business had the Boz-Katz matchmaking seal on almost every card in the nation. If Bos-Katz didn’t actually make a match on the card, they gave other matchmakers ideas for matches…gave them phone numbers or had fighters call them.

He and Katz would talk on the phone thru the night—every night. They made matches, got opponents, sparring partners and helped other matchmakers who were in desperate need of assistance. They usually got no money. Occasionally, they got a “Thank You.” They didn’t care. They had each other to talk boxing to.

It was nothing for them to conference-call someone—after midnight. I lost track of how many times my home phone rang after 2:00 a.m. Upon fumbling for the phone, I’d hear the two of them—Heckle & Jeckle—singing, on key, “Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.” I’d then go into another room and talk boxing with them, for a good hour or two, this, despite the fact I had to be into my office at The Ring in a few hours while Heckle & Jeckle slept the morning away. Thank goodness my boss was Bert Sugar!

“They can try as hard as they want to take the man out of boxing, but they’ll never take the boxing out of the man.”

* * *

Johnny loved music, and his tastes ran from the Temps, Four Tops and Marvin Gaye to Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie and Irene Cara (one of his favorite songs was Cara’s 1980’s hit, “Fame.”). He also loved his wearing his chains, his oversized boxing glove, his rings and his bling. Oh, there was also that full-length mink. Johnny loved his white mink, even in the warmer months. It was as common to see Johnny walk into a press conference in late April or early October wearing it as is was to see Don King with his hair pointed to the boxing heavens. Once, before Gerry Cooney fought Jimmy Young in Atlantic City, Jones & Rappaport, known in the industry as the “Wacko Twins,” told Bos he’d have to look presentable and professional at the casino in Atlantic City on the day of the fight, so they bought him a powder blue, three-piece suit.

“They told me there would be executives from CBS there and I would need to wear a suit,” Bos recalled. “I told them I didn’t own a suit and wasn’t gonna’ buy one. And what did I care if executives from CBS were there. They were there to see Cooney, not me.” But after the “Wacko Twins” bought Johnny the suit, he wore it.

“I kinda’ liked the way I looked,” recalled Bos recently. “It brought out my best features.”

Actually, Johnny’s best feature was his personality. Sure, his pimp-like mode of dressing on that 6’4” frame, which always held between 260-300 pounds, drew attention, but his quick wit, along with his deep passion and knowledge of the Sweet Science—both past and present—ingratiated him to everyone he came in contact with. Here was a man who loved what he did.

In a business known for its backstabbing and underhanded business deals, Johnny could be counted on and trusted. If he shook your hand on a deal, you could consider it done. In his decades of building the careers of so many fighters, Johnny gave more of himself than he ever took in return.

Few top fighters of the 1970’s, 80’s and early 90’s went through their career without being touched in some way by Johnny Bos. Once, he made a match for a rising contender who had stiffed him of a few thousand dollars a year earlier. It was one of the few times Johnny sought revenge. The opponent for the rising contender was a last-second replacement. Bos, who knew that styles make fights, made sure the opponent he chose was anything but the “right” opponent for the rising contender. When the fight was over, the rising contender was a fallen contender and Bos was thrilled.

After the fight, he laughed to me about what he had done.

“You’re bad, Johnny,” I said.

“I’m Johnny Bos, Johnny Bos, baddest dude there ever was!” he said with a roar.

But those moments were few and far between.

He watched with pride as many of the fighters he made matches for, including John “The Beast” Mugabi, John “The Heat” Verderosa, Michael Bentt, Joey Gamache, Tyrone Booze, Tracy Patterson, Jameel McCline, Paulie Malignaggi, Tyrell Biggs, Evander Holyfield, Mark Breland, Meldrick Taylor, Alex Ramos, Johnny Bumphus, Frank Bruno, Cornelius Boza-Edwards, Lloyd Honeyghan—and many more—all went on to major success in the industry.

Hall-of-Fame journalist Michael Katz once said that if he had to choose a person to be the National Commissioner of Boxing, his choice would be Johnny Bos.

To that, Johnny replied, “I could do the job, but I’d hate the politics.”

It was the politics of boxing, the truly dirty side of boxing politics, which broke Johnny’s big heart. After guiding and building the career of lightweight/junior welterweight Joey Gamache, Johnny steered him into a fight on February 26, 2000, against Arturo Gatti in Madison Square Garden. At that time, the New York State Athletic Commission was comprised of political hacks and cronies and run by a convicted felon who should have never been allowed to take control of the state agency.

At the weigh-in, Gatti was allowed to get on the scale and get right off, without the scale actually showing what his weight was. When Bos complained, the inept commissioner gave him a hard time, and told him the weigh-in was official. Gamache weighed 140 pounds. Gatti weighed 140 1/2. The following day, at the unofficial HBO weigh-in, Gamache was still a junior welterweight. Gatti wasn’t. He had ballooned four weight classes. He weighed in at 160 pounds. That night, he crushed Gamache, knocking him out in the second round.

Bos went wild, calling out the commission’s ineptitude on every level. As Gamache recovered in the hospital from the severe head trauma he suffered at the hands of the brutal-punching Gatti, Bos filed a protest on the grounds the weigh-in was handled improperly. Then he filed suit against the New York State Athletic Commission.

With the NYSAC breathing down Johnny’s neck he sought what he thought would be a bright future in the Sunshine State. He settled in Clearwater, Florida, originally telling me, “Lots of people head to Florida to finish out their lives and die. I’m going to Florida to live.”

It never worked out that way for him, especially after a New York court ruled in Gamache’s favor in the lawsuit, finding the NYSAC negligent in their handling of the weigh-in. But then came the blow which struck Big John harder than he had ever been hit before. The court refused to award Gamache any money. Not a penny. They ruled that the NYSAC’s negligence had not determined the outcome of the fight. He retreated to his apartment in Clearwater and stayed there for months.

“Don’t worry if there’s a hell below, because we’re all going to go.” -Curtis Mayfield

* * *

Johnny’s spirits were lifted, when, in 2009, he was inducted into the Florida Boxing Hall of Fame. The induction was exactly what Bos needed. In his 58 years, he had been addicted to three things: Cigarettes, alcohol and boxing. Over the years, he was able to completely eliminate alcohol (1986) and cigarettes (a few years later). But he never could rid himself of his addiction to boxing. Many of us know that same feeling. When the call came about his upcoming induction, Bos was elated.

He took to Facebook and proclaimed he was back. Then he met and became friends with Henry Rivalta, the head Boxing Operations for Acquinity Sports, the new boxing promotion powerhouse based out of South Florida. Rivalta made Bos his matchmaker.

Last November 30, I was in Sunrise, Florida, as one of four announcers for the Khabib Allakhverdiev-Joan Guzman fight. Acquinity was the promoter. Sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting for me were two of my favorite boxing people. One was my announcing colleague that night, Ron Borges, who, for years, has been one of the top boxing writers in the world. The other was Acquinity’s matchmaker, Johnny Bos.

Although I had spoken to him quite often on the phone, this was the first time I had seen Johnny in a few years. Both Borges and I didn’t think he looked well. The fact is, he wasn’t.

Recently, he put a photo of a cardiologists’s report done on him in 2000, on Facebook. The report found Bos to have congestive heart failure, brought on by years of heavy smoking and excessive drinking. The doctor said his long term prognosis for Johnny was not encouraging. When Johnny put that doctor’s note on Facebook, he said “I’m still here, so f–k all of you!”

“I spoke to him last week,” said Henry Rivalta. “During our conversation, he said ‘Thank you, Henry. Thank you for everything.’ I don’t know how much longer this old heart can hold out. So thank you for bringing me back. Thank you for everything.’ He knew.”

On Saturday night at around 10:30 p.m., Johnny’s brother, Jeffrey, along with Jeffrey’s girlfriend, Suzanne McBee, found Johnny dead in his apartment.

On so many occasions since his departure from New York, Johnny Bos said to me, “Nobody remembers me. I was once a big name in boxing and now, nobody remembers me.” I assured him that wasn’t true.

Now, as he sits in his white mink at the bar inside the Pearly Gates (sorry, Johnny, you were wrong about where you were heading) with Bert Sugar, Wayne Kelly, Teddy Brenner, Emanuel Steward, Angelo Dundee and other boxing luminaries who graced us, Bos sees the outpouring of love his memory is getting, and knows he hasn’t been forgotten.

As long as boxing lives, he will never be forgotten.

EDITOR’S NOTE; This story first ran on May 15, 2013. For more on the late Johnny Bos, check out Thomas Hauser’s fond remembrance.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 108: Knockdowns, Featherweight Title Fight and More

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 319: Rematches in Las Vegas, Cancun and More

Published

13 hours ago

March 28, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-319-Rematches-in-Las-Vegas-Cancun-and-More

Rematches are the bedrock for prizefighting.

Return battles between rival boxers always means their first encounter was riveting and successful at the box office.

Six months after their first brutal battle Mikaela Mayer (20-2, 5 KOs) and Sandy Ryan (7-2-1, 3 KOs) will slug it out again for the WBO welterweight world title this time on Saturday, March 29, at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.

ESPN will show the Top Rank card live.

“It’s important for women’s boxing to have these rivalries and this is definitely up there as one of the top ones,” Mayer told the BBC.

If you follow Mayer’s career you know that somehow drama follows. Whether its back-and-forth beefs with fellow American fighters or controversial judging due to nationalism in countries abroad. The Southern California native who now trains in Las Vegas knows how to create the drama.

For female fighters self-promotion is a necessity.

Most boxing promoters refuse to step out of the usual process set for male boxers, not for female boxers. Things remain the same and have been for the last 70 years. Social media has brought changes but that has made promoters do even less.

No longer are there press conferences, instead announcements are made on social media to be drowned among the billions of other posts. It is not killing but diluting interest in the sport.

Women innately present a different advantage that few if any promoters are recognizing. So far in the past 25 years I have only seen two or three promoters actually ignite interest in female fighters. They saw the advantages and properly boosted interest in the women.

The fight breakdown

Mayer has won world titles in the super featherweight and now the welterweight division. Those are two vastly different weight classes and prove her fighting abilities are based on skill not power or size.

Coaching Mayer since amateurs remains Al Mitchell and now Kofi Jantuah who replaced Kay Koroma the current trainer for Sandy Ryan.

That was the reason drama ignited during their first battle. Then came someone tossing paint at Ryan the day of their first fight.

More drama.

During their first fight both battled to control the initiative with Mayer out-punching the British fighter by a slender margin. It was a back-and-forth struggle with each absorbing blows and retaliating immediately.

New York City got its money’s worth.

Ryan had risen to the elite level rapidly since losing to Erica Farias three years ago. Though she was physically bigger and younger, she was out-maneuvered and defeated by the wily veteran from Argentina. In the rematch, however, Ryan made adjustments and won convincingly.

Can she make adjustments from her defeat to Mayer?

“I wanted the rematch straight away,” said Ryan on social media. “I’ve come to America again.”

Both fighters have size and reach. In their first clash it was evident that conditioning was not a concern as blows were fired nonstop in bunches. Mayer had the number of punches landed advantage and it unfolded with the judges giving her a majority decision win.

That was six months ago. Can she repeat the outcome?

Mayer has always had boiler-oven intensity. It’s not fake. Since her amateur days the slender Southern California blonde changes disposition all the way to red when lacing up the gloves. It’s something that can’t be taught.

Can she draw enough of that fire out again?

“I didn’t have to give her this rematch. I could have just sat it out, waited for Lauren Price to unify and fought for undisputed or faced someone else,” said Mayer to BBC. “That’s not the fighter I am though.”

Co-Main in Las Vegas

The co-main event pits Brian Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) facing Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1, 19 KOs) in a contest for the WBO welterweight title.

Norman, 24, was last seen a year ago dissecting a very good welterweight in Giovani Santillan for a knockout win in San Diego. He showed speed, skill and power in defeating Santillan in his hometown.

Cuevas has beaten some solid veteran talent but this will be his big test against Norman and his first attempt at winning a world title.

Also on the Top Rank card will be Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington and Emiliano Vargas, the son of Fernando Vargas, in separate bouts.

Golden Boy in Cancun

A rematch between undefeated William “Camaron” Zepeda (32-0, 27 KOs) and ex-champ Tevin Farmer (33-7-1, 8 KOs) headlines the lightweight match on Saturday March 29, at Cancun, Mexico.

In their first encounter Zepeda was knocked down in the fourth round but rallied to win a split-decision over Farmer. It showed the flaws in Zepeda’s tornado style.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also includes a clash between Yokasta Valle the WBC minimumweight world titlist who is moving up to flyweight to face former flyweight champion Marlen Esparza.

Both Valle and Esparza have fast hands.

Valle is excellent darting in and out while Esparza has learned how to fight inside. It’s a toss-up fight.

Fights to Watch

Fri. DAZN 12 p.m. Cameron Vuong (7-0) vs Jordan Flynn (11-0-1); Pat Brown (0-0) vs Federico Grandone (7-4-2).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. William Zepeda (32-0) vs Tevin Farmer (33-7-1); Yokasta Valle (32-3) vs Marlen Esparza (15-2).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Mikaela Mayer (20-2) vs Sandy Ryan (7-2-1); Brian Norman Jr. (26-0) vs Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Boxing Odds and Ends: The Wacky and Sad World of Livingstone Bramble and More

Published

2 days ago

March 27, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Boxing-Odds-and-Ends-The-Wacky-and-Sad-World-of-Livingstone-Bramble-and-More

One couldn’t write a book about prizefighting’s most eccentric characters without including former lightweight champion Livingstone Bramble who passed away last Saturday (March 22) at age 64 in Las Vegas. The Bramble chapter might well be the longest chapter in the book.

Born on the island of St. Kitt’s and raised in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, Bramble had his first 22 pro fights in New Jersey, nine at Ice World where he made his pro debut. A 3,000-seat hockey rink in Totowa, a community in Northern New Jersey roughly equidistant between Newark and the state capitol of Paterson, Ice World was the stomping ground of Main Events, a family-run enterprise founded by former labor lawyer Dan Duva, the oldest son of colorful boxing trainer Lou Duva who was effectively the face of the operation.

Bramble burst into prominence on June 1, 1984, when, in his twenty-third pro fight, he upset Ray “Boom” Mancini at Buffalo’s War Memorial Auditorium, taking away Mancini’s WBA world lightweight title.

Referee Marty Denkin stopped the fight in the 14^th stanza with Boom Boom on his feet but in very bad shape. Bramble dominated the second half of the fight but was yet trailing on two of the scorecards, a potential scandal that was averted when he took the fight out of the judges’ hands. They fought again 11 months later in Reno and Bramble won a narrow but fair 15-round decision, out-pointing Mancini by 1 point on all three cards.

Bramble’s eccentricities overshadowed his feats in the ring. He owned a boa constrictor named Dog and a pit bull terrier named Snake. A Rastafarian, he trained with reggae music in the background, braided his hair before it was fashionable, and began his public workouts by having his trainer blow soap bubbles which he popped with his fists. Prior to both Mancini fights, he had a voodoo witch doctor place a hex on Boom Boom (the man was exposed as Bramble’s former middle school basketball coach).

After the second Mancini fight, Bramble successfully defended his title with a 13^th-round stoppage of Tyrone “Butterfly” Crawley, but he was then shocked by Edwin Rosario who became a lightweight champion for the second time when he knocked out Bramble in the second round at an outdoor stadium in Miami Beach. Rosario’s upset spoiled a lucrative unification fight between Bramble and Hector Camacho.

Attempting to fight his way back into title contention, Bramble never did get over the hump. His best win as a former champion was a second-round knockout of junior welterweight Harold Brazier, a boxer who would be stopped only one other time, that coming late in a 124-fight career. Bramble took that fight on nine days’ notice, subbing for Micky Ward who pulled out with a hand injury.

Bramble eventually devolved into a gatekeeper, a diplomatic term for a professional loser. He won only three of his last 16 fights to finish 40-26-3.

Late in his career, Bramble settled in Las Vegas. He was 41 years old when he made his first and only ring appearance in his adopted hometown. It came at the Orleans, an off-Strip property where he was paired against Guadalajara journeyman Juan Carlos Rodriguez who had lost seven of his previous nine heading in. At the time, Bramble was preparing for his life after boxing by taking a class for aspiring slot machine technicians.

Bramble lost a wide 10-round decision. “[He] couldn’t get his jab working or put his punches together in a disappointing performance,” wrote Review-Journal ringside reporter Royce Feour. The bout’s matchmaker Brad Goodman was more scathing in his assessment. “Bramble should retire,” said Goodman. “He can’t pull the trigger. His mind was telling him to do something, but his body was not reacting.”

Bramble had four more fights, the last two 6-rounders on small cards in Idaho and Utah. All told, he answered the bell as a pro for 498 rounds.

Jacob “Stitch” Duran, boxing’s most prominent cutman, was new in town and scrounging for work when he first met Livingstone Bramble. They met at the long-shuttered Golden Gloves gym.

“I approached him and asked ‘when is your next fight?’” recalled Duran. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘right now if you don’t shut up.’”

Duran was taken aback, but then Bramble smiled his radiant smile and Duran knew he was being spoofed. He would eventually work the pads for Bramble and the two became fast friends.

Livingstone Bramble spent his final years in an assisted living facility in Las Vegas, the cost of which, notes Duran, was born by the World Boxing Council which has a fund set aside to assist former professional boxers who have fallen on hard times.

Duran had a habit of visiting Bramble every week but stopped when the boxer could no longer recognize him. “I told his son that I just couldn’t do it anymore, it was too heartbreaking, and that I wanted to remember his dad the way that he was,” Duran told this reporter. “His son was very understanding.”

Stitch Duran remembers the exact time when he was informed that his friend had died. The call from Bramble’s son came at 3:44 in the morning.

News travels fast in the digital age and after Las Vegas fight writer Kevin Iole shared the news of Bramble’s departure on his website, other news outlets quickly latched hold of the info. What’s missing is a formal obituary and funeral arrangements. As yet, there are none.

Bobby Czyz

Livingstone Bramble and Bobby Czyz were stablemates whose careers ran on parallel paths and sometimes intersected. Both earned their spurs on Main Events promotions at Ice World.

The headline attraction on the card where Livingstone Bramble made his pro debut was a match between Bobby Czyz and Tommy Merola, young middleweight prospects. He and Bramble were on the same bill again the following year. The May 21, 1981 event was reportedly the first advance sellout of a boxing card in Totowa.

The brainy Czyz, who finished sixth of 365 in his high school graduation class according to a story in the New York Times, went on to win world titles as a light heavyweight and a cruiserweight. He had a promising career as a Showtime boxing commentator when he hung up his gloves.

Czyz lost that gig (we won’t elaborate) and things went downhill from there. In the summer of 2018, he was discovered working as a cashier in a New Jersey grocery store by a reporter for the Newark Star Ledger.

In December of last year, Bobby Czyz, now 63 years old, was diagnosed with brain cancer. And that brings us to this Sunday (March 30) when a benefit will be held for Czyz at the Elks Lodge located at 242 Chestnut Street in Nutley, New Jersey. A number of boxing luminaries of yesteryear will be in attendance at the event which commences at 1 pm. Tickets to the fundraiser, which are tax-deductible, start at $100.

At last look, the event was a near-sellout. Those interested in attending or just supporting Bobby in this battle should go to this website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/battle-for-bobby-czyz-tickets-1243505882569

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A Paean to George Foreman (1949-2025), Architect of an Amazing Second Act

Published

5 days ago

March 24, 2025

Arne K. Lang

A-Paean-to-George-Foreman-1949-2025-Architect-of-an-Amazing-Second-Act

George Foreman had two careers as a prizefighter. He finished his first career with a record of 45-2 and his second career with a record of 31-3.

The two careers were interrupted by a 10-year intermission. During the lacuna, George morphed seamlessly into a different person. The first George Foreman was menacing and the second George Foreman was cuddly. But in both incarnations, Foreman was larger than life. It seemed as if he would be with us forever.

George Foreman, born in 1949 in Marshall, Texas, a suburb of Houston, learned to box in the Job Corps, a federally-funded vocational training program central to President Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty initiative. He was already well-known when he made his pro debut in 1969 on a card at Madison Square Garden topped by an alluring contest between Joe Frazier and Jerry Quarry.

The previous year, at the Olympic Summer Games in Mexico City, George endeared himself to the vast majority of white Americans (and many African-Americans too) by parading around the ring clutching a tiny American flag in his right hand after winning his gold medal match with a second-round stoppage of his Russian opponent. The scene was viewed by millions on television and the picture of it graced the front page of many large-circulation American papers.

The image would not have resonated as strongly if not for the actions of medal-winning American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Ten days earlier, at the same Summer Games, Smith and Carlos stood on the podium with their black-gloved fists clenched high in a black power salute during the playing of the National Anthem. Big George, although only 19 years old, was hailed as a patriot, an antidote to those that would tear apart (or further rent) the fabric of American society.

Foreman squandered the admiration that flowed his way with his disposition. He didn’t handle the demands of celebrityhood very well. Reporters found him stand-offish if not downright surly. But he kept winning.

Foreman was never better than on the night of Jan. 22, 1973, when he conquered defending heavyweight champion Joe Frazier in less than two rounds at Kingston, Jamaica. Frazier, like Foreman, unbeaten and a former Olympic gold medalist, was as high as a 5/1 favorite in U.S. precincts, but George demolished him. Frazier was up and down like a yo-yo, six times in all, during the brief encounter.

In his next two fights, Foreman knocked out veteran Puerto Rican campaigner Joe Roman in the opening round and took out Ken Norton in the second frame, the same Ken Norton who had fought 24 rounds with Muhammad Ali, winning and losing split decisions.

Then came the iconic Rumble in the Jungle and we know what happened there. Riding a skein of 24 wins inside the distance, Foreman entered that contest with a record of 40-0 and the prevailing sentiment among the cognoscenti was that he would horizontalize Muhammad Ali in the same fashion as he had starched most of his other victims.

Following this setback, Foreman sat out all of 1976. He would have six more fights before his goodbye starting with a bout at Caesars Palace with Ron Lyle.

Foreman bombed out Lyle in the fifth frame of a back-and-forth slugfest that would be named The Ring magazine Fight of the Year. Four more knockouts would follow beginning with a fifth-round stoppage of Joe Frazier in their second and final meeting and then came a date in San Juan with Jimmy Young, a cutie from Philadelphia.

Foreman and Young met on a sultry afternoon in March of 1977 at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, a building with no air-conditioning. Foreman nearly took Young out in the seventh round of the 12-round contest but ran out of gas and lost a unanimous decision.

In his dressing room after the fight, Foreman experienced an epiphany and became a born-again Christian. His trainer Gil Glancy rationalized the voices that Foreman heard in his head as a hallucination born of heat prostration, but George was having none of it. He returned to Houston where he could be found evangelizing on street corners or preaching as a guest pastor in storefront churches. His Rolls Royce was gone, replaced by a Volkswagen, and he found coveralls more to his liking than the fancy silk suits he had once purchased in bulk. He eventually established his own church, the Church of Lord Jesus Christ, and became an ordained minister.

ACT TWO

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives,” but Fitzgerald never met Reverend George Foreman.

Foreman’s second act began on March 9, 1987, before an announced crowd of 5,555 at Arco Arena in Sacramento with a fourth-round stoppage of journeyman Steve Zouski. He told reporters in attendance that he would use his purse, reportedly $24,000, to build a youth center but the cynics were of the opinion that every penny would go into his coffers as expensive divorces and other burdens had exhausted his savings. When George passed the collection plate at his church, wisecracked the wiseguys, all that came back was lint.

Although Foreman had been out of action for a decade, it seemed much longer. By then, Muhammad Ali had fallen into decrepitude, dating an entire generation of heavyweights as relics. In appearance and in fighting style, Foreman scarcely resembled his former self which had the sensory effect of elongating the gap in his timeline. The new George Foreman shaved his head bald and his torso was more massive. When he sallied out of his dressing room, Hall of Fame boxing writer Graham Houston likened the impression to that of an ancient battleship coming out of the mist.

This reporter was ringside for Foreman’s second comeback fight at the Oakland Coliseum where he was paired against Charles Hostetter, a smallish heavyweight packaged as the heavyweight champion of Texas. Hostetter folded his tent in the third round, taking a knee like a quarterback running out the clock at the end of a football game. Foreman carried 247 pounds, 20 pounds less than what he had carried for Zouski but nearly 30 pounds more than what he had carried in his first meeting with Joe Frazier.

The Hostetter fight was a set-up, as were many of Foreman’s fights in the first two years of his comeback, but Big George never cheated himself. Away from the probing eye of reporters, he always went the extra mile in his workouts.

Foreman stayed busy, but his comeback proceeded in fits and starts. In his eighth comeback fight, he stopped Dwight Muhammad Qawi in the seventh round (more exactly, Qawi quit, turning his back on the referee to signal that he was finished) at Caesars Palace, but it was a lackluster performance by George whose punches were slow and often missed the mark. This was the same Dwight Muhammad Qawi who had given Evander Holyfield a tough tussle in a 15-round barnburner when both were cruiserweights, but against Foreman the “Camden Buzzsaw” was a bloated butterball, carrying 222 pounds on his five-foot-seven frame.

The bout’s promoter, Bob Arum, exhorted Foreman go back to the bushes to freshen-up and when George returned to the ring nine weeks later it was in Alaska in an off-TV fight against an opponent with a losing record.

But Foreman’s confidence never wavered and when he finally lured a big-name opponent into the ring, Gerry Cooney, he was more than ready. They met on Jan. 16, 1990, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

At age 33, Cooney was also on the comeback trail. He hadn’t fought in two-and-half years, not since being stopped in the fifth round by Michael Spinks in this same ring. Since his mega-fight with Larry Holmes in mid-1982, he had answered the bell for only 12 rounds. But, rusty or not, Cooney still possessed a sledgehammer of a left hook.

Cooney landed the harder punches in the first round and won the round on all three cards, but Big George was just warming up. In the second stanza, he decked Cooney twice. The second knockdown was so harsh that referee Joe Cortez waived the fight off without starting a count.

“He smote him,” wrote Phil Berger for his story in the New York Times. “The Punching Preacher gained a flock of converts,” said Bernard Fernandez in the Philadelphia Daily News.

Foreman called out Mike Tyson after the fight. The wheels were set in motion when they shared top billing on a card at Caesars Palace in June of 1990 (Tyson knocked out former amateur rival Henry Tillman in the opening round; Foreman dismissed the Brazilian, Adilson Rodrigues, in round two), but the match never did come to fruition and Foreman, tired of waiting, set his sights on Evander Holyfield who owned two of the three meaningful pieces of the world heavyweight title.

An Adonis-physiqued gladiator renowned for his vitality, Holyfield, 28, figured to be too good and too fast for Foreman. If Evander set a fast pace, Foreman, it seemed, would eventually crumble from exhaustion. “Hopefully Holyfield will take it easy on him,” wrote the sports editor of the Tennessean. “There’s no glory to be gained in mugging a senior citizen.”

Holyfield won the fight, but Foreman – the oldest man to challenge for a world title in any weight division to that point in time — won the hearts of America with his buoyant performance. On several occasions Holyfield rattled him, but Big George kept coming back for more and at the finish it was he, improbably, who seemed to have more fuel in his tank. After trouncing Gerry Cooney, casual fans, at least most of them, finally took him seriously and with his gallant performance against Holyfield, he graduated into a full-fledged American folk hero. One would be hard-pressed to find an example of a boxer elevating his stature to such an extent in a match that he lost.

There was more to George Foreman’s growing popularity. He proved to be a great salesman, leavening his fistic fearsomeness with self-effacing humor. He developed an amusing shtick that played off his fondness for cheeseburgers and he became a popular guest on the talk show circuit. “Is this Adilson Rodrigues a good fighter?” inquired Johnny Carson. “I sure hope not,” deadpanned Foreman.

History would show that Big George wasn’t done making miracles, but there were potholes in his path. He had ended the Holyfield fight with a puffy face and with swelling around both of his eyes, but he looked a lot worse following his 10-round match with Alex Stewart in April of 1992. At the final bell, his face was a bloody mess and both of his eyes were swollen nearly shut. Fortunately, he scored two knockdowns in the second stanza, without which he would have been on the wrong side of a split decision.

Two fights later, he was out-pointed by Tommy Morrison in a bout sanctioned as a world title fight by the fledgling and lightly-regarded World Boxing Organization (WBO). Purportedly a distant relative of John Wayne, “Tommy the Duke” had the equalizer, a Cooney-ish left hook, but there were holes in his defense. A slugfest on paper, this bout played out like a chess match. Go figure.

Eighteen months after his lackluster showing against Morrison, Foreman got another shot at the world heavyweight title, thrust against Michael Moorer who had upset Holyfield to win the WBA and IBF (and lineal) titles. (The WBC version was held by Lennox Lewis; Mike Tyson was in prison.) A former light heavyweight champion who had successfully defended that diadem nine times, Moorer, not quite 27 years old, was undefeated in 35 fights with 30 knockouts.

The match-up was widely disparaged because of the alphabet soup nonsense and because Foreman was coming off a loss. “Big George has been good for the game, but has outstayed his welcome,” wrote Harry Mullen. The noted British scribe, who had been ringside for Larry Holmes’ beatdown of Muhammad Ali, told his readers that he wouldn’t be going to Las Vegas to see the fight because he just couldn’t stomach yet another dispiriting spectacle. “The most likely outcome,” he said, “is a prolonged and painful beating.”

At this juncture of his life, Foreman didn’t need the money. Although his TV sitcom “George” had been cancelled after only eight episodes (George played a retired boxer who starts an after-school program for inner-city kids), he had money rolling in from a slew of endorsements. McDonald’s, KFC, Frito-Lay, Oscar Meyer – you name it – and Big George was a “brand ambassador.” With his purse of no great importance in the big picture, George’s only incentive for defeating Moorer was his pride.

Through nine rounds, Moorer vs. Foreman was a tedious affair. Moorer was ahead by a commanding 5 points on two of the scorecards while the third judge had Moorer ahead by only 1. Foreman, who scored 68 knockouts over the course of his pro career, always had a puncher’s chance, no matter the opponent, but there was no inkling of the thunderclap that would come. This was shaping up as the sort of fight that would have the patrons streaming to the exits before the final bell.

The thunderclap arrived in the final minute of the 10^th frame. It was a classic British punch in execution, a stiff right hand delivered straight from the shoulder. The punch didn’t travel far, but landed smack on Moorer’s jaw. His face went blank and he fell to the canvas where he lay prone as the referee counted him out. Before the stupefied crowd had a chance to soak it all in, Foreman dropped to his knees in prayer. Many were misty-eyed as ring announcer Michael Buffer made it formal, orating the particulars.

Six days after the 20^th anniversary of the Rumble in the Jungle, Big George Foreman had rolled back the clock, recapturing the world heavyweight title, or at least pieces of it, capping the most astonishing comeback in the history of human endurance sports.

Foreman would have four more fights before leaving the sport for good two months shy of his 49^th birthday. We won’t delve into those bouts other than noting that he was fortunate to get the nod over Axel Schulz and unfortunate to lose to Shannon Briggs in his farewell fight, a narrow decision widely assailed as a heist.

And the money kept rolling in. In 1994, the year that Foreman conquered Michael Moorer, a portable indoor grill that came to be called the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine was introduced to the public. The contraption proved so popular that Foreman, the TV pitchman and the face of it, reaped a reported $200 million in royalties, more money than he had earned in all of his prizefights combined.

They say you can never go home again, to which Big George replied , “bah, humbug.”

Foreman’s heroics during his Second Act put a spring my step and had the same effect on many others. In the words of the inimitable Jim Murray, he was a hero to every middle-aged man and older who looked in the mirror and saw some stranger looking back at him.

Thank you, George, thanks for the memories. Rest in peace

***

Note: TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2016 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020. Several of the passages in this story were extracted from that book.

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